Easier by the Dozen

It's the Naramata X country run today so I only had 12 students in class this morning.  Wow, zero management and productive.  We tried Jeff's suggestion for learning with movement by posting numbers to 31 around the room.  I said a number in French and they had to try and be the first to find the sign and touch it.  I thought it was better to try it first with a small group.   For French they made little cartoons of dialogue we will be doing 'live'.  Their cartoons will be on the bulletin board as a prompt.  They were happily working on the proper pronunciation and spelling for the presentation.  They each chose the context of their different conversation lines.  Dice games as a group in math.  They all said they loved the morning. 

Here I go.

I have never blogged before and was never too successful with journaling either.  I have heard that having kids write out anything they are worried about before an assignment or test lessens their anxiety.  Maybe I should give it a try.  I am worried that I won't be able to come up with enough creative ways of meeting the learning outcomes, that time will burn away and we will be left with untouched curriculum (more than usual), that I will have difficulty keeping enough records and then won't get enough data for the project. 
I know the desire to change the way you do things doesn't always make changing any easier but it does motivate you to take the first step.  I feel relieved that the Different Lens project gave me a place to put my foot down and has such great supporters to move me down the path.  I am already thankful for the blog since I signed on and saw a great lesson from Kent (Thanks).