As a new teacher at Summit, I spent time introducing myself, settling any fears of having a new teacher, and getting to know the students. I answered any questions they had for me, including a dizzying number of “what’s your favorite (blank)?” questions, and we’ve been working on creating classroom communities that invite the input necessary for our class conversations and anticipated growth in reading/writing skills this year!

Today, we reflected on our goals for the semester and came up with a word to represent our intention for the year – an aspect, value, or characteristic we need to be intentional about to achieve our goal(s). We discussed sentence functions in a basic paragraph, and students wrote a paragraph about their intention for the year. Now, their intentions greet them as they enter our classroom. 

We are beginning our first project for the semester, which we will peer review and turn in next week. As we continue to get to know each other and our classmates, students have been asked to create a presentation with 5-7 songs that tell the story of their lives or have been favorites over their years. (I am prepared to see several presentations with reference to “Let it Go”!) Students have the choice to deliver their presentation in front of the class or simply turn it in to me – and hopefully be proud enough of it to add it to our Kudos Corner.

Our Intentions