Leavin' It!

Our big topic during this morning's Morning Meeting was, are we still going to be able to have our field trips in May. They're mostly thinking about the Heintz farms tour that's been on the calendar since the first day of school. I told them we would hopefully still go, but if we are in virtual school in May, I would take them on a virtual tour of the farm. One of the other boys (who also lives on a farm) said, "Hey, I could do a virtual tour of my farm and then we could compare them!" Thus was born the idea of Field Trip Fridays. A girl's DNR officer dad volunteered to take us on a virtual tour of the prairie. Another girl lives near a motorcycle club and volunteered to see if she could take us on a virtual tour of it. There are four school Fridays in April and four that want to do virtual tours. Perfect. I figure I'll save my farm tour for May just in case we can still go in person.

Tomorrow is our last Drop Day before the 'shelter at home' mandate starts. It lasts for two weeks, but since we know school won't be in session until (at the earliest), May 4th, we want to send home papers/worksheets for the whole month of April, just in case. That's a lot of planning to do!

The 7-8th graders were supposed to have class at 1:00 today, but they messaged me in the morning and asked if we could move our class to sometime in the morning (so they could be finished with school before lunch). Sure! So I got all my virtual teaching finished in the morning. Then, as I started planning for the upcoming month, I got sucked in to teacher resources to share with students...

Eventually I pulled myself away from the distractions, and mapped everything out (solidly for April, roughly through May/the end of the year). The 5-6th grade lesson topics are planned; I need to figure out what I should print off to go home. I'm saving that for tomorrow. Everything is printed off and ready to go for the 7-8th graders except one assignment about explorers. I have to save that for tomorrow too. I've hit my breaking point; it's late and I should go home and be done with school for the day. Parents can come to school from 4-6pm tomorrow, so I will have a little time after my virtual classes to get things ready.

I'm leaving everything at school: my planner, my grading/lesson plan clipboard, my flashdrive of lessons, my papers to correct... everything will keep until tomorrow.