Sweat to Inspire

Day 20 – @TeachThough  30 Day Reflective Teaching Challenge  

How do you curate student work–or help them do it themselves?

 This is a great question, that I have just begun to think about seriously and how it fits into my instruction. Students should have a learning portfolio of artifacts that show their learning. This can be done digitally or in folders. Ideally I would have students create a blog to keep their BEST work on. I currently don’t have access to technology enough to be effective in this manner. I currently have students keep their projects in folders through out the school year. We have this resource at the end of year to look back at our learning. Now I am beginning to realize that these learning artifacts need to move on with students. Students need to have a record of learning from K-12 that is more than the grades and comments found in the CA60 folders. I need to do a better job curating my students work.

Day 19:  @TeachThough  30 Day Reflective Teaching Challenge  

Name three powerful ways students can reflect on their learning, then discuss closely the one you use most often.

Student reflection is a key part of learning, maybe one of the most important parts of the process. Ways students can reflect:

1. Student Blogging or learning journals where students reflect on what and how they learned.

2, Learning Portfolios- Showing student growth from start of year to end of year. Year to year

3. Learning dialogues – Class discussions about how and what is learned.

ALL three are very powerful!

I use learning dialogues most in my classroom right now. After learning, we dedicate class time to discuss how we learn the content. What was easy, what was hard, how we connected to the content, how we can use the knowledge moving forward and why it is important to know. This is valuable for students for they see others strengths and struggles. Often the discussions leads to sharing about how the most recently learning process was different or similar to the last. This has helped promote a growth mindset in my classroom. Students realize that they all have different strengths and weaknesses.

Day 18- @TeachThough  30 Day Reflective Teaching Challenge  

Create a metaphor/simile/analogy that describes your teaching philosophy. For example, a “teacher is a ________…”

Similes for teaching are running rampant in book tiles these days. Teach like a pirate, teach like you hair is on fire, teach like a champion. (All great reads)

My philosophy of teaching is like sailing a boat. You never know how the winds will be blowing or which direction will be the best tack. Keeping one eye on the sails and the other on the wind, constantly monitoring both. Making sure you are heading in the right direction to make it to port on time. Keep you boat level in the water moving ahead, make sure you don’t turn into the wind and in up stuck in irons.

Pirates are champion sailors with their hair on fire.

Day 15- @TeachThough 30 day reflective teaching blog challenge 

Name three strengths you have as an educator.

My 3 strengths:

1. Flexibility- You have to be flexible as a teacher. I am willing and able to go with the flow that is middle school. I know how to punt when the lesson plans aren’t flowing or we encounter an unforeseen change in our daily routine.

2. I listen and relate. I feel I do a good job listening and relating with my students. This helps me make the valuable relationships. Students know I care and I hear their thoughts and concerns.

3. Adaption of content: I feel I can adapt the content so my students can relate to it. So often texts make teachers jobs harder. They add in ideas and facts that confuse the students and inhibit learning. I feel I can take the content down to the bare bones and make students see the WHY in the need to learn. Without knowing the WHY students often fail to have the desire to learn ideas.