On September 3rd Baby Jaxson entered the world at 6:41am. Everyone is happy and healthy!
Reflective Blogging Part 3
This post is part of the Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge hosted by Terry at Te@ch Thought. While the original challenge is a year-old already I thought it would be the perfect thing to keep me on track over the next little while. DAY 3 – Discuss one “observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation. One area that I really want to improve in my classroom is fostering a learning environment where students are taking on more responsibility for their own learning. While this is something that I am conscious of and am trying to incorporate… Read More
Classroom Design WINS
One of the hardest parts of preparing for my maternity leave, besides saying bye to all of my students, was having to un-decorate my classroom so that my coverage could prepare it to his liking. I think a lot of teachers really pour their heart and soul into their rooms, attempting to make them the perfect spot to: – facilitate learning – initiate creativity – make students feel welcome – showcase student personalities/learning – showcase their own personalities – etc If you are new to my blog, or just want a reminder, here is what my… Read More
Blogging in the Social Studies Classroom – Reflective Blogging Part 2
This post is part of the Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge hosted by Terry at Te@ch Thought. While the original challenge is a year-old already I thought it would be the perfect thing to keep me on track over the next little while. DAY 2 – Write about one piece of technology that you would like to try this year and why. You might also write about what you are hoping to see out of this edtech integration. Since I am away on mat leave I can’t actually write about a piece of technology that I will be implementing this year… Read More
Thinking About Choice
I think that most educators can agree that providing our students with choice can be incredibly beneficial, in and out of the classroom. This level of choice can be regarding instructional set-up, groupings, seating preferences, assessment options, etc. How do we, as educators, balance how much choice to allow while still managing our classroom? What about our students who seem to continually make the wrong choices? What do we do with students who continually change their mind and seemingly “waste” time bouncing back and forth between different choices? Yesterday the TED network shared this… Read More
Goal Setting During Mat Leave – Reflective Blogging Part 1
As excited as I am about being back in the blogging world, I am nervous that I will fall off the wagon again as soon as Baby Thompson arrives in 2 weeks?… 3 weeks?…. any day now?… I know I will need to maintain some semblance of focus, however, because I also resume my master’s classes at the start of September. I am hoping *fingers crossed* to attempt to set aside some time every 2-3 days while baby sleeps (is that delusional thinking?) to work on my classes, blog, and attempt to maintain my sanity. Resourceaholic Reflects. (2014).… Read More
Why Aren’t We All On The Same Page?
As we gear up to go back to school I’ve seen a lot of blog posts and Twitter conversations about assessment at schools. Specifically, how do you organize your assessment vs. your colleagues/another school/another district/etc. I’ve read a lot of posts in this topic before and it always made me think about my own personal views of assessment and, as a result, I’ve changed aspects to better represent my understanding of fair and appropriate assessment. Unknown Title. (Accessed 2015). Uploaded by Vera Teschow. Available online at: http://www.verateschow.ca/assessment.html Lately, however, these posts have not been making me think… Read More
Student-Led Back To School Kick-Offs
Last year myself and another colleague took over the supervision of our school’s Student Council. After being involved in student council myself for over 9 years, at the high school and post secondary levels, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to help out our students as they made their voices heard at our school. To be honest, it was a rocky start…. positive… but rocky. Both my colleague and I were new to the school so we still unaware of many of the school traditions and schedules that the student body and staff expected of us. Furthermore,… Read More
What If We Cared About School As Much As We Care About Sports?
Have you seen this video that debuted last week from Key & Peele & Comedy Central?? While obviously created for comedic purposes I think this video raises a lot of good questions: – How would our jobs change if the public was as financially and emotionally invested in education as they were in sports? – Would the quality of education increase or decrease? – What type of teaching methods/curriculum/resources would become the “norm” for classrooms? – Why is education so often pushed to the back-burner for a lot of citizens? _________________________________________________ What do you think?
August Currently
If you haven’t encountered a “Currently” post before, it is just a fun post at the beginning of each month that serves as a way to share what is Currently going on in your life! You can link up and share your own “Currently” post by visiting the wonderful Farley over at Oh’ Boy 4th Grade.