MMI - new planner, running inspiration, and Greek allusions

Earlier this summer I blogged for the first time in a while.  I had hoped to reignite my excitement of the blogging and TpT world, but it's been a struggle.  In trying to blog once a month, I sat down at 7:57pm on July 31 to get in a blog for this month.  If I get through it, I'll join up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her monthly linky - Monday Made It.

While adventures like blogging or running tend to come and go, thankfully my passion for teaching hasn't faded out.  I'll be headed into my 20th year of teaching, and still love it!  My first Made-It is my new planner/gradebook for this year.  I started using these 2 years ago, and have made it better each year.  The biggest change this year is for my grading pages.  We are a standards-based school, which is tricky for ELA.  Thankfully, this will be the first year in A LONG TIME that we are not making any changes to our online gradebook.  But I adjusted my pages to allow for me to see progress by having fewer standards per page, and having each page span all 4 quarters.  I plan to cut off the edges, so I only need to write in the names once.  This took a lot of manipulation in Pages, but I'm happy with how it came out.

My Weekly Lesson Planning Page

I've blogged before about my on-again, off-again running.  Well I'm proud that I've been at it for a couple years now (with small breaks).  To help keep me inspired, I finally organized my medals and helped my daughter to do the same with a wall in her room.  She is headed into her second year of cross country at the high school.  She has worked hard this summer and is going into her first official day of practice tomorrow READY!  We have run 4 races together, and have two more before school starts.  This Saturday we will run in a women's race that has mother/daughter teams!  I should mention that my son also runs cross country in the junior high.  He hasn't quite been as motivated, although did very well in the last race that we all ran.

My Daughter's Wall

My "Inspiration" to Keep Running

This is in my office.

Like most everyone else, my store will be on sale for the TpT back to school event.  I did manage to add a product last month.  Last spring I sat down to create a unit of my own for teaching common Greek allusions.  The students and I both loved it.  There is a complete unit of 6 myths and questions to accompany each, aligned to 4th grade ELA standards.  There also is a free myth with questions for anyone to download to try out.

Well, here's to the final two weeks before school starts for me.  I'll be headed back in this week (likely tomorrow as the temperatures will get hotter later in the week).  Can't wait to see what everyone else has made.  Although I've been not so great about blogging, I have been better about reading the blogs I follow.  My TpT cart is pretty full, and I'm ready for tomorrow's sale to start!

Vacation is Over!

Okay, so the title of this post may be a bit confusing.  Summer vacation may just be beginning, but my vacation from blogging is over.  At least that's the plan.  I'm also hoping to get back to adding products to TpT.  I certainly have plenty of items created, it's just a matter of getting them polished and TpT ready.  Hopefully I remember how to do all of this...  If you read this, please leave me a quick comment at the bottom so that I can remember that this little blog is actually read by a few:)

It's been over a year since I've put anything on my blog, so here's a quick run down of what I've been up to:

• Back to taking care of me!  I've been at it for a while now, and pretty proud of staying fit and healthy.  I'm even teaching some group classes at the fitness studio that's been the reason behind me being the most fit I've ever been.  Julie's Fitness Studio is an awesome gem in our small little town.  Here's a video Julie made of me and some of the training exercises she has me do.

 

• Another great year of teaching in the books!  I wrapped up my 19th year, and 3rd year back in fourth grade.  At this point I'm grateful to look forward to another year teaming with Shane Pransky.  He is the math/science part of our team.  Check out his blog, Math is FUNdamental.  We had a student teacher this past year, and all I can say is WOW!  She was amazing, and we were very lucky.  I'm happy for her to already have a job secured in Hilton Head for next year!  Yeah, Elizabeth:)

• My own kids are getting big!  My son just finished 7th grade, and I love him to death, but this is not an age I will look back and remember fondly...  My daughter seemed to also go through a phase at that age that wasn't pleasant, but now she is doing great!  Brooke just finished her first year of high school.  She is a happy teenager, and I'm very proud of the young lady she is becoming.  Here is my family having a little fun with a green screen at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando.  We left for vacation the day after school ended, and just got back!

 So, what's next?  My plan is two TpT products by the end of the month.  Something fun for free, and Unit of 1 of the materials I've created for Wonders (vocabulary worksheet, questions for the workshop story, and selection tests for the literature stories).  See my previous blog post about these if you'd like more information.

TTFN