- Give my learners more ownership in the class. One such way would be for them to write the class newsletter and post to my website as a blog post or Smore for parents to see what we've been doing in the content areas. There are other ways I want to do this too. I'll have to post them as they happen. Stay tuned... (the pic is of last year's Smore)
- Inspire my learners to fall even more in love with reading by trying out new authors and genres. When I was at my public library this summer, I saw something that I want to try. There was a shelve of wrapped (yes, in wrapping paper and ribbon) library books with their barcodes taped onto the wrapping paper. The books had a short, bulleted description of the book that was just enough to capture your interest and give you a gist of what it was about. I thought, how cool is that?
I am doing that! I also plan to model how to make book trailers and recommendations so when learners read a book, they can get their peers interested in reading it by explaining why they loved it so much. I just need to remember to stress that we shouldn't give away too many details, much less the ending! I'll post more about this once I begin implementing. - Help my learners develop a passion for and improve their writing skills. I'm currently reading a book called Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi. There will be more to come about this topic in a future post. It will definitely change how I teach writing. I am so excited about it though!
- Take flipped lessons to the next level. I already incorporated flipped lessons to some degree last year. My learners last year were highly capable of navigating the digital material that I gave them in all of the various formats. This year, I want to continue to work on making class time more application of the content by giving them some flipped aspects to do on their own time.
- Get out and about using our school as a tool WAY more often that we did last year. I just can't wait for this crazy August heat to go away so we can get outside more. It is unbearable right now.
- Interactive notebooks, and not just in science! I took a training this summer about it and I have already been practicing how to do it over the summer. It's just not the same. I need to see it in action with my class. I can't wait!
There are of course tons of other things I want to do, but I decided to keep this post short and sweet. The final one that I want to add, unofficially, is to intentionally share what I'm doing through my blog. I want to have some kind of record, that I created, of my growth and development over the year. I did not do such a great job of this last year, as I was trying to juggle too many things at once. Blogging will be a priority this year.
