Another Year in the Books

I have always loved end of the year reflection activities.  They involve looking at the goals you set at the beginning of the year and thinking about your effectiveness as a teacher.  This year, my Associate Head of School had a new activity for us.  She had the teachers write report card comments for themselves.  The purpose of the activity was to observe and comment on yourself as though you were an outsider, thus using third person.  It allowed me to think about all aspects of my teaching.  It also helped me to be more honest with the things that I need to improve upon, mostly because I was also giving myself credit for the things I do well.  This activity is exactly what we want when planning meaningful lessons.  We want to plan something that is creative and fun, yet gets the students thinking and reflecting.  It was a very effective exercise, and I enjoyed creating mine very much. In fact, I think this is a worthwhile activity to do throughout the year as a means of checking your status.  We do report card comments for the students multiple times a year, so why not for ourselves as well!

In this post I also want to tell you about an upcoming series on my blog.  This year, I am leaving my job in hopes of finding one closer to home.  In the position that I have held for the past four years, I have been the upper school English teacher at my school.  And for three of those four years I have taught all the seventh and eighth graders.  Many days, it felt like I was the English program.  At times this was a lot of pressure, but it also made the victories that much sweeter.  Now that I am packing up my room and saying my goodbyes, I have realized that I'm not quite ready to relinquish my classroom.  In an effort to make my transition out more smooth, I am writing letters on my blog to new English teachers.  One part of me thinks that these are for the person who replaces me, yet in reality, she probably won't be reading my blog.  It is more of a reflective exercise, and one that I hope some new teacher somewhere will find value in.

So please stay tuned for Letters to New English Teachers coming soon.  

Reflection-- Anne Frank Research

One of my favorite things about teaching is the ability to reflect on my lessons.  Figuring out what went wrong and implementing changes to enhance lessons brings such satisfaction.  Sometimes, those changes aren't going to be used until the following year, but still, there is growth in the process.  I also think that blogging is a fantastic way to reflect.  It gives you the opportunity to get comments from others who may have struggled with the same things.  Plus, there's the organizational factor.  I often refer back to posts I have written in the past to help me remember successful lessons.

So with all that being said, today's post is another one of reflection.  I recently did a pre-reading assignment with my eighth graders (read more about it in this previous post).  Last year, the students wrote and delivered speeches.  This year, I switched it up slightly and had the students write and present a newspaper article.  Each student researched a topic and wrote their paper, but we didn't have a lot of time.  Don't you hate the time factor?!  This is where I ran into trouble.  I really should have had each student do a visual to go along with their article.  Instead, I had the students present their article by reading it--with NO visual.  My ultimate goal was for students to learn from their peers' presentations.  I had the audience taking notes, but since there was no visual, it was very difficult for them to follow along with the presentation.  Students kept interrupting the presenter asking them to repeat things, "What was that date?  How do you spell that name?  What year again?"  By the end of two days of presentations, I wasn't sure the students in the audience got anything out of it.  Next year if I do this assignment, I will definitely require a visual that contains both pictures (to bring life to the topic) and bullet points (to help the audience follow along).  That way, the audience can focus on listening, but still learn from the research their peers did!   Lesson learned- sometimes forgoing parts of assignments "for the sake of time" actually ends up being more costly in the end.