Thinking of what to write-#sol15

I struggled with what to write about today.  I flipped through my blank book, but nothing jumped out at me.  I tried a word cloud activity mentioned by another slicer in a blog post from earlier this week, but that didn’t help either.  I started a post, then deleted the words.  I thought about my day, and how I spent the day finalizing a presentation that I will give on Thursday at the VSRA Conference.  This is a conference that I look forward to attending each year.  In the twelve years that I’ve been a reading specialist, I think that I’ve only missed two conferences.  I love this conference because I’ve had the opportunity to listen to amazing speakers like Nell Duke, Richard Allington, Donalyn Miller, Tim Rasinski, and so many more! I have also attended sessions led by amazing teachers from all across the Commonwealth.  We have some pretty incredible educators sharing their knowledge!  Every year, I return home with so many new ideas and always feel so invigorated after interacting with so many educators who are so passionate about literacy instruction.

This year, I am presenting as a part of one of the pre-conference literacy institutes.  My presentation focuses on using web tools to support literacy instruction and parent involvement.  I love anything to do with technology and figuring out how to integrate technology and literacy has become one of my pet projects.  I love finding new tools and figuring out how they can enhance my instruction and I enjoy sharing those ideas with other teachers.  Hopefully, the teachers who attend my session will walk away with additional tools to keep in their instructional toolkits.

As I look at what I have just written, I am a little surprised, but happy.  When I first started this post, I didn’t have a topic and my mind felt blank.  I was worried that I would just end up writing “I don’t know what to write” over and over.