I decided over the summer that this would be my year! A year of change for me... for the past 5 years I've been set in my ways at my school. Following the same old routines as I always have and, well, I needed to shake things up! I want to make a name for my self (so to speak). I'm full of ideas and I never speak up, I keep them quiet. Well that's just not going to work for me any more! I want to share my ideas, I want my ideas to take me places so this year I'm speaking up and shaking things up. I've been working hard to get out of my old routines and trying new things in my room. Simple changes like doing Math in the morning not in the afternoon, to larger changes - joining teacher support teams. I'm speaking up and sharing my ideas more. Here's what I've done so far:
Right now I'm in the midst of trying to get a class set of iPads for my kinders to use throughout the week. I've spent the past month and a half researching apps and writing proposals explaining why I think my class would benefit from having iPads and how I would use them in my room. Thanks to many of you and your blogs I think I was able to make a strong case... Nothing has been set in stone yet so I don't want to get my hopes up, but I think having iPads in my room can be a great tool! Do any of you use iPads in your classrooms? How do you use them? Do you have any suggestions? I have some great ideas of how to use them in small groups but what about whole class? I'd love your input!!
I also joined our new Learning Leaders team. This team is headed by our new A.P. and consists of five teachers (including myself) grades K-3. We are currently working on revamping and organizing our Math curriculum. We are using Investigations, which personally I love, but there are some gaps in the program according to our standards and we are working to fill those gaps and make the program work better for our school.
I've signed up to join a technology team in our building. There are so many teachers in our school who love finding and using technology in useful, productive and creative ways in the classroom but we have never had an outlet to share our ideas. My hope is that this team will allow teachers from K-8 to join together and share and collaborate on ways we are currently using technology and ways we wish we could use technology. There is so much potential out there and I know that collaborating will open all of our eyes up to new ideas! Now I haven't been officially accepted onto this team and I'm not sure that this team will be developed this year, but I signed up and I'm waiting to find out.
So you can see that I've been quite busy...well apparently not busy enough because on Wednesday at the end of the day my A.P. approached me and asked if I would join yet another team of teachers... of course why not! This final group is working on math videos. We are trying to continue to build our home-school-connection and we think that these videos would really help with that. I'm actually really excited about this idea and I can't wait to get started. Most of the teachers on the team, there are four of us, will be using an app on their iPads to make the videos but I'm not sure if that is going to work for me. Almost everything we do in Kindergarten is hands on I'm thinking I need to come up with some creative ways to make some videos....
Well, as you can see I've been just a little busy... SO I appologize to my loyal followers and I will do my best to start blogging again. But please know that I wish I could be on here every day sharing all the fun that's going on in my room. I'll do my best to start blogging more again!
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