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!