Oh my...Common Core!

Howdy, fellow bloggers!  Today we had our 3rd day of inservice....an entire day devoted to the Common Core for the entire district.  As a social studies teacher, I have been sort of wondering all along how these new standards were going to apply to me and my content area.  After today, I have a little better idea, but I'm still learning.  We spent the morning "practicing" how to deconstruct standards and create learning targets.  We also had a presenter introduce a new curriculum building program to us and we got to explore it a little bit on laptops.  After lunch, we broke into building and subject area groups to begin "deconstructing" standards, my group being the grades 6-8 Literacy Standards for Social Studies/History.  Each group had an author/leader to enter our newly-created learning targets into the new curriculum building program....I was the "lucky" district-appointed leader of my group.  It really wasn't too bad because I was working with some great colleagues, but after working with this stuff all day, my brain feels a little fried.  Thank goodness it's Friday!  We didn't have time to deconstruct all of our standards, but we will be working on this more during our weekly collaboration sessions and future inservice days.

Like I mentioned yesterday, our district is now using Google mail and other applications.  One of those applications that excited me was Google Sites, where you can create your own websites.  Since learning about this Wednesday, I've been working on setting up my own classroom website.  I am so pumped because I progressed with it enough last night that I was finally comfortable making it public.  It's still a work in progress, but I'm proud of myself for creating it....and not launching my computer out the window in a frustrated rage in the process.  If y'all want to check it out, you can find it at - https://sites.google.com/a/indyschools.com/aallen6/.

Have a great (and restful!) weekend!  Until next time.....

~Mandy   :)