Each summer I begin to think about an area I really want to plan or improve on for the upcoming year and dedicate some time to working on this area throughout my summer break. This year it is writing. Writing was part of my Professional Development Plan this year, but sadly with the crazy year we had, I felt that it was something I need to continue into next year.
So the planning has begun and you can follow along with me here on my blog as I begin the work of planning and learning this summer about how to improve in this area.
Part 1: Organinizing All the "Stuff"
My first step has been to organize all the resources and information I already have. After many years of teaching, I have accumulated a lot of resources. Some are things I have acquired on TPT others are things I received through various trainings and resources from my district. I know I needed to first get all of these resources into something more organized. Here are the steps I have taken to begin this organization process.
Printing District Resources
The first thing I needed to do was make sure I had all of my district information printed so I could reference it as I was planning. Our district has a writing portfolio that we add to for each of our students that goes into that cumulative folder. This is the place where their progress in writing is documented throughout the year. I know there may be some changes to these documents for the new school year, but normally the changes each year are miniscule. I also printed out the writing standards and some exemplars that our district provides. These resources will help me as I map put my plan for the year.
Create a Planning Calendar
My next step was to create a planning calendar just for writing. I decided to do this with Google Calendar but a printable calendar with next years school dates on it would work as well. We have certain deadlines for our beginning of the year baselines so I went ahead and put in some dates to plan to have these completed at the beginning of the year next year. We also have a pacing guide that helps us plan when to do different types of writing such as narrativing, informational, etc. By using a calendar, I will be able to better plan dates that I would like to have certain types of writing completed by next year. Of course, we know things happen, but at least by having these dates, it will help me pace out my writing plans much better.
If you are like me and need the steps to create a new calendar in Google, here are the steps you will need to follow to set this up.
Google Drive Writing Resources
My last step in getting all things prepared was to work on organizing all of the writing resources I have in my Google drive. Through my many years in the classroom, I have accumulated a lot of different resources. I first created a folder called Writing 2nd Grade and then worked to get all of the resources I know I want to use next year in this folder. Then I created sub folders, as you can see from above, to further organize into different categories. These are the categories I came up with as I looked at what I had.
I still do need to to download some TPT resources I have bought and add a few of those, but now I do feel as if I have things much better organized as I begin this major overhaul of my writing plan.
There is more still to come so make sure and come back soon to see my next step in this project.
Until then…
