- Using the four categories to plan my days and taking the time to establish routines:
- In my last post, I talked about establishing four categories to guide my first weeks of school. I ended up sticking with these categories for the first three weeks of school.
- I slightly tweaked the management category to include training for our two student led stations. I spent about a week helping the kids learn how to be independent. We created a chart similar to those I did with the Daily 5 when I taught ELA classes, and we used Freckle, Exact Path (which I am excited to be piloting), and Study Island during this time. That made it an extra opportunity to practice some of our tech boot camp skills.
- We also spent about a week and a half learning how to work effectively in collaborative groups. A lot of our conversations focused on socialization vs collaboration and being willing to accept help or constructive criticism. During this time we used Week In Math activities from YouCubed to start developing the mathematical mindset I'm hoping to grow in the kids this year.
- Teaching and living the 7 Habits
- Since we are beginning to implement the Leader in Me program this year, I have been living the 7 habits in my life, and it truly has changed the way I interact with my students. Yesterday we had another fantastic training, and I'm looking forward to moving beyond just using the words with my classes and focusing on the principles.
- I always made the effort to make positive communication at the beginning of the year, but I always dropped the ball when things got busy and didn't keep it up. I am making this positive communication a priority this year.
- While hard conversations are never fun, my new learnings are helping me make these difficult contacts less challenging. I've stopped taking them personally and see them for what they are: ways to help my kids grow.
- Having 1:1 chromebooks in my classroom
- Being a teacher with 1:1 resources has made a huge change in my class, simply because of all the time saved in transitions. There's no, "Go down the hall and get your computers," or, "You need to go put the computers back in the cart." Because the kids can keep their computers in their desks and have the most important sites bookmarked, transitions are down to about a minute. It's pretty amazing.
- I am able to give the kids more opportunities to come up with different ways to show their learning.
- We are able to use different tools for formative assessments rather than just a paper pencil test.
- We're continuing to develop our technology skills, and I'm looking forward to the next big step: adding Schoology.
- Having my entire class do their independent station first in the afternoon allows us to meet with every single student individually each day. That's been a great way to learn about the kids and see how they are applying skills we're doing in groups.
- Doing all instruction in small groups
- While I know that I am not technically doing my station rotation model by the book, I am already thrilled with it. Students spend 20 minutes per day in each station.
- Having the opportunity to meet with all of my kids every day in small groups during math instruction has allowed me to see where kids are making mistakes more quickly and talk through misconceptions with them.
- Changing my spiral reviews to mostly small group number talks has allowed me, when not working with individuals, to walk around asking critical thinking questions that I learned about this summer at my Franklin Institute training. This has really helped me feel more like a facilitator than a teacher.
While there are always bumps along the road, I feel like this really has been the best start in my 21 years. I feel happy to come to school each day, and I really am looking forward to seeing how we can continue these routines and grow and adapt them to help the kids be even more successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment