July 1st is the deadline to share your response to the question “What Will You Do Differently Next School Year?”
Forty-one educators have already left their answers at my blog post “What Will You Do Differently Next School Year?”
I’ll be combining them all into a post here, and including some in an article I’m writing for Teacher Magazine.
So, please, as briefly as you can, share in the comments section of that original post one or two things you want to do differently next school year — along with sharing what is prompting you to want to make that change and why.
Larry
I am coming to realize that I need to strengthen my reading curriculum and shift towards more online reading skills with my students. This comes to light as I am part of the Massachusetts New Literacies Institute and the research shared here around young people and online reading has been helpful for me as I think through this issue of how to help my students not just navigate, but comprehend and use online reading skills to gather information and then create something from what they have learned. I think I have often just assumed they know what they are doing (even though I sort of knew that was not true– just watch a kid search for information and you will see the scattershot approach). So, for next year, I will start to move towards integration of online reading skills with my sixth graders. And I already have a curriculum plan forming ….
Kevin Hodgson
My goals for this next year is to look at differentiated instruction in more detail to better meet the needs of my students. I also plan on coming up with new reading strategies to get some of these kids back to reading books.
This coming year, I plan on trying some new things. I am a gifted intervention specialist, and in my classroom we ask a lot of questions. So this coming year, I am planning on making a question wall. This where my students can post a question and either they or another student can do some research to answer it.
Next year, I will require my students to learn how to show their work on their problems, and will not give them the credit if I do not see the work. They will also need to demonstrate more than one way to solve a problem. On each problem, they will show me how to solve it at least two ways. This will enable me to see their thinking, and what topics they need to focus on.
Another topic I am working on is teaching to the TEKS, and not to the standard state test. The pressure is immense in public schools for students to pass the state test, so the school may get money from the government. I understand the importance of this, but I think it has potential to limit teachers in what they are asked to do, and this in term limits our students from really learning the topics they need to.
My goal is to teach them the math, so they will not need to worry about the test, but instead learn the math. When we learn something, we can do it again, and add to it, like riding a bike, or tying shoes. Math is something a lot of students struggle with, and I think part of this comes from being spoonfed the topic so they can memorize it, and put it back on the test, which is not the way it is supposed to be.