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This seems so interesting. But how does the implementing really work? Anyone ever do it?

Instructional Advice

So my district has chosen to pilot a new reading program called Journeys. It is suppose to be aligned with the new standards and has some well known authors such as Donald Behr. Here are my concerns or issues with this. I really need some input or advice on these issues:

• Every 4th grade in the district is not piloting this program...some schools chose to pilot the program in the first grade. So it is frustrating that we can't ask fellow colleagues within the district for their advice or troubleshooting.
• We have been using the Lucy Caulkins Reading Workshop strategy. It has worked wonderfully with our students because it allows for no center work or worthless activities in center rotations and has students reading independently. Obviously we modified it to allow for incentives such as computer time to keep the readers attention.
• Now they have implemented this and first discussed it in June. We had an inservice in June and said we would discuss later on. Well school starts on Monday and the next inservice we received was Thursday. So basically gave us one day to meet with colleagues to collaborate. 
• Then at these meetings there have been different administrators and each time the administrators have a different answer or response to how the pilot should be implemented and how fully we should use it. So we should be planning what for the first week of school?
• The Journeys program is also frustrating because it is set up like a student anthology and we removed those from the curriculum over five years ago.

Can anyone see the trend in why frustration is building? Someone like me who is in their 2nd year teaching and just felt like they had a little bit of a handle on the curriculum is now getting all changed about. Oh yeah and our 4th grade math curriculum changed entirely. We are using Investigation books that last year the 5th grade teachers used. How can we take incoming 4th graders (who honestly are still little innocent babies when they enter in Sept) and teach them math concepts from an original 5th grade book?

What do I do?

Currently Linky

Can you believe it? I figured out how to link up to a linky party that had an image you had to fill in?!? I am shocked at myself!!

Where has the time gone?

Well I know that it has been a little while since last post and it was my original goal to be writing either daily or two or three times a week but I had to cut myself some slack we were away on a cruise and internet access was not being paid for.

School starts tomorrow for teachers and I am a fluster thinking of all the things I should have done before now (the night before) or could have done to be ahead of the game. I feel like all those things I told myself sounded so great at the end of June looking ahead to all the time I had off and now that the time is over...who was I kidding? That time flew so fast I was lucky I got the tons of things done that I did!!

I am up to 4 followers and feeling pretty excited about that, especially because only one is a friend from my own school. So a great big thank you goes out to you three ladies who have been watching!Pass me on to others please! I am trying very hard to keep this blogging thing up and get more into all the craziness of it! I hope to have more this week. We will be sitting in on four days worth of in-service meetings, curriculum changes, and CCS info. I will share with you my thoughts on it all and hope to get some of your feedback as well.

More to come tomorrow after the first hectic day back!