A New School Year Is Approaching QUICKLY!!!!

It seems like I just said goodbye to my homeroom class, packed up my classroom, and have had a few days off to sleep late, play with my three-year-old, and watch some tv.......now here I am looking at going back to work next WEEK! That's right.....it's almost time to meet a new group of 5th-graders and start a new year! July 20th is the first day for teachers to return and start setting up their classroom, unpacking boxes, and planning for the year! I am a little excited and also a little sad that the summer has flown by so quickly! I know this year will be hectic and busy and we're going back to changing classes so I'm a little stressed at being the Math teacher for all three Math classes! This year our SOL scores were NOT what we thought they would be.....the students were so excited to take that test and then we got our scores back and everyone's morale just dropped! It was so sad to see how hard the kids and teachers had worked and we felt so prepared and pumped and then had the wind knocked out of us!!!! And the new Guided REading groups were pretty stressful too....trying to do reading groups and whole group instruction and Word Study.....WOW we were flat packing in the instruction and again our REading scores were a bit disappointing although NOT as low as Math! I felt like ALL of the students worked so very very hard and learned so much.........ALL of my homeroom students went up at least one grade level in Reading and some even higher! Our SuccessMaker scores and levels looked impressive and showed GREAT strides and growth, but those darn SOL Tests just didn't show it! I've spent some time over the summer thinking about how I can improve and how I can get the students where they need to be........sure hoping we can do better this year on those tests! I was VERY VERY VERY proud of my homeroom last year for all their work and achievements and improvements in their academics AND behaviors! They were a wonderful group and we were like one big happy family all year! If any of them are still reading this blog, I sure hope they know how much Mrs. Appleton loves them and wishes them the best as they go on to Middle School! Work hard and make me proud!!!!!