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!