This is mainly for my own personal benefit but I am also looking for suggestions/ideas/advice! Christmas Around the World: START PREPARING EARLIER! This unit is SO much fun! I am loving it as are the kiddos, but I KNOW it could definitely be wayyyy better if I'd had enough time and resources. Start prepping around start of school and slowly work on it on and off until ready! Definitely will be worth it. Literacy block: Definitely in need of an overhaul. Trying to figure out how to better incorporate sight words and spelling patterns and differentiate appropriately. Right now my thinking is to take a spelling pattern a week. (short vowels: 1/week, digraphs, blends, long vowels, silent e, vowel teams, r-controlled, inflectional endings etc) However, I'm not sure how I'll incorporate with how I currently do my comprehension lessons, but I'm not sure how to teach separately from the comprehension lesson and make the lessons flow and reinforce each other. Hmmmm. More pondering but the more I think about it, the more sense I make of how I want to do it. Planning on changing 100% after the Christmas break so I still have some time to think/reflect. Ponderings ponderings of a first year first grade teacher...