I was out on maternity leave for the end of the fall semester. I came back in January in time for the start of the spring semester. Here are 5 goals I have:
1. Incorporate mind (concept) maps into all of my classes.
2. Continue teaching reading and writing across content.
3. Increase the amount/quality of feedback I give students.
4. Deconstruct all worksheets into activities.
5. Go paperless. Continue to transfer all paper pencil graded work to assignments that can be posted electronically.
I've done some things already to work toward these goals. Here's some things that have been going on in my classroom:
In personal finance to wrap up the intro unit on goals and time management I gave the students a set of words and had them make mind maps. It worked pretty well. I had several different levels of out comes. One group came up with the idea of using stair steps between all of there words. They had a very elaborate. Thought process of how they organized their words and how they set up their stairs. Very cool!
In biology I've been teaching literature roles and am working up to doing a lit circle discussion from a section in he textbook. We practiced using an article about how a South American male Spider attracts females. The students ended up having a big discussion about spiders mating and were doing the roles without even knowing it. For example they were asking really good higher order thinking questions without me having to prompt them! Exciting!
The last thing that I think is cool is my plan for Valentines Day! I plan on focusing the whole day on chocolate. In chemistry we will do a lesson on the chemistry of chocolate, biology will focus on the environmental issues of chocolate production and how it's grown. And in personal finance we will do a lesson looking at the cost of buying a chocolate bar from the vending machine and how that money could be saved. The social studies teacher is going to do a lesson on chocolate in his economics class. Always fun to try to get some cross-curricular connections going on! I'll post an update to let you know how it goes.
Let's hope the next time I update it's warmer and spring is on it's way! I'm ready for this winter to end!
