I have long felt that if the weather at the end of April vacation is awful/snowy/cold, then we get about 4-5 more weeks to teach. If, however, the weather was lovely/spring-like/sunny, then the quest to "manage behaviors" is on. Well, last weekend was gorgeous...and now I'm managing behaviors!
My big goal, with the reality of antsy-kids, is for me to design an interactive, engaging, differentiated unit for my 9th grade English classes. I've just completed a novel with 2 classes and they imagined the book had happened --> creating scrapbooks or facebook ("Fakebook") pages. The other class read Lord of the Flies with a focus on class discussion.
I'm thinking of reading some non-fiction: Into Thin Air or Fast Food Nation... There is also the possibility of reading a classic with some of them - Lord of the Flies for the 2 classes that didn't do it; Catcher & the Rye or something else for the other...