And we’re back!

It still doesn’t seem real that students return Monday. But, here I am, ready (?) to start year SEVEN of this crazy teaching thing.

I completed my master’s degree this summer, which means instead of working on grad school assignments during my prep and after school, I might actually have time to IMPLEMENT some of the new things I learned in grad school and professional developments in the past two years!

This is kind of an accountability post, idea post, whatever you want to call it. These are some of the things I want to commit to at least trying in my classroom this year.

Improving Parent Communication

This is one of my weakest points as a teacher. I didn’t get into teaching to talk to parents, I got into it to talk to kids. And I really do believe that high schoolers need to take responsibility of their own learning and not rely on their parents to remind them of things and keep them on track. BUT, I have also realized that parents still care about what’s happening in their child’s classroom, and I want to get better about sharing that with them. I plan to use Seesaw, which automatically allows parents access to any work their child posts to the platform if they have signed up, and I am going to use this platform to also post weekly calendar pages about my class.

Varied Student Assessment

I want to get away from every grade being a paper and pencil test. I have a couple good projects that I use, but I want even more variety, since the ways they will be assessed post high school will vary a lot as well. Specifically, I want to experiment with collaborative/cooperative testing, and oral testing using the video feature on Seesaw. I want to try portfolio assessment, where students have to curate a set of evidence to show they met the standard using the textbook, their assignments, and other various materials.

Interactivity in Lessons

Trying to get away from teacher at the board being the go to, even for new content delivery. Our district gave us all access to PearDeck Premium, and I want to use this to quickly check understanding in students. I also received a Rocketbook at our district’s tech bootcamp, and I want to use it to quickly send student work to my computer so I can display it on the screen and discuss it with students. I also plan to use it to easily digitize answer keys (since it’s easier for me to make answer keys by hand), share them with students and emphasize them being accountable for tracking their own understanding. I am planning to use Mentimeter to have quick check ins on learning targets and potentially to create word clouds as a quick exit slip or opener.

Those are just some ideas so far. I know I’ll get overwhelmed when school starts and forget about half of these, so now they’re all written out! What new things are you wanting to try this year?

(I should get back to my to-do list now…)