So Much to Process

While trying to process what we've learned over the past week and how I can use it in my classroom, I find that I am overwhelmed with all of the new ideas I am being bombarded with. I'm sure part of it comes from the fact that I was not able to attend class last week, because of my contractual obligation to be at parent/teacher conferences at my school, despite the fact that I made ZERO parent contacts during that time. I feel as though I am really out of the loop in terms of the class and what was covered last week, along with what I should be doing for this week. That being said, I have taken some interesting things from the course work and actually implemented a couple of them in my classes already. One idea I got while looking over the standards for my level. I came up with idea for my students to use a graphic organizer to put together information on the state I assigned to them to research. It was perfect timing because I was looking for a structured way to have students work on this assignment with a substitute teacher, rather than with me. Historically, assignments done with a substitute teacher have usually ended up to be a wash because the directions weren't followed or implemented by the substitute teacher. I am anxious to see if this extra bit of structure with the assignment will help.