What Do Teachers Do in the Summer?

Based on the memes I have seen over the past few months, most people seem to think that teachers spend their summers drinking wine like water

and watching Netflix in their pajamas all day. What do I love about summer? Sleeping in past 5:30, working out when I want to, peeing when I want to, not needing a nap, staying up past 10, and catching up with friends. I am not going to lie; it's been great! However, I have spent several hours each day reading books about teaching writing, working on my website and blog, reading countless educational articles on Twitter, lesson planning for a new class I am teaching, and learning new ways to incorporate technology in my classroom in meaningful ways.

I use my summer to reflect on the past year and to set new goals for the upcoming year. Here are my goals so far:

1) To make my classroom one that kids love to walk into. To connect with my students and get them fired up about learning.

2) To spend more time giving feedback WHILE students are working on an assignment rather than after they finish.

3) To make my classroom much more student centered. To include more personalized and project based learning. To make assignments more meaningful and relevant to students.

4) To use Screencastify as a way to share information with me and for them to present information. I just learned how to do this today!

I usually only set one big goal, but I am aiming high this year!

Comments

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator. Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles. One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature. I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time. Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher. I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it. Here's h

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy. All students come with different skills and knowledge. With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process. Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience. Students need to learn to develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade. Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product. I was adamant that I was not go

Hexagonal Thinking

The last few weeks can be challenging. Keeping students engaged and learning is my mission! When I stumbled upon a post about hexagonal thinking, I knew I had to try it with my students. I am SO glad I did. Although this activity can be done digitally or on paper, I insisted that my students in class do it old school. My goal was for my students to have thoughtful discussions about what we read this year. Here's how it works! First, I came up with a list of key characters and ideas from The Giver, Animal Farm, and The Children's Story. I found this awesome generator on line where I could just type in my words, and it put them in the hexagons for me. Then I printed out the pages (there were three) for each group. I did a copious amount of research before embarking on this activity, and I was shocked by the number of teachers who cut the hexagons out for their students. That would have taken me HOURS. I simply gave each group scissors, and they were done in five minute

Learning, Laughter, and Love in Middle School English

Search This Blog