A Peek at My Week Linky!

Thanks to Middle School OCD, I discovered this fun linky!  It's hosted by Jennifer of Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and encourages you to share your plans for this upcoming week.

This week marks the end of our third week of school.  It feels like four because we had a mini week to start the year.  Am I insane that I feel like I'm behind ALREADY?!  Is it possible?  I'm trying to train these guys and move through plans and activities but I feel like I'm moving at a snail's pace.

1.  Finish the Fall of Ancient Rome

I have to finish up this chapter if I want to hit the Renaissance at the end of the year!  Sometimes, I drag on the first real social studies unit and this year I promised myself that I would take it easy.  Practice learning the note taking routines, doing actual work, etc.  Keep any "Projects" to a minimum.

2.  Finish Rikki Tikki Tavi and create a comic strip!

Again, I have to start closing out my smaller stories if I want to hit The Hunger Games in a week.  We have to finish reading Rikki Tikki together, discuss Plot Elements and then we are creating a comic book strip to help everyone retell the most important plot points.  For middle schoolers, they want to retell EVERYTHING and I have to train them to give me the highlights only!!

I use my Story Map/Plot Chart for teaching them Plot Elements.  I really like it because it hits all the important ideas in one page AND gives them their plot chart and summary section on the back.

3.  Create Sub Plans

I hate hate hate writing the first sub plans of the year.  You never know how it's going to go and how fast they will finish the work.

4.  Nurse my hubby back to health!

My husband will be going into get his deviated septum fixed on Wednesday and I'm taking off two days as his official "caregiver."  I'm more nervous about the surgery than he is!!  He has had his deviated septum forever from breaking his nose as a kid and seriously, the guy can hardly breathe.  He can't even get a decent nights sleep anymore.  I hope that everything goes well and... well... at least I can get 5-7 hours of quiet grading time in at the hospital, right?  (So horrible of me!)

Wish me luck!  Apparently, Kaiser has free wi-fi so maybe I'll even get in a blog post about my ISN's or my Roman Tweets activity.  We shall see!