Let Them Teach

Yesterday on my way home from school, I listened to a TED podcast from Sal Khan: Let's Teach for Mastery, Not Test Scores . Its a great way to spend 11 minutes, and I don't know about you but I love the cadence of his voice. Very Barack Obama-esque. Politics aside, I love hearing that man speak. I was pumped after listening to this. It validated my recent cannonballs into flexible seating, and rubric based grading, and it lit my fire to the personalized learning schedule my team is currently launching. I will share those resources, and also give some perspective of how we got to this point in our classrooms. Its a step farther out on a continuum, not a switch that is flipped.  I have been feeling more and more disillusioned by our grading system in my district. When a parent looks at an 89% in math on a report card, what does that tell them? What does it communicate? I have asked about whether our district would consider standards based grading for a couple ye...

With the help of one of my teammates, her knowledge from Math Workshop conferences, as well as my own scouring of blogs, I've thought through several station options. I only implement about 5 of these, but as this is my first year of Math Workshop, I expect to expand my horizons next year. The options for stations are: Small Group Instruction Fact Fluency Technology Math Games Notebooking/Vocabulary Interdisciplinary Spiral Practice/Weak Standards Great. Now what? Find the stuff for the centers. The quicker they are to acquire, the more likely you are to do them :) I started with what I had on hand. My stations look something like this: Small Group Instruction - 4-5 students and I working with manipulatives, white boards, and having think alouds and problem solving discussions Fact Fluency - flash cards, mad minute timed test (self check) Technology - online leveled practice (Think Through Math, iStation Math) or discovering how to use an app and creating ...

I was chosen to be part of a cohort this year in my district to pilot the use of instructional coaches. The goal of our district is to turn professional development into a daily occurrence, fueled by peers. I was super excited to be part of this opportunity, and it's turned out to be the biggest life/game changer. In the beginning, we took a self-evaluation to rank us on 21st Century Teaching Skills . We took it again mid-year, and we'll take it again at end of year. It's a great tool to use for goal setting. Based on my low scoring areas, I was able to set goals for myself this year on what I wanted to accomplish in the classroom. It really focused my growth, which is something I haven't had in the past. My first goal was Math Workshop. My second goal has been Project Based Learning. I'm in the middle of my first PBL unit, but I've been doing Math Workshop for months, so I have a bit more reflection to share on that particular topic right now. First rule of...