Reports Cards and Innovation!

There is so much to talk about since the last post. Although I have switched to bi-weekly posts due to time constraints, I am still being very regular about doing 15 minutes of PD each weekday evening and doing 30 minutes of reading per week. I always felt so overwhelmed by February in the past, but I have found being connected to other educators online to be very energizing. I NEVER thought I would be able to find time to do so much professional development complete my report cards and teach every day. Angela Watson's 40 Hour teacher work week club has really helped me be more efficient. I am glad to be able to use the extra time for being in touch with invigorating innovative teachers in an online community!

Twitter - I found a Connected Learning Self-Assessment that I need to use to help me add more new things to my classroom. I have started working on adding more voice and choice, as well as developing problem solvers and critical thinkers, but I would like to include more time for reflection and opportunities for innovation. One of the resources to help with this will be the PBL toolkit, and another is to investigate how far I am allowed to take the use of social media in the classroom. For Valentine's Day, I discovered 5 apps/websites that educators love and I was able to pass it on to other teachers in my building who are not on Twitter. I continue to be inspired by George Couros a recent blog of his that I liked was about Focusing more on innovation than edtech. I am really trying to embrace the "constant pursuit of getting better" that George talked about, too. My big excitement of the last two weeks was signing up for #IMMOOC4. Which leads to my reading segment . . .

Reading -  I continued with my reading of Tracy Johnson-Zager's book Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had. I highly recommend this book. Every time I sit down and read a bit of it I find a few interesting strategies to try or anecdotes to reinforce things I already do. This time it was buddy checks that I used during my graphing practice to help students see if they could find all of the info on each other's work. Estimating, my favorite no, and whole class critiques were some of the other strategies I read about.
My other reading was starting Katie Martin's new book Learner-Centered Innovation that I chose for #IMMOOC 4. As George Couros recommended in the foreword I was looking to identify What challenged me, what has been reaffirmed, and what I will do moving forward. So far I have found most things have been reaffirmed. I like the analogy of traditional school to Kodak. I was also challenged by the idea that students have a hard time navigating the wide spectrum of expectations from all of their teachers which makes me feel challenged to figure out where to go from here. I can't wait to read more in the upcoming week!

Pluggin' Along

Podcasts - My usual fare of Truth for Teachers and Science Friday. Helpful and enlightening as always. China's policies on Renewable Energy seem so much more advanced than ours. Hopefully, we can get on board soon!

Twitter - Awesome insights this week on the difference between Engaging students and Empowering them. I also read a tweet by George Couros about 10 easy ways to create an amazing classroom culture. This will come in handy when we move to our new building at the end of the month and I am establishing new norms. Thanks, George!

10 Ways To Create an Amazing Classroom Culture

AJJuliani had posts about How to take criticism and about the Global Day of Design. (GDD18) I am excited to try one of his challenges with my science classes. I am also excited to see the new book by Katie Martin about Professional Learning that inspires student centered learning. #40CF has six questions to ask yourself everyday. Angela Watson had some great tips for writing report card comments in the #40HTWW club and I have already started using them! Jo Boaler put up a new poster on youcubed.org and a link to an article in Education Week about Educational Strategies Teachers might be missing out on. Jo's section was very informative and I am intrigued to read more about a strategy called QFT - Question Formulation Technique. Here is a link to the article: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2018/01/response_instructional_strategies_that_teachers_might_be_missing.html

Reading - I read two articles about productive struggle. I really liked the concepts in the one about scaffolding. (Scaffolding for Access to Productive Struggle from Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School Vol. 23 No. 4 January/February 2018) I am going to try the Cartoon Corner activities from the same issue next week because that is the exact topic I am working on right now!

February is here

This is a two-week reflection because I didn't have time to get to a computer on Friday of last week.

Podcasts: Truth for Teachers is back and I am really enjoying listening to Angela again while I am doing #40HTWW. I have implemented her concepts of chunking similar tasks, and I am using her list making system for work and home. I find I feel more relaxed when I go to bed because my list is finished every day. I feel better organized at school, too. So far so good! On Friday I finally caught up on the Science Friday podcasts. As always I find them interesting and inspiring. They have provided interesting facts for me to add to my science classes and my Young Surgeons elective. I am planning to start listening to School's In with Denise Pope and Dan Schwartz this week. 

Twitter: I have been pretty consistent with doing at least 15 minutes of Twitter each night thanks to the 40-hour teacher work week. I looked into some book titles like Teach Like Pirate, The Wild Card, Culturize, QuickDraw, Kids Deserve It, and 4 o'clock Faculty. I definitely have a long reading list! I read articles about a post-mortem for test-driven reforms, "genius" hour vs. Mastery hour, and empowered vs. engaged vs. unintentional teaching. I followed some new educators and my son's fourth-grade class. I watched some Ss instructional videos, read about how to be internet awesome. Hopefully, I will be able to tap into some of the live chats I have been reading about, but so far I haven't been able to make the times work with my schedule.

Reading: I am reading some articles about a productive struggle for all in math that I got from my math department chair. I will wait to comment until I have finished reading all four of them. I also read about how to be more efficient with grading writing assignments, so I hope to apply that to my science class assignments.

Happy 2018!

The new year started off almost as busy as I felt before the break, but the family time, as well as rest, made me much better equipped to handle it. This is a two-week reflection because there was a hockey tournament over MLK weekend.

Podcasts:
I took a real break and intentionally didn't do any professional development over break, so I have lots of old Science Friday episodes to get caught up on. I had some tech difficulties with playing podcasts in my car, but I think I have worked that all out now. I listened to one episode about the big Physics questions and the annual Christmas Bird Count. Both were interesting. The other episode I listened to had the year in review about the top science stories of 2017, an interview with the Secret Life of Flies author Erica McAlister, and the bourbon quiz. The Secret Life of Flies sounds fascinating, so I'd love to read it. I was able to gross out my Young Surgeon's students by telling them about how sterile maggots are being used to clean up gangrenous wounds. So cool!
There was a special episode of Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers that talked about optimizing time and how to plan for more productive times of the day to do certain tasks. It also talked about blocking similar tasks like making copies. So I have now started to do all my copies at the beginning of the day on Mondays. Such a simple idea, but it saves so much time and it forces me to plan further ahead. 

Twitter - I followed two new innovators and authors and #6thchat gave me some great suggestions for book ideas. The teacher challenge for 2018 looks interesting, but I have lots to do already with the 40 hour work week club. I spent most of my evening PD time working on the 40-hour work week club materials.
40-hour Work Week Club - I love lists, so I was super excited to hear Angela Watson's bonus material for the club about making prioritized lists. I am excited to try out her system and apply it to my practice.
Reading - I have been having trouble getting to this on Wednesday mornings for 30 minutes, so I am going to try splitting it up into two 15 minute sessions. One on Thursday morning and one on Friday morning. 
Clearly, I need to work on blogger more often because I can't figure out how to fix my line spacing!

So close I can almost taste it!

The pace is getting into a frenzy this week. The break is coming! 

Podcasts:
Truth for Teachers will not cast again until the new year, and I didn't get to Day 4 and 5 of the challenge, yet. Maybe next week!

Narwals, jellyfish, and microbes, Oh My! Science Friday was full of exciting bio-related stories this week. They also had a segment on The Best Science Books of 2017. The segment about Holiday light Safety and California's wildfires were both very timely, and I was sad to hear about the destruction of the Ventura Botanical Gardens. Voyager 1's thrusters and coastal restoration in Louisiana rounded out the program this week. 

Again, I ran out of podcasts to listen to before the week was over. Does anyone know any good podcasts that are not on break right now? I like Revisionist History, Truth for Teachers, and Mindshift, but they are all on breaks right now! Suggestions?

Twitter - I discovered AJ Juliani last week, and I read another one of his posts this week. It was called Project Based Activity That can work in any Classroom. http://ajjuliani.com/project-based-learning-activity-can-work-classroom/ I also signed up for his notifications and I am curious to know how this works if students or their parents do not want them to be broadcasting online. 

I read three George Couros posts this week and they were very timely for the chaos of life! They were 4 ways to not let others dim your light, 3 Ideas for taking care of yourself before the break, and 4 hints on being that "jolt" you need for yourself. As always George has a way of making me think about things differently or reminds me of truths that I easily forget. Thanks for keeping me focused George!

#inquirybasedlearning had a list of 6 strategies for creating an inquiry-driven classroom and the one that I think is hardest for many people (Myself included.) is STOP being the expert.

#mashupmath seems like a good source for some fun problem ideas.

Reading - I finally got to read some of NSTA's Science Scope and I found an interesting resource for my archaeology unit. It is askananthropologist.asu.edu. I also read about some ideas for better using formative assessments and a 5E model for teaching about fire safety and wildfires. I would love to add that to my energy unit in the spring.

Keeping track

This week I was really motivated to get lots of Twitter time, and I decided to keep better track of the interesting things I was learning by writing it down in a notebook rather than on random notes that I left everywhere. It has made this reflection much easier! 

Podcasts:
Truth for Teachers was not cast this week, but I listened to the 3rd challenge of the 5 day challenge. I have been able to to do pretty well with the first three days, but I haven't listened to the last two challenges, yet. It is hard to try new things this close to winter break. I feel like I am just in survival mode. Looking forward to listening to these challenge days this week. I missed your podcast this week, Angela!
Here is the link to her podcast if anyone is interested: https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/goodbye-teacher-tired/

Here are the titles of the first three days of the challenge:

1) Get real about how much you can accomplish each day, and eliminate the unnecessary.

2) Schedule your day to get the most important things done, instead of doing as much as possible.

3) Minimize decision-making by automating tasks and creating routines that simplify your life.

Science Friday covered the Net Neutrality issue and the house plan for taxing Grad students. A story that surprised me was about the HIV/AIDS eidpemic that is happening in the southern USA. All of which worry me for the future of our country. I also heard stories about Proton trapping, Muscle speed, Switching attention in Macacs, and research on Yeti DNA that turned out to really be bear DNA. The two stories I talked most about was the strength of neolithic women (During my archaeology unit) and robots modeled after oragami. (During a STEAM class.) I ran out of podcasts to listen to beofre the week was over. Does anyone know any good podcasts that are not on break right now? I like Revisionist History, Truth for Teachers, and Mindshift, but they are all on breaks right now! Suggestions?

Twitter - I followed a new math teacher and through her tweets I got linked to a way to use Desmos and One Note together. http://continuousformation.blogspot.com/2017/11/desmos-onenote-replay.html

George Corous lead me to an article by Katie Martin that was inspiring, and old quote of his from 2011 that talked about the difference between classroom management vs. classroom leadership. He also tweeted about an article by Marcel Schwantes that gave the 6 steps to get what you want from your manager.
I also really enjoyed AJ Juliani's post about getting students to do the talking. I plan to try some of his strategies in my science classes. https://medium.com/@ajjuliani/the-three-step-system-for-getting-students-to-do-the-talking-f1802cac8648 @ajjuliani

Tara Martin shared about students in her district who were sharing their learning portfolios.

Then I clicked on a link that took me to three articles about how CRISPR/CaS 9 works. They were fascinating, and I can't wait to hear more research about these gene editing tools. That ended up being my reading for the week. 

Learning Never Ends even if I don't blog about it

It has been awhile since my last post because I took time off from blogging for Thanksgiving, and then my son was home sick on Friday and the laundry took over. I was great about my podcasts for the last two weeks, my twitter activity was pretty low and I don't do as much reading as I would have liked, but I got to connect with a former colleague and talk about mindfulness in math. She also shared some exciting new resources that I can't wait to look over and connected me with a new resource for science in Boulder. All great stuff. Read on for details . . .

Podcasts:
Truth for Teachers was cast the Monday before Thanksgiving and I learned that it was the last episode of the season. However, in the episode, she started a 5-day Challenge to saying goodbye to teacher tired. I signed up for the challenge, and I am still working on it, but I liked lots of her ideas. Some of them I have kind of discovered on my own, but anything I can do to be more efficient, even in little ways is great. I have been working on these things on my own for awhile, but I appreciate the challenge and materials that go along with it because then I don't have to re-invent the wheel. Thanks, Angela!
Here is the link to her podcast: https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/goodbye-teacher-tired/

Here are the titles of her 5 days of the challenge:

1) Get real about how much you can accomplish each day, and eliminate the unnecessary.

2) Schedule your day to get the most important things done, instead of doing as much as possible.

3) Minimize decision-making by automating tasks and creating routines that simplify your life.

4) Maximize your energy and focus by batching tasks and building in buffer time.

5) Prioritize rest as the catalyst for productivity, and schedule time for things you love.

Science Friday had a special airing of the Ig Nobel awards ceremonies as a Thanksgiving treat. It was pretty entertaining to hear about the research that is going on out there. There were also segments on bat studies, some caves in Kentucky, potential ideas for mission to Uranus and Neptune to study the diamond rain, and mining coal for clues to ancient environments. I love listening to all these stories because I can then share with colleagues and students! 

Twitter

I didn't do much on Twitter for the last two weeks, but I am already working on it for this week, and I missed so much. Looking forward to spending the next few days catching up and getting ideas. So exciting and invigorating!
Reading
I didn't get to read because I had extra meetings scheduled during my normal reading times. I did get the chance to talk to someone on the Scheduling Committee about the new schedule we will be adopting in the 2019-2020 school year. 
This reflecting is a great reminder of what I have learned and it motivates me to keep going on this journey. Since I am approaching the mid-year mark it will also be a good chance to reflect on my goals and how I am doing with them.