Little by Little

Well, I think I have completely overextended myself! I am exhausted, running on 6 hours of sleep a night and now working through my lunch break.   I have had a combo for two weeks now (we restructured two weeks into school).  The kids are settled in and our routines are more or less in place.  I teach one group then send them off for independent work, then teach the others--pretty much all day.  I have found it difficult to keep up with it all!  I know my 2nd grade curriculum but 1st is all new.  Our district requires us to teach the adopted curriculum and we are not supposed to vary.  This means I plan two different curriculums and try to teach both in the same amount of time I used to teach one.  I'm not sure how much longer I can play this game...  It seems it would be a lot easier to sit down and completely create my own curriculum and teach both grade levels, occasionally pulling kids for grade specific tasks and mini lessons.  I feel like I am "on" all day!  I really don't know what my kids can do since I never see them work independently. 

On the bright side, I think that how curriculum is delivered to students in combo classes may be the topic for my research inquiry with my master's class.  Maybe someone has a brilliant idea out there that I haven't found yet.  Then I can present it to my principal and cover my tail.  Part of the problem is that 6 & 7 year old's really aren't developmentally ready to be fully independent for any lenght of time, in my opinion. 

As for Daily 5 (my first attempt, by the way), the kids loved the shoe lesson!  They thought it was hilarious.  The other day they wanted to know why I was wearing my hiking shoes to school! (Because my dogs were barkin'-I tell you!) We have only done a few read to self practices but they have a book "bag" that seems to work and have done an OK job with good fit books.  I'd love to hear suggestions on how you all manage book shopping.  I was letting them do this if they completed work at independent time but it is getting too crowded and noisy.  I can't wait to get the Daily 5 going as I think it will give the kids more to do at independent time (some are done super fast!) and I really need some small group time for reading tasks.