Reflections and Looking Forward

Well, I did not keep up with this blog as I intended. I still enjoy writing in paper journals. Oh well. There is always next year.

This year is nearly over, a little over a month to go. I love where I work. It truly is a joy to go to school each day.  I am thankful for the dedicated teachers (as well as administrators and staff) at our school. As our campus contains two schools, this goes for all our teachers - elementary and high school.

I truly enjoyed this group of kids. They are bright, and they were prepared for seventh grade. They are outspoken and do not mind asking questions. I feel they will do well in the rest of their academic endeavors and life, in general.

Our English standards changed to a more rigorous set of standards, so I felt the stress to catch up and overcome the gap. I feel like all of our teachers (elementary and high school) felt this way. (The math curriculum changed last year, but I know there are still gaps between the old standards and the new that are being addressed. I can only speak from my subject area though!)

We also blocked reading and grammar for seventh and eighth grade this year. It was interesting, and I really did enjoy it. Besides teaching grammar, reading, writing, and research, I was able to add more speeches.  It was great to add more speeches this year. I think it will be beneficial to our students, and it is in the new curriculum as a major strand, rather than as merely one of many objectives to teach.

I also think that my parent communication was a bit lacking this year. Part of the reason for the "lacking" is my own educational pursuits this year. In addition, I got rid of my original classroom facebook and did not start a classroom group page until late in the year. I do like the group page better; I don't see all the other posts, but my information is out there.  Because I started the page so late, I was not in the habit of posting everyday. This needs to change.

This year I tried Remind101. It was great, except only about 5% of my parents signed up to receive messages. It is kind of disappointing, but perhaps the percentage will increase next year!

I am looking at an online lesson planner (for next school year) that has a setting that allows parents/students to see the basic lesson plans. I may use that next year. I will try it over the summer to see if I like it.

With some of the pedagogies we have spoken about in my classes, I may switch up some of the teaching strategies I used this year. I do tweak each year, but these classes have opened up a few new ways that I have not considered in while, if at all.

With regards to changes in lesson plans, I need to consider which novels I want to teach next year, as well as if the About Me project will be assigned. There a few snags this year. I may just tweak the project, and start assigning the parts earlier in the year, maybe one part a month.

Oh well. I will be working on more changes over the summer.