Did I Do It?

I've been spending some time exploring new blogs (to me!), and going back and reading their older posts (doesn't everyone do that?! :), when I saw Jess' Back to School linky from last year-which reminded me of my post!

I thought it would be fun for me to repost my goals, and see if I actually met them!

Here were my goals for last year:

Here's how I did!

Personal: I definitely succeeded with this one! I hardly ever brought any work home with me, and though I did some unit creating, it didn't consume my life nearly as my as it did last year!

Organizing: Well, my math centers were sorted into domain bins.

Here are the binders that hold the copies of the centers.

I didn't get them organized by individual strand (but hey! at least their organized by domain!).

I also didn't use them this year! With piloting and everything, it all fell by the wayside. So, they are as organized as I left them. Maybe half-succeeded on this one?!

Planning: Hmmmm. Well, I definitely did more with the CC than I did the year before....but I definitely wasn't always planned three days in advance!

My planbook usually looked like this! ELA was almost always planned for the week, Science or Social Studies nearly so, but Math was planned on a day to day basis, depending on how the lesson went!

 I usually had everything planned at least a day in advance-and almost always before the day started :) Although, I did get very lazy by the end of school-but you don't need to see that picture ;)

Professional: This did happen! My teamies and I went to Lucy Calkins together, and we also recently completed a 2-day workshop at our local historical society. I also went to a so-so Guided Math workshop on my own.

Piloting definitely happened, and we had lots of math meetings and discussions. We'll be working in our first year of our new program-Math in Focus, so we'll have more trainings on that as well.

Students: I hope they had fun and learned a lot- I can say that the ABSOLUTELY LOVED Mentor Sentences (thanks Jivey!), when I asked them what their favorite thing was 90% of them said that! (And they definitely think I should do it again next year!)

I had some interesting kiddos this year-but for all the trouble this kiddo gave me-he also came the farthest, and made such an impression on me (and I on him! He said I was his favorite teacher, and if anyone told me I wasn't a great teacher-I shouldn't listen to them :).

Motto: What can I say? I still think nonsense and fantasy are necessary things in everyday life! :D

So, all in all, I didn't do too shabbily! I think reflecting on this was one of my better ideas (pats self on back) :), because I can see where I need to make improvements, and I'm now gearing up for next year! I think it helped wipe the slate clean, and made me think of how I want to change and improve for next year!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn