Day 187: I love it when a plan comes together

I used to watch the A-team each week and wait expectantly for the crazy, twisting plot to finally work out. Then Hannibal would chew on his cigar and say, "I love it when a plan comes together." Today was a day I felt like my plan came together and really worked. I kinda wish I had a crew of cohorts with whom to share this success.

I know yesterday I said I wasn't going to write about my students anymore, but today was a GOOD day. We had a shortened day before a three day weekend, which is often a recipe for disaster, so I planned a highly involved lesson in which the students were busy and engaged the entire class period. 

And it worked!!! It felt so great to finish teaching today with wrapping up what I wanted them to learn, with the students nodding and really understanding what I was trying to show them. 

We did an activity on reading without a purpose and then reading for different purposes to demonstrate the importance of understanding why we're reading what we're reading to improve comprehension and processing. I had them read a very generalized story without any clear direction. Then read the same story with two different sets of specific purposes for reading. 

The kids were on it. They were reading and discussing with their partners. They wrote a paragraph, without looking, about the article we had read and discussed yesterday, and they all remembered the article. 

I felt amazing after teaching all day, despite still being pretty ill. The best part of the lesson was the inductive reasoning. The students didn't know where we were headed with the lesson until the very end which kept them curious and interested. Every kid left my room today feeling like they learned some skills that would be useful on closed reading tests, like the state achievement tests or skills based tests or the ACT or SAT. I felt a lot of kids mentally saying "ah ha!" today. I even heard a few say they finally saw what I have been talking about for weeks. 

My job is often challenging and draining, but days like today, days the light bulbs of comprehension glow, make it all worth it. Gosh, I love it when a plan comes together. And it is nice when the kids finally realize that maybe I know what I am talking about.