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2020 Adventures Update!

It has been a LONG time since I have posted anything new and here are the reasons why:

1. What do you do when all your children are grown up and leave the house? Sell your house and take a leap of faith as you embark on your own new adventure! My husband and I decided to do just that. We sold our home in Wisconsin and moved to a small mountain town in Colorado. My husband decided to move from the classroom to administration and so we applied to a school in Colorado where we are surrounded by beautiful mountains and the best nature has. This brings me to number 2 reason!

2. Teach in a multi-age group in a grade level you have not taught before and create an Innovation Lab, bring flexible seating and personalized learning to a school that has not embarked on this ventures before at the elementary level. Wow! What a year of firsts. I was so busy writing grants, creating learning documents and trying out a variety of strategies, curriculums, and classroom management systems that I really lost track of time and never made it to my blog. What did I learn? I learned that you can bring what you have been doing and apply it to a new situation but that this requires you to make adaptations along the way. The students at my new school had never heard of Design Thinking, Project Based Learning, Makerspaces, or any of the items that would be part of that. Luckily we were 1:1 with iPads and it was a matter of starting with the basics. They learned fast and amazed me with their passion and what they made happen. From saving a cat named Baby from a tragic end, creating a morning concession stand to bring nutritious breakfast to all, 3D printing face mask straps for hospitals and other essential workers, to writing a book and having it on Amazon for sale we, did it all! Which brings me to number 3!

3. COVID-19 home learning! Even though I thought I knew a lot about technology and how to infuse it into classroom instruction I was not prepared for the sudden at home learning we were forced to do. The most challenging part of this was keeping my class feeling like we were connected. It was a learning experience for me that has made me a better teacher all around!

What are my goals now for the upcoming year? Since we are so uncertain of what the school year will look like as we progress through these uncertain times of the pandemic I want to make sure that my students are prepared for whatever may come. The plan right now is to start the school year with face to face instruction but we all know that may change. I will hit the year by building a strong community of connected learners and teach them how to use technology to stay that way. That has to be my first priority. Making connections and building relationships while teaching students how to maintain those relationships even if we can’t be at school together. My future posts will be about how to do that, what platforms I will use, and reflections on how that is going.

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End of year reflection

It is now July and I have returned from an awesome family vacation to Alaska!  The picture to the right is my son and I.  It’s my first time on a small plane that lands in the ocean and I have to admit I am nervous (yes, I smile and often laugh when I am scared!) There is nothing like the excitement of doing something for the first time no matter how scary it is.  Personalized learning was no different!  I am ready to take a moment to reflect on last year’s journey down the personalized learning road.  I know my team learned much about ourselves, learning, and students.  I am going to start with the positives:

  1. Student Proficiency Profiles:  I loved them!  I do not think I have ever paid so much attention to the standards and where each student is at as I have this year using the Student Proficiency Profiles.  It was rewarding to see students take a more active interest in the Student Proficiency Profiles as well.  With our 4 scale grading system previously used both students and parents were often under the understanding that a 2 simply meant they had a little bit of catching up to do, not that they were behind grade level.  With the Student Proficiency Profiles families could clearly see what grade level they were working at.  This opened up many conversations between students, parents and teachers.
  2. SeeSaw:  We had students keep digital profiles of their work throughout the year.  I love the many uses SeeSaw provides with communicating with parents.  Not only did it provide evidence of their learning but ongoing conversations with families.  We also used the blogging portion of SeeSaw to connect with other schools.  I was not as happy with this and will go back to using Edublogs this upcoming year because I like the ability for students to have their own blog pages they customize.
  3. Personalized Learning Plans (PLP):  This is definitely a work in progress for me.  PLP’s are plans students can use to practice the standard they are working.  We utilized Google Slides for this.  There is a slide for each standard with links to websites that provide additional practice.  Students can do independent work at any time of day!  We have most of math done but am finding reading to be more challenging for a few reasons.  It is more difficult to find tutorials and practice materials online.
  4. Relationships:  There were both positives and negatives here.  Some of us felt that they struggled more to have a close knit group with the mixing up of students.  Since I was a new teacher to the school I felt like I developed more relationships than I would have.  I enjoyed getting to know more students at different ages and I loved working with my team of teachers!

The negatives are much less than the positives.  That should tell you how I feel about personalized learning!  As a group of teachers, students, and parents I can tell you that sometimes it was exhausting!

  1. There was lots of prep work, reflecting and modifying going on throughout the year.
  2. Communicating with families was more vital than ever and at times it was difficult to help them understand the new system of reporting student growth.
  3. Scheduling was a challenge to make the multi-age groups work.

In conclusion I would definitely say it was all worth it and I am looking forward to the upcoming year.  We are bringing in 4 additional teachers/classes.  Expanding this way is making it easier to group students.  I look forward to seeing how our program will grow this year!

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This year’s goal!

Each year I set a goal for myself.  This year it is to take Personalized Learning to a new level at my school.  I am part of a team that will pilot a multi age, 2nd through 5th grade, group.  We will mix our students up for math and literacy, having our grade level homerooms for writing, science, and social studies.  We will use a different report card that is customized for each student based on the standards rather than what the rest of the district is using, Skyward reporting.  We are working to have common classroom management procedures in place so when our students are mixed up they all have the same expectations.  PBIS supports this and is something our district uses.  Stay tuned for this great adventure!