Welcome to my website.
As you navigate through the pages you will see that "What's Happening in Room 109" is a link to my blog. Writing about teaching is something I am trying to do more of but I'm not very consistent with it yet. The next four links will take you to webpages that I have created to enhance history lessons or in the case of the "AHS DC Trip" link, to provide information about our annual trip with students. I started the "Integrating iPads in My Classroom" pages immediately after getting iPads in 2013. The rest of the links will take you to pages that are primarily pictures of my travels and activities. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me by Twitter or email.
Words of wisdom from Sponge Bob.
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Engage Your Students
I took part in an all day PD with Dr. Feldman. He talked about engaging your students; there should be no "chillers" in your classroom. I find myself looking over my lesson plans checking to see if I am engaging all of my students and when I see things that aren't very engaging I change them. I even find myself changing them during class on the fly.
Dr. Feldman asked us if we could sell tickets to our class. I have had some pretty great classes before where I was so excited at the END of the day. But I never thought of them as something so great that I could sell tickets to it until Thursday morning Block 2. I had my lesson plans ready and thought I would be starting class as usual. Within the fist 5 minutes I changed my lesson because an idea of how to engage them ALL popped into my head. From there I hit the ground running, changing directions and ending the class with a big smile. Where were the "Idea Bandits" when I needed them? Why wasn't this lesson recorded for everybody to see? |
Record Yourself
The third thing I got from Dr. Feldman's presentation was that teachers should record themselves teaching. For those that are reluctant he compared this process to coaches who record practices and games and then watch them for areas that need work.
The teacher's video is not necessarily for others to see. This is something that the teacher watches and critiques themselves. Get over being on camera and do it, otherwise how do you improve your teaching? I will be recording myself teaching part of lesson this week. |
