As we count down the remaining days of our Christmas holidays I have found myself collecting my thoughts and experiencing many pangs of enthusiasm and ideas for the new school year. Whilst it is a little daunting going back to teach a new year level (Yr4) for the third year in a row, I am looking forward to the challenge of teaching a grade that I last taught in 1998.
When people say to me that they could never be a teacher I find myself replying that it is an exciting time to be a teacher at the moment what with the fast rate of change and challenges in education. Some of these include the explosion of technology, a move to collaborative teaching and learning methods at our school, personalising learning for all students and developing our PLT.
Some of the things I am excited about for this new school year and have set goals around for these exciting times include (in no particular order):
- starting my own blog (tick)
- sharing our work and learning with my teaching partner and with our PLT
- continuing to build my PLN
- getting our students blogging and making writing fun
- using Edmodo with our students
- incorporating The Daily 5 and The Daily Cafe into our literacy blocks
- personalising learning for all students
- introducing BYOT in Stage 2
- inquiry learning
- Maths 300
- having our students share their learning and make global connections via our class twitter account
No doubt this list will grow and change as the year progresses and I am looking forward to ruminating(hence the blog title) on our experiences through this blog. For those still on holidays, enjoy it while it lasts. Eight days and counting down...