At the spot

I am at that spot right now where I am getting a feeling for the kids and their abilities. You can't do it on the first day and start at the right spot. You have to play with it, giving easy and hard stuff and seeing where they fall in the middle. I feel that I can actually put them at that learning level where they belong now.

And it is more than two preps. In a perfect world, I would be able to plan for two classes: three sections of eighth grade and three sections of seventh grade. That is now going to work. I need to put the classes at the individual levels.

Which almost isn't fair to me. I need another prep and more time to do it properly. Fifty-five minutes a day isn't enough. There is a lot of time I will need to spend outside of school working on this and gathering things for them to do and read their stuff they write each day. Some of this is as low as crafting complete sentences and for others I need to give them higher things to do.

Lots of work. I am up to the challenge, but it is nice to know exactly what I need to do now. I need to plan for each of my six class periods as if they were different classes.