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!