Ideas and Taking Action

My mind has been spinning with great ideas of how to improve my classroom. I am blessed with opportunities to attend conferences and collaborate with other talented, passionate educators, and these opportunities motivate me to take new steps in making my classroom student-centered. I recently joined a cohort for a Future Ready Teacher Leader Certificate through the EdTech Team. My excitement continues to grow each day as I continue to connect with more educators and learn from their experiences while also sharing my own. My mind continues to race with new ideas for my classroom, and I know it is up to me in order to take action and risks in the future. 

My first big step this year was revising my research project and turning it into an Inquiry project. While it took time, I am extremely happy with the process and my students' work. Will I do things differently next year? Yes...of course, but this will only make it more successful. The risk in changing the project was invigorating, and it provided an opportunity for my students to think creatively, analytically, and critically. They took ownership of their own research and writing, and this ownership was powerful to observe and facilitate. 

My next step is creating a Project Based Learning activity for our fourth and final unit. The unit focuses on aspirations and what it takes to pursue happiness. In addition, our anchor text is my all time favorite novel, The Great Gatsby. At this point, I am in the planning stages but look forward to creating a learning opportunity for my students in which they contemplate what it takes to attain happiness. The project will take place while we are reading, and each week I hope to give the students a day to research and share using some sort of digital platform. Google Collections is high on my list for a digital platform, as I have just started using it professional and personally in order to organize my ideas and share my learning. Potentially, students can research, question, reflect, create, and then post writing, links, images, questions, and videos in their collections. From there, they can share their reflections in our class Community, which will speak to a larger audience and provide an opportunity to learn and communicate with each another. I may also challenge my students to share their collections on Twitter or through another digital platform in order to expand their audience outside of our classroom. Obviously, the opportunities for learning are endless. 

Ideas will continue to come in...but it is my job to take action. Stay tuned as I continue to brainstorm, create, learn, reflect, and share throughout this process. #whatsup