This week marks the end of the first semester of my first year as a public school teacher. Wow! It has been a wild ride. It is a lot harder than I expected it to be. I was happy to find that our topics this week are differentiation and curriculum mapping. Lesson planning and execution are two very important parts of teaching. With all the demands on me so far this this year, I have not been able to spend enough time on this important task. I have not done a lot of differentiation. What I have done is work with small groups and give individual attention to the students in need of intervention. For the few gifted students, I have challenged them by asking them to be peer tutors and by giving them enrichment work. Within my regular lessons, I have not offered differentiated tracks. Now that I have more time on my hands, I plan to put a lot of time into lesson planning and look for ways to differentiate instruction. Curriculum mapping is something I have not done. In a lot of ways, it has already been done for me. First there are the Common Core standards, the big outline. Then, we have a district calendar. It is not quite the same, though. I know what I need to teach and when, but there is more to it than this. I love connecting everything together across subjects. This will be a fun project. I look forward to starting next semester strong with these two important tools in place.