I ♥ DDI!

Color me the biggest nerd on the planet....but I got my box from DDI today and a huge grin split across my face despite my uber tired and cranky state of being. Considering I ordered the stuff on Monday and I haven't even had a chance to send my check, I was super excited to open that box. I have all of this stuff at school but I wanted my own set. Firstly for planning at home and secondly in the event I ever leave my district I have a set of my own.

I'm probably more excited because I've really been ramping up our use of the DDI strategies the last two weeks to prepare for the winter MAP. We took the reading part 1 yesterday and they squeezed us in for Part 2 today. I'm SUPER excited to see their scores tomorrow. From the preliminary peeks I took, most of my kids made growth (I'm upset that two of my top readers went down from what I saw and I had a private talk with both of them that since they've kind of spaced out on me lately it's probably why they didn't do as well). From the preliminary numbers, my basic ELL went up somewhere between 20-30 points this time around! So awesome. Every time I see their score and go to shut their test down, when the score is definitely higher, I whisper to the child, "Who's the best teacher ever?" and they smile and whisper back, "you are". 

So coming home after that and opening that box just had me giddy. I'm sure my colleagues think I'm a freak because I just LOVE this stuff. I get the data side and if I don't understand it, I strive to make sure I DO understand it. I could see myself getting a doctorate in an area where you focus on the data side of the instructional model -- to make it useful and not stupid and pointless. 

I am exhausted beyond belief but excited as hell to see my kiddos' scores tomorrow. It'll also be very interesting to see my teammates' scores since they haven't really immersed themselves into DDI and I have.