We spent a few days in New Hampshire over the break and before we left, my daughter had created a "Winter Break Bucket List." We made bucket lists over the summer, and I think I may have created a monster because she wants to make bucket lists all the time now! The third item on her list was to go ice skating. When we arrived at Steele Hill, I read on the activities page that they were offering ice skating time on the pond the next morning. Looked like Emerson was going to get to cross at least one thing off her bucket list! Since getting a new knee two years ago, my husband is slightly protective of me, so I was banished to the wooden benches around the fire pit (not burning unfortunately when we were there), far away from the slippery ice. I was able to watch Emerson wobble around and eventually begin to sort of skate across the pond. There were some other mothers sitting and watching their kids skate as well. Of course, as it turned out, the mom sitting next to me was from Groton-Dunstable, a school district where I was once a principal for seven years. Her kids were at the other elementary school, but now they are in middle school and high school. When she learned that I was a principal, she said, "Can I ask your opinion about something?" She explained that her middle school child's English teacher had been explaining to parents that he was going to have the kids grade themselves basically. I ended up talking to her about the importance of letting kids set goals for themselves and helping them learn how to be reflective. My opinion was that I liked that the teacher was working with students to help them own their learning, to help them set goals for themselves, to help them reflect on their learning, and ultimately evaluate their own learning. Of course, the teacher will probably need to help her child and others understand how to grade themselves, but think about how powerful those lessons will be for those students. It made me think about the action and expression part of the UDL framework. We want strategic and goal-directed learners, don't we? Check out the blue column below. Think about how we can work on building these skills with our learners. Especially the bullet point that says formulate plans for learning. Think about how we can help our students formulate their own plans for learning through goal setting. And then helping them to reflect on if those goals were achieved and if their plans worked. These are skills that we can work on with even our youngest learners. Here are a few articles I came across that talk about goal setting with students: https://www.edutopia.org/article/supporting-student-goal-setting/ https://www.edutopia.org/article/guiding-students-set-academic-goals/ After chatting with that mom, I went back to watching my daughter wobble and sometimes skate across the ice. I realized that maybe teaching her about making bucket lists wasn't such a bad idea. She had set some goals for herself and now she was working on achieving one of those goals. After the skating session was done, I know that our conversation would center around if she liked skating, how she thought she did, and if she wanted to do it again at some point. A nice, quick reflection about her goal and her learning. Think about how you can help your students set some goals for themselves over the next six weeks. Definitely love a vacation week to catch up on my reading time! My husband just shakes his head when he sees me curl up somewhere in our house with my stack of books. I am almost finished listening to You Could Make This Place Beautiful and I am excited to start listening to The Women by Kristin Hannah. So many people have recommended it to me. I am excited about a new opportunity where I will be running virtual book clubs for 5th and 6th graders one night a week. The first book we are discussing is A Wrinkle in Time, a classic that I had actually never read so I am reading that one currently. I am also reading Wild for one of my classes, definitely loved it the first time I read it, now loving reading it as a writer gives me a new perspective. And I started reading a new middle grade book, Simon Sort of Says, over the break.
0 Comments
Good news, if you read the speech bubble in the graphic above, this week is all about switching things up! It will be quite a different week, but I am sure you all are ready for it. February is coming at us fast and furious (and fabulous)! Looking forward to an afternoon of professional development focused on writing. We will have a chance to see how our rubrics look across the grades. We will also begin to look at what we are using for graphic organizers. You will also have a chance to provide some input to our trimester 2 writing prompt that will be coming up in March. Tuesday is Inspired Learning Day! Please make sure and share with your students on Monday the slideshow that was sent to you. It will give them an idea of the possible sessions that they will be attending. Thank you to Julia and Tracee for creating name tag necklaces for all of your students. On one side there is a sticker with the POL competency that the student selected as his/her number one choice. On the other side, there is a list of the 3 sessions and the room numbers of where he/she needs to go. I will be sending out an email with more details of how the day will go. We will have several high school students here to help. I am also looking forward to the high school drama students performing a portion of "Percy Jackson" for us. They will also connect their characters to a POL Superpower. And hopefully at the end, our students will have a chance to learn part of a song in the musical. At the end of the day, you will have a chance to help lead your class through a reflection of the day. I will also ask you to reflect on the day and think about how to bring components of Inspired Learning Day into your daily lessons and activities. We will also have a group of administrators from Needham Public Schools visiting MURSD and Clough is their first stop on Inspired Learning Day. After we get through a half day and Inspired Learning Day, Wednesday is both the 100th Day of School and World Read Aloud Day! The 100th day is a good time to think about how you have been working with your students for more than half the year now. Think about where they started with you and where they are today. Think about where they will be after 80 more days with them. If you want more information about World Read Aloud Day and what you can do with your students to connect them to classrooms all over the globe celebrating World Read Aloid Day, check out this link.
This week and this month will be fast and furious... and fabulous! Make sure to enjoy every moment! |