- Bringing Project Based Learning to our Classroom - August 12, 2018
- Keep the Engagement Alive: Start the Year with Purpose - August 5, 2018
- It's Our Fault: A Teacher's Confession - March 18, 2018
- Keeping Your Teaching Real: A Teacher's Role - March 11, 2018
- Sketch Notes in the Elementary Classroom - February 15, 2017
- Teach From the Heart - February 9, 2017
- Who is the Teacher: School or Family? - January 11, 2017
- Dear President Elect Trump, From Your Teachers - November 17, 2016
- Let them Be Children - October 21, 2016
- Print Resources: Great Tools for Kids - October 17, 2016
Lesson planning is not a ditto machine. It is impossible to take a set of lesson plans from the previous year and implement them exactly for a current group of students. Curriculum, resources and technology all change and keep lessons constantly evolving. Sometimes lessons from previous years get left in the past. Often times, however, they are simply altered and reused. And with each year, the reflection makes the activity stronger.
For the past few years, I have been doing a poetry activity with my fourth graders in January. The poem, "Where I'm From", is a wonderful new year reflection. Sharing my own version allows me to share more about my family and my own childhood with students. Writing their own version allows students to focus on the positives and what has brought them to where they are. Here is our experience of writing last year.
This year my class is continuing the activity. Each year they have brought artifacts and pictures from home. We have used flipagram on the iPads to capture these moments. They can easily be shared with families and my fourth graders show them to the freshman English class that comes over. Their class has done the same poetry activity and it is a fun connection to see nine-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds doing the same project. Each year, however, I have felt we need more.
This year I have discovered Adobe Voice. It is an iPad app that allows students to put a voice to their work. It operates similar to a PowerPoint but creates a much more fluid and beautiful presentation. This year, along with the poem and the artifacts, my students will add their voice. They will be able to represent their poem and read it. I am excited to see what this new piece will bring to our project.
Educators work too hard to throw out ideas and replace them with brand new lessons each year.
Think about a lesson you love, but that has not gone as smoothly or solidly as you would like. A lesson that feels like it is missing something. A lesson that does not engage students as well as it used to. What can you change? What technology can you add that will enhance the learning? How can you network your students with others and open their world? Find a way you can push yourself, the lesson and your students to strengthen the old in the New Year.
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