I spent the bulk of the second week on a trip to see some of my children and grandchildren and having fun with them. It always seems like there are too many months between visits, but until I retire I am limited by the school holiday schedule for long trips.
This week I got to meet my new principal and chat for half an hour with him, I am looking forward to the new year and seeing how his plan for our staff and students unfolds, but that is always a bit stressful to deal with a new boss.
I have also done a bit of school work, uploaded some more items to Teachers Pay Teachers, and a book I requested from Amazon arrived and I have started reading it. It is called Total Participation Techniques and is by a husband and wife team. They give a whole list of quick techniques to gauge how the students are understanding what they are learning, and at the same time most of them require ALL students to participate in the class as active learners.
As a teacher I recognize a lot of these already, some by different names, but I am already planning a goal of inserting at least one of these into every lesson for next year, if I don't already have something like this in the lesson. And I like the suggestion that you need to write the technique into the lesson plan, or you will probably forget to do it. Highlight or write them in red too to make them stand out. Some of the techniques that are recognizable to me are 'Thumbs up-Thumbs down", "Quick-Writes", "Think-Pair-Share" etc, but another tip in the book is to make a folder or envelope of prepared items such as a whiteboard with dry erase marker, cards that have answers typed on like (Still Thinking/ Ready to Share) that you can use for specific lessons. I am thinking I would like to do this for next year, to have a set of envelopes that are large enough to put my whiteboards in and get the other items printed off and laminated added also. I will need 32 that is the only thing that is going to take some money... unless I can put in a request with my secretary at school to add 32 super large manilla envelopes to the budget for this summer. Our district still hasn't released the new budget to our middle school for spending this summer yet!
