I believe that learning creates change. Especially in our quest as educators to always provide our students with best teaching practices. The more we learn, the more we refine our teaching skills. When we really learn about our students and their needs, we adapt what we do to meet those needs. I love to learn but am not comfortable with change. I like my established routines and the comfort of knowing what I am doing and what I will do next. I have not thought about the transitions associated with change before. It makes sense to me that it isn't the learning and adaptation to that, it is more the transition that I struggle with. The discomfort of reaching beyond that which I clearly understand and uncertainty of where it will bring me. I am such a "why" person that the statement of change making sense and being "owned" must have been written for me! For me, change that makes sense and is something that I can own overrides the discomfort of the transition times and allows me to travel the path of confusion.

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I have been contemplating how to organize the reader's workshop format in my classroom since last year. Dinnette Johnson shared the new phonics program by Pinnell & Fountas (firsthand by Heinemann) with us at our last study group. As I looked through the materials, it made sense to me. It included parts of what I had already been doing and provided new ideas and structure to create the reading/writing workshop. I have restructured my schedule this week. I still need to go through the curriculum maps and be sure that all skills/concepts will be covered. I am trying to figure out the best way to work in McGraw-Hill and the science/social studied piece. I feel good about the change but still feel that I need to fine tune the schedule but I am comfortable with the direction I have taken. My students are very cooperative this year and love trying new things. They have tried the reading salad at home and thought the schema roller was the best! Some are using their "paint cards" during independent reading and we added a new chart on Metacognition to our wall. I moved the first one we did to the hall for parent conference day. One student noticed that it was missing and asked where it was. I am loving this class!