I was going to write about the coming of spring today, but looking at the other teachers' entries, they beat me to it!

Beat me to it? What does that mean? If you look in your dictionary, 'beat' has some very violent meanings. This is why it is important to do two things when you use your dictionaries.

One, make sure that the definition you are looking at matches what you are reading. You may not understand everything, but you probably understand enough to think, 'this sounds strange....' Also, look at the example sentences. Do they match what you're reading?

Two, and this is something a lot of people don't think about: look at the words around it. Maybe the word is part of a collocation (group of words often found together) or a set phrase. Some dictionaries let you look up phrases and idioms. Try those too!

In this case, we can use the word 'beat' to mean something like first, or faster, or to win something. If writing a blog were a race, then the other teachers finished first. They beat me. And they beat me to writing a post about Spring.

But, y'know what? That's ok! Because I am going to show my First Photo of Spring too, and it gave me an idea for my own journal entry!

I'm not looking forward to summer...but spring sure is pretty!

--Josh