Fun Field Day!

So today was Track and Field Day at my school. What a great day! I think it's awesome when people are soooo thankful for me to switch groups I was supposed to supervise. Maybe I'm wrong but isn't part of teaching being flexible and adaptable? 

If I'm teaching a lesson and I can see (through my formative assessment of course) that my students aren't picking up what I'm putting down.....or discovering what I would like them to find.....I change it up! So it wasn't that big of a deal for me to change groups and have a blast! 

Ice Cream Debacle

On a lighter note for the day. I had a student ask me last week if his dad could bring ice cream in for his birthday because his birthday is in the summer and he never gets to celebrate it at school. Of course, I obliged. Yesterday he asked me if it was ok if his dad brought the ice cream around 3:00 on the Fun Field Day. Of course! My thinking was, we'll just be getting back to the classroom, it's the end of the day....PERFECT! Well....in the middle of the relays, with the entire school hanging around, my student's parents roll in with three, ten liter buckets of ice cream and 100 cones. Well...there was about 200 students out watching the relays. We had students coming from all over asking for ice cream and they ran out....so the parents....not wanting to disappoint start scooping it into hands! Yep....kids not getting ice cream....kids with ice cream in their hands....DEBACLE! Good thing there's a PD today and the kids are off for the weekend!

I start my blogging adventure nearing the end of my second year of teaching. As I look back on the year I there are a few things that I have learned or that I would like to do differently for next year.

Professional Development

Professional Development (PD), in my humbled opinion, is a wonderful thing. The thing that is missing from PD is the teacher's willingness to learn more. I say that even the "worst" PD session you attend has something to offer....if you truly have a willingness to learn. I like to find at least one thing I can take out of every PD session I go to. If I get more then one, even better. 

I have also found that some of the best PD I have attended have been free and after school (a gem that my school division offers) or via social media. I have learned more strategies, techniques, ideas, information from my Twitter feed this year then I think I did in my 7 years of university (I feel another blog coming here). 

Finally, I found that if I didn't use what I had learned in a PD session right away then I might as well have not gone at all because it ends up in that dreaded binder I have of PD "stuff" never to be seen again!

Backwards by Design

I love backwards by design planning. It makes sense to me and it is all I know as that is how I learned to plan in university. The small issue or flaw I find in backwards by design is this....I am a firm believer of work smarter not harder and thus I rarely create from scratch a lesson or assessment. However, if I'm planning and I choose the outcome(s) I want to teach and then I decide on how I want to assess them then I'm off to find a lesson.....however, a lot of the time the lesson doesn't quite match how I had planned my assessment or what I had in my assessment (even though it clearly meets the outcomes I want to teach). So, I must then fix my assessment so it is more in line with the lesson or activity or change the lesson so it fits my assessment plan. Which then means I am technically not fulfilling my commitment to the backwards by design plan. 

So I ask...am I not really using the backwards by design? or am I adapting the design to fit my needs?

The Value of Sharing

I started at my current school in the middle of October after taking over a mat leave. I only kind of knew one other teacher in my grade team and a couple of others in the school. The first thing I did was talk to the teacher of the school I had just left to see if he could help me out with some ideas and/or resources to get me started. Then as I got comfortable and was creating things for myself (backwards by design of course!) I would fire out an e-mail and attach the Smartboard file or assessment and a quick note on what I used and how I used it. I never claimed they were amazing (which is one reason I think a lot of teachers don't share, they're afraid of the judgemental eyes of a colleague) and as always added change adapt how you may (I later started to add...if you do change it could you please send it back to me). Soon.....I was getting e-mails or hard copies dropped on my desk of ideas, activities, or lessons and now, my grade team is a lean, mean, file and idea sharing machine. 

I also found that just because someone doesn't teach the same grade doesn't mean their information is not valuable....I got a great idea to use in my portfolios while wondering around the Kindergarten rooms one day. 

That's all for now but I feel a blog on how Social Media has helped me in the near future.