It's been a busy week of working on lessons and activities. I think my brain has forgotten that it is holiday time. I have been enjoying some new picture books I found, cuddling up with them, reading and letting all the fantastic ideas come together in front of my eyes. I am hoping to get a couple of One book lesson plans finished these holidays ready to test in the classroom in Term 2.
Over the next couple of weeks I will also be putting the finishing touches on the new ones I have trialled in the classroom and add them to the bank of stuff ready for TpT.
I've also been working on a new 12ish page booklet which is my spin on what it takes to be a desirable CRT. Not a good CRT, there are a whole bunch of good CRTs out there! It's about polishing off your Professional Identity in ways that help you to have a good amount of career satisfaction as well as getting that professional identity out there so schools can see it and want to put you right near the top of their CRT preference list!
I mean, really, how could I have a store devoted to CRTs without having a booklet like this?
The last project in the pipeline is an interesting one for me to do! One of the ways I recieve extra work in schools is by specializing in intervention level literacy. Over the years I've developed my own set of activities, systems and ethics about approaching the students and their education. It's been a very interesting journey to put it down on paper! My husband just keeps telling me "You're just a natural born teacher, stop thinking about it because all that makes you do is stress out. Just walk in and do it and you'll get it right, you always have". And he's kind of right because I've always taken the CRT approach, used my CRT skillset and modified my methods on the fly to suit particular students.
It's actually where many of my activities come from. I get stuck, scan the room for simple stuff I can have the student help me quickly make something out of that does what the student needs it to do. Then I refine and add to it over time until it works for just about all of my students (nothing works for everyone is one lesson I've learned over the years!)
This is where I'm comfortable. Analyzing it or writing it all down?
Well, I've never studied my methods or tried to figure out why they work so well. They just do and in the end working out why was always kind of like just making more work for myself.
Teachers pay Teachers though gives me a reason to do it and I'm kind of glad it has. I knew I was good at what I do, I just didn't realize the pool of knowledge I had to pull from until I was given a reason to pull it apart and look at it!
This one will take a while to produce as to make it as effective as it should be I think the production of a few support videos to go along with it is a good idea!
Regards,
Mel.
