On Monday of this week our first round of report cards went home and officially kicked-off Parent-Teacher Interview week. Being that we are a K-12 school, our K-7 teachers scheduled and organized their own meetings which ran throughout the week. In the 8-12 end, our school secretary scheduled our meetings for us which were primarily held on Thursday after school and Friday during school-hours (there were no classes on Friday). Thursday marked a full day of teaching from 8:50-3:30 and then straight into interviews beginning at 4. By the time I had straightened up my room and ran… Read More
Report Cards For Teachers?
When I was student teaching, I had my students complete assessments of me as a teacher. This was not something I was required to do but it was a big learning opportunity for me so I continued doing it throughout my last year of my Education Degree. I actually got the idea from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog (here is his most-recent example). When student teaching, my evaluation questions were centered around the statements/categories that were included in my evaluation checklists from my university. Now that I am out of school and have my own classroom I am not sure… Read More
Report Card Reflections
Today our Semester 1 Report Cards went home with students and I could breathe a sigh of relief. The past two weeks have been emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting as I’ve attempted to survive my first report card experience as a first year teacher. To be honest, I don’t feel like there was any one aspect that was genuinely hard (although they were time consuming). The most difficult part, for me, was making sure I actually did everything that was required of me. I felt like there was a lot of aspects that I simply wasn’t aware of, so… Read More
Making Time…
This past month has been a weird one for me as it has been the first month in almost two years where I haven’t been blogging regularly. They say that if something is important to you, you will find a way to make time for it…. My viewpoint towards my blog has not changed. In fact, my time away from my blog made me realize how much it truly meant to me. So much has been happening in my teaching-life over the past few weeks and there has been several times where I have wanted to share it with… Read More
2 Stars & a Wish: Week 9
*Unfortunately, I do not have a reflection for Week 8 as I was on a hiatus/break haha. November is upon us and reality is beginning to hit home. Number one, report cards are due in 10 days…. Number two, my first parent-teacher interviews are in 15 days… Number three, there are only 34 teaching days left until Christmas! Seriously, was it not just the first day of school last week?!? I guess the only thing to do is take a deep breathe and take one day at a time. In the mean time, here are some things that I think went… Read More
See You In 5 Days…
I only see my Grade 9 math class 3 days a week… Now, I will note that although this is a high-school class, it is not broken into semesters and I will see them all year long. The problem, however, is that these 3 days are back-to-back Monday to Wednesday. This means that my students do not have math for almost 5 full days with the way our class times are laid out. Furthermore, our school functions on a 5-day cycle which means that anytime there is a holiday on a Monday, I only see my students 2 days a week.… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 7
This weeks started our back-to-back short weeks as Monday of this week was Thanksgiving and this upcoming Friday is our provincial professional development day, S.A.G.E. This week seemed to go by very quickly even though I didn’t actually teach that much. Most of my classes are nearing the end of their units and I had 2 classes write their unit tests on Friday. Two things that I think went really well this week are: 1 ) Introducing Formal Lab Reports in Science– We have been working with the Scientific Method since the beginning of’ the school year and we have… Read More
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things…
We’re at that point where the majority of my classes are finishing up their first units and preparing to move on. As such, I wanted to share some of my favourite projects and activities from some of my classes. Grade 8 Art Our first project in Art this year was a Famous Artist Research Mobile. Students picked an artist of their choice, created mobile using their pieces of art, and included artist bio’s and references on the back. These are now laminated and permanent fixtures in my room! Grade 8 Science In Science we explored cells and… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 6
Twas’ the week before the long weekend… That’s right, it is Thanksgiving this weekend! Not only that, but it is also our community’s big rodeo event and our school’s Spirit Week. All together, this resulted in our student’s having that “Friday afternoon” mentality ALL week long! It was a bit of a nut house, but we all made it through unscathed. Two things that went really well this week are: 1 ) Having My First Evaluation!– On Monday I had my very first evaluation as a first year teacher. I was asked to submit a list of possible dates… Read More
Spirit Week
This week our Student Council organized a Spirit Week leading up to the long weekend. Here are some pics from the week: Backwards Day & “Pie The Teacher” Fundraiser,I couldn’t think of better shirt to wear to this event! I got off pretty safe in the pie-throwing event! Twin Day!Thing 1 & Thing 2 Movie Character Day: Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games