AAAAAAAAAugust!

AAAAAAAAuuuuugggggghhhhh!!!! It's August! I'm not ready for it to be August yet! (Yes, I know I'm writing this on August 3rd, and I'm still not ready for it to be August!)

So, I had posted this #summerlist at the beginning of June: New comments are in blue.

• Finish the online course I started last summer. This one has a deadline - I have to get it done in June.
• Read. I definitely would like to do some reading that I normally don't get time to do. Some professional (we are starting with Understanding by Design on #sbarbook), some personal. I ended up punting UbD. I was struggling with getting into it and I wanted to get some other reading done before heading to Orlando for NCTM's Institute on Reasoning and Sense Making. I have finished Teaching for Tomorrow, Nice Bike (the author is speaking to us on our first workday together), and most of Focus of High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making. After the Institute, I have added 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, Mathematical Discovery, and The Stanford Mathematics Problem Book. Also added to the list is Empowering the Mentor of the Beginning Mathematics Teacher since we will be hiring a new math teacher for the upcoming school year and More Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Secondary Mathematics Instruction since my new principal mentioned that this was something I should look into when I went to the Orlando Institute. @dcox21 and others recommended this one, so it's my starting point.
• Revise my SBG for next school year. See this post.  Update on this here.
• Revise my concept lists for Calculus (which I'm not teaching next year), Math 1 and Algebra 2/Advanced Algebra 2. Along with this, put together the concept list for Pre-Algebra (7th grade), which will be my 4th prep next year. Have not even started this. I know I should but I am not feeling motivated to at the moment. I really should start this tomorrow.
• Learn more about rich problems and how to incorporate them into my classes. The NCTM Institute on Reasoning and Sense Making in Orlando last week helped to expand my knowledge of rich problems and how to incorporate them. This will be an ongoing project for me this year. I'm looking forward to it.
• Revise how I teach in my classroom. I am still very much a traditional math teacher (go over homework, teach/lecture on the new concept, give time for homework). I want to change that, I just don't know how. Still thinking about it. I did a post on bellringers as a starting point. I don't think I am going to make huge changes, but from some discussions with other teachers, I have some thoughts that I am contemplating integrating into my classes to switch things up a bit. More to follow on this later, I think.
• I am attending the NCTM Reasoning and Sense Making Workshop in Orlando July 28-30. I have some of the Reasoning and Sense Making books to read in front of that, but I also want to take what I've learned from that workshop and apply it to my own classroom. I am really looking forward to this!  See this post for the summary of this Institute (along with links to each of the posts I did)
• I'm also attending the Making Ohio Schools Work conference in Columbus next week as part of my role on our district's Race to the Top committee.
• Try and help my daughter to master her addition and subtraction basic facts. She finishes 2nd grade this week and will need to know them when she enters 3rd grade in the fall. It doesn't help that she has ADHD, but we will need to find a way to help her learn them. I think she is getting a lot closer on this but I haven't spent anywhere near the time I should have this summer.
• I am taking a course to learn Moodle in early August. This is Tue-Thu of next week.
• We have some fun trips planned this year also. First up is the Monte Carlo Nationals in York, Pennsylvania, with a side trip to the Crayola Factory afterwards. Then, hopefully a trip to see my sister-in-law in Houston, Texas. Reasoning and Sense Making is next, followed by a week on Lake Erie with my family right before school starts. Summer always finishes with the Canfield Fair and the annual Henry Hootenanny on Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I think this is the reason why I am going AAAUUUGGGHH at this point in time - we leave a week from Friday and when we come back from Lake Erie, I will have 5 days until our teacher workdays start.

So, here I sit looking at the list and the dwindling number of days until school starts (22 until I go back to work, 27 until the first day with students) and I'm a little panicked at this point. I had hoped to accomplish a lot. Maybe I made my list a little too ambitious. Like it or not, the first day of school is coming. I'd really like to spend that week at Lake Erie not dwelling on school stuff and I suspect because of the timing, that's going to be a little bit of a challenge. I'm going to do my best not to be thinking a lot about school. Guess if I want that to happen I better get crackin'.