Uh oh- it’s past my bedtime and I’m still blogging. I made the mistake of watching the Oscars and therefore staying up late enough to catch a second wind. So here I am, linking up with Reagan over at Tunstall’s Teaching Tidbits. If you have never visited her blog, you must!
{Product}
My favorite product is my Call the Cops Writing Resource. This was an idea that I came up with after being introduced to the COPS acronym at an Orton-Gillingham training last spring. COPS stands for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling. I wanted it to become a phrase that was used constantly in my classroom, but it needed rewards and consequences. That’s where the Get Out of Jail Free Cards and the Speeding Tickets come in. My students can earn Get Out of Jail Free Cards when they are caught doing something right, or when they make a significant improvement on work. For example, sometimes I will go through an entire stack of papers and realize only ONE KIDDO has the date on his paper!! He would then earn one. The Speeding Tickets get issued when kids are caught rushing through work and skipping COPS. I also give my students COPS points on their work. For example, I used to write “- 2 points-please check your punctuation” and now I simply will write +2 COPS or -2 COPS and my kids understand why they were given certain points. Call the COPS has changed the way my kids self-edit and self-monitor their writing and it has made it easier for me to communicate with my kids about the quality of their writing.
{Sanity}
Ahhh sanity. What keeps me sane? Besides Starbucks, definitely Saturdays. I had to think about this for a long time because I couldn’t pick just one or two things that always keep me sane. My Sanity Saturdays vary with activities and that is why I love them! Last year I made a pact that I would keep my Saturdays as “me time.” I am very cautious when my friends and family want to make Saturday plans because my Saturdays are so sacred. I love getting up early, making a pot of my french press coffee and reading blogs in bed for hours. It took me a long time to understand that relaxing is OKAY and that I need to recharge after the week is over. At one point, I was completing my master’s on Friday nights and all-day on Saturdays, waitressing on Sundays and working full-time from Monday-Friday. I never sat down and relaxed because in the back of my mind there was always something I felt that I should be doing. Now I know that it’s okay if I spend an entire Saturday on my laptop and if I don’t actually tackle that one project. I love keeping it simple and wasting away the day. After all, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
