Sigh. Embarrassing!

I cannot believe that I have not made a post since January. How embarrassing, truly. So much for that New Year resolution! I’ve been very preoccupied over the last several months with renovating my store, Reading the Rapids, on TpT. I went through and updated my previews and covers to better show teachers what can be expected from a lesson or unit. Some of what I had listed was just from my early days of making my lessons, and what I thought was decently formatted then, now is just most definitely not. So, to make to make everything more aesthetically pleasing, and aligned design-wise, I made a lot of updates. My early stuff was just way outdated. Here are some examples below.

I think it’s pretty obvious which of the cover images below are the updated presentations and which are the outdated ones, but just in case, the bottom row contains the befores and the top row the afters. Though, I must say, basic and bad as my original “Flowers for Algernon” cover was, there is something about it’s elementary simplicity that just says Charlie, to me. Keyes does a great job of building sympathy for Charlie and I just feel for him the entire short story. Charlie did what everyone should do: He happily did his job to the best of his ability and he was friendly, happy and pleasant to all–despite circumstances. UGH. Keyes, how dare you create such a likable character and then give him such tragedy.

If you happen to need any resources, the images below are hyperlinked to their corresponding units, and thus my store. 🙂

Additionally, I updated the content of several lessons and units, too. I’ve long since found a groove and basic handout format that works well for me, so some updating to the student files was needed to bring those older lessons up to par. It was all pretty simple, but more time consuming than I ever would have thought. Last night, it was with great satisfaction that I finally completed the last lesson revamp. It felt so good to click that “submit” button. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Whew! Now I can again turn my attention to other things.

I’m going to undertake a little bit of website renovating as well. Making the site was a massive learning curve for me…I am so very un-techy, but I really have not utilized it like I should. I intend to start putting it to work. Which puts me to work, haha, but I do enjoy these things. And now with my store up to speed, I can better shift focus.

The goal is to make my site more effective both for my creative fictional writing and my creative academic unit and lesson writing. And ideally, I’d like to start writing some informative articles and little fictional stories to use with my lessons. It’s been a time issue, but I’m getting there! I began a short story several months back, and completed the rough draft…only to accidentally delete almost the whole thing. XP I have not yet gone back to rewrite it, so that will hopefully be forthcoming too.

So let the website work begin and the creativity flow! Away we go! Again. X)