What’s on Your Wish List?
Posted by Jen Bragg on 04 Dec 2009 | Posted in: Holiday and Seasonal, Planning and Curriculum
Now that it’s December, you’re probably closing in on the halfway mark of your school year. Can you believe it? I remember the buzz in the classroom at this time of year—my students were so excited about the upcoming holidays! But I also remember feeling crunched for time. It was at this point in the school year that my wish for more teaching time would first surface.
Knowing it was up to me to find ways to squeeze in more teaching time, December was when I would think about my plans for the rest of the school year. While I thought about the skills I needed to cover and reviewed the materials I had available to teach them, I’d find myself asking questions: Will the materials I used in years past work with this group of students? Will they be too easy or too hard? Do my materials really address the skills as I intend them to? Are there skills I already covered this year that I need to revisit using a different approach? New materials were always on my wish list!
You probably share a wish list of practical classroom needs (such as tissues, copy paper, or craft items) with your students’ parents. But what about making a wish list for your teaching needs? As you plan the rest of your year, are there skills and topics for which you’d like to have more materials? Is there a type of material, like games or posters, you wish you had more of? Or are you just looking for more ways to find teaching time in your day?
Wishing you season’s greetings,
Jen Bragg
PS: When you respond, please include the grade level you teach!
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Last week, my first graders and I were working on our letters to Santa. My students thought it was funny, but I asked Santa Claus for eraser markers; “maybe magical ones in which the ink won’t dry out and the tips can’t be pushed in.” My students use whiteboards all the time in my classroom, especially for math & spelling(my husband made them very cheaply from a sheet of 4×8 laminate whiteboard he got at Home Depot). They love them! BUT! I find I am buying eraser markers almost weekly. It gets expensive. So my Christmas present wish this year is…eraser markers!
I teach kindergarten in China, and I always wish for more holiday decorations. It’s hard to keep the classroom decorated for all the holidays when China doesn’t celebrate all the holidays! I’m always asking my family to send me classroom decor for halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Valentine’s day.
I also find myself needing more glitter this time of year. We decorate a lot of snow flakes and angels with glitter, which makes for a very glittery floor as well as the crafts!
In my Kindergarten classroom, I am always wishing for more time to accomplish everything that needs to be learned and done in Kindergarten. It doesn’t seem like it matters how much time I put in there is always more to do! The other thing I would wish for is another person to help accomplish all the preparation that needs to take place for each day!