Beginnings

Ahhh ... summer begins.  Yes, school ended almost two weeks ago, but I went straight into a weekend of classroom shopping (love reimbursements, don't love the strict timeline on when purchases must be made) and friends'  graduations and then a week and a half of professional development, complete with homework to do each night.  Now starts a month off of all have-to's.  Time to decorate my apartment (finally), take a road trip, and start really thinking about next year.


A pile of classroom purchases, ready to be cute-i-fied, sit next to me.  My social studies and science teacher editions wait in the book case behind me.  Two massive boxes of to-be-organized papers and file folders lurk near by.  A million ideas float in my head.  Where will I start?


Here is my ever-growing list of classroom-related things I want to do this summer, in no particular order:

• Organize my messy boxes of papers
• Create new behavior management plan (clip chart?)
• Plan my classroom layout (new room this year!  Way less storage, but way more wall space)
• Find and create classroom decorations
• Plan out quality social studies and science lessons that go beyond read these pages (as a class, independently, in partners ...) and do these worksheets/workbook pages.
• Read some of the books in my classroom library
• Re-vamp my daily schedule
• Read Daily 5 and Book Whisperer
• Decorate and label turn in boxes, copy-files, classroom library bins, math manipulative storage ...
• Re-vamp how I do classroom jobs
• Organize files on computer
• Set up classroom (in August, when I get my keys back)

We'll see what I get done this summer.  I'm excited for the chance to be so much more prepared for next year than I was for this past one!  I've been trying to force myself to do the less fun jobs (such as those boxes of papers) first, but so far that has resulted in nothing getting done.  Maybe some more crafty, fun work will get my motivation going ... hmmm ....


How do you prioritize your summer to-do list?