Post 5

Much of the reading this week focused on standards.  I know in my masters program, TCH program and my district  much emphasis is placed on standards.  I was glad this chapter offered some helpful strategies to teach with the standards in mind but to also do authentic teaching.  The suggestions on page 93 were especially helpful.

• Understand the scope and nature of high-stakes testing
• I see educators get really worried and stressed out when there isn't a real reason to worry.  If you are truly informed about testing then you should be able to tackle it and transfer that knowledge to your students.
• Weave test-like experiences  into daily instruction in a seamless and productive manner.  
• Again if you know the scope and nature of the test you should be able to prepare your students using daily instruction - not giving practice tests all the time but working with your everyday classroom to cover what you need.
• Correlate instructional plans with testing guides.
• I see these being used in my district.  Students get used to how the test will look, the format, question type, etc.  It helps ease the anxiety on test day.  I do feel that it can be another drain on resources but test scores are how schools are measured in our current educational climate.

Post 4

Lots of things to think about this week.  First off: I love Prezi.  I heard about it during my masters program and first put it to use when I had to present during an interview for my current job (they must have liked it).  My district superintendent also loves Prezi and using it during all of our district meetings and when he presents at conferences.  Like Malia said in her video, I like to get away from using PowerPoint.  Since everyone uses it, it can get boring, plus there are so many other options.  For some reason I had never considered using the Explore part of Prezi.  The Explore part is such a great way to get ideas or spark interest.  It had also never occurred to me to use Prezi as a timeline tool, which it is perfect for.  Pete and I are using the site Dipity for our lesson plan but I can see that Prezi would work for it as well.

Lots of information in the text and in the flipped videos on inquiry and Project Based Learning (PBL).  This was well timed, I was just talking to a college about PBL.  After showing him the site we are going to purchases the Starter Kit book to have in our library for staff and he is excited to start using it.  Putting students first seems to be what inquiry and PBL is all about.  Letting their own curiosity guide their learning will keep students engaged and them giving them something to do through PBL will engage them even more. 

Post 3

Chapter 2 focused on reflection.  This was a big part of what I did during my first year as a school librarian and I still continue to do it as I teach during my second year.   As a school librarian, I teach lessons to K-5 graders on library skills, study skills, technology skills, basically anything that will help you find the information that I am looking for.  I also do some read-a-loud for reading promotion and reading/language skills.

When I started my first year I decided I needed to keep track of what I was teaching so I could remember to do it again (or not) the following years.  I have developed a huge Google Drive spreadsheet which tracks how my lessons went.  I track each grade by the week I am teaching, with sections for the lesson and my feedback on the lesson.  Over the first year I could easily start to see that some of my lessons were keepers and some were not.  I made notes for myself to focus on certain things or present them in a certain way that was more successful.  Much of this type of reflection in my spreadsheet was reflection after the lesson.  These reflections have been very valuable to me this year and allows me to plan my lessons with more ease.

I also reflect during teaching.  Since I see four sections of each grade I do my lessons several times.  I feel bad for the ones who go first!  I know that I keep getting better at the lesson the longer I teach it.  Some things don't work and I scrap them before the next class comes in, something else works great and then I focus on it for the next class.  Poor first ones!