New Year Organization
You have read that correctly. I am thinking about the New Year already. As most of my readers know I have been off on Maternity leave for the past ten months. (Canada is a great place to live!)
After Winter Break I am back to work. My schedule looks a bit different this time. I not only have the grade eights but the grade one french immersion for their English Literacy. I also have the little kinder tots for one period! I will have the youngest and oldest students in our school!
I have just started to officially wrap my brain around it all. I am so excited as you know how much I love teaching (see post
here) but I have rather enjoyed being a stay at home mama. I look forward to working with my coworkers again and the challenges we will conquer, the creative collaboration shared and the small i
inappropriate hilarious moments.
I always have a goal to be more digital then the previous teaching year. I have been tossing around a few ideas in my mind.
1. D2L: Online learning platform. I have used it very briefly before and I found that I was limited. A few years have passed and I see lots of improvements. However, I am also unsure of how much access my students have to the internet at home. I think I will put this one on hold until September of 2015. I am looking forward to hearing what
@gr1and2bkwrms will share!
2. First Class: I currently use my First Class website. This platform is the one that my school board uses. I like it....but I find that it is "basic". I am limited to what I can do. You can check it out
here. Be wary the site has cobwebs as I am still dusting it off.
3. Class Blog: I think I would like to start a class blog. It could keep track of our daily learning. It would be a good reflection tool to look back upon. There are a couple of great examples that I will use to model:
Check out
Miss Dunsiger's class blog
here. My favourite part is her Daily Shoot.
Check out
The Graffiti Bench here. She has not updated this year as I believe she is not in the classroom right now but you can see so many great ideas there.
I have yet to find a great intermediate class blog......so I haven't found a "model".
I have started to build the "bones of the blog". No posts yet but you can check it out and get ready to follow if you are interested.
BLOG:
http://78phoenix.blogspot.ca
4. Class Twitter and Instagram: I am excited about these ones as well. Since I teach mostly intermediate it is not only for the parents but for the students as well. The students tweet/post pictures of things that are important to them. Including their lunch pics! I want them to know that I feel what we do in the classroom is important. I want to share it with the world but they and their learning means that much to me. Posts will begin early January.
Follow us here:
Twitter:
@Pheonix7_8
Instagram: pre78
5. Day Book: I have started to build my day book. In September this is another goal for the next school year to be digital for my day planning...however there is something therapeutic about writing my plans down and it helps me remember.
I have created my calendars for January-June of 2014. I have included the day rotation in the calendar as it helps with my planning.
Two pages so it lays out in my day book and I can see a month view with the cycle days better.
Do you want a copy of it for yourself?
Help yourself!
Here it is
here:
This is an open office file. You can download and edit.
A pdf version is available
here.
What do you use for organisation?
