Monday, May 26, 2014

#SummerList 2014

Time to think about my summer goals and put them down on "paper". :)

I really hate the last couple of weeks of school. I know that's weird, but there's nothing more I can do to really make much of an impact on this year and I'm eager to start thinking about next year. The best part of teaching is that every year we start with a clean slate. However, in order to get to that, I have to do some other stuff first...

  • Organize! I did not do a very good job of filing papers this year, so I have stacks of papers that need to be filed away. While I'm at it, I want to clean out old files and recycle things that won't be used again. My home office is a disaster area at times, especially when it comes to paper. I'm really bad about bookmarking pages, never to go there again, so I tend to print off neat ideas and file them for "someday". Problem is, some of my files date back to the early 2000s when I first started teaching AP Stat! I need to dig those out and see what I want to incorporate this year.

  • Professional Growth! I have several books on my to-be-read list, but that may need to be another blog post :) I also want to catch up on my blog reader, spend time on pinterest, and work on my professional growth in general.

  • 1:1! As I said in my previous post, I'm revamping my classroom for Chromebooks, so I want to work on ways to integrate technology in a meaningful way. I really don't want "technology for technology's sake"... I want the technology to enhance and improve the instructional experience in my classroom.

  • Active Learning! I fell away from this a bit this year and I'm sad. I even had students comment that 2nd semester wasn't as fun as it could have been. Snow days really stress me out when it comes to pacing and I made decisions to do more direct instruction as a result. I want to bring back more student-centered activities to my classroom. I need to do some research on other AP Stat webpages of neat hands-on activities and go through all of the resources I've accumulated over the past 14 years as well.

  • Formative Assessment! This has been an ongoing goal for several years and sometimes I'm doing okay, sometimes not. One thing I used successfully this year was the Red/Yellow/Green cups, but I did not use Exit Slips as much as I should have. I really want to incorporate more informal writing/reflection because often I feel like the kids are getting it, but they really aren't. I need to be better at utilizing the strategies that I've researched over the past few years.

  • #Made4Math! With summer here, it's time again for #Made4Math! I need to look at my classroom this week and see what needs to be done and start brainstorming ways to make my classroom more functional.

  • TMC14! 'nuff said! :)

    What's on your #summerlist?
  • 1 comment:

    Sherrie said...

    Can't wait for Made4math to start again. It keeps me motivated to work on my projects!