I'm linking up with Teaching in Room 6 to share what worked in my classroom this year and what didn't. Stephanie started with her own reflection on the school year with her students. She received so many comments, she made it a link up.
What Worked
What worked in my room this year was the time I spent developing more concrete math lessons with my students. The curriculum we have expects my students to think far before they are ready. I have shared several of my lessons on this blog, like the trapezoid art above, and plan to share more over the summer.
I have a read aloud time with my students every day where I share books and authors and we discuss what we are reading. If you want to know more about why I read aloud, I have a post here.
What Didn't Work
What didn't work for me this year was the number of changes our district tried to implement at once. I felt like too much of my teaching/planning time was sucked up by "urgent meetings" and "important emails". There was a lot of misinformation communicated about what we were expected to do with our new evaluation system, Common Core, and Smarter Balanced Assessments.
I felt like I was reacting to these meetings and emails instead of planning ahead and getting prepared. Now that I have lived through these for a year, I will organize my goals better. (I'll let you know how that works.)
I would love to hear what worked for you this year (and what didn't.) Either make a comment or write a post for the link up. By sharing our successes and failures we can help each other.
My math journals worked this year, but I'm planning to organize them differently next year. Writing journals worked well too. More writing from the kiddos than ever, but I'd like to be more varied in my mini-lessons next year. Lots to think about during this short summer :)
ReplyDeleteI did math journals last year, but not this year. I am going to try them again this year.
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