That's a Wrap

Yesterday was my last day in the classroom for the 2010-11 school year. We finished with kids on Wednesday, I got myself checked out, and then returned yesterday to clean out files before summer. It feels nice to be done, and to have a break from school (plus sleeping in until 7:30 or 8 instead of 5:45 is great!). This is my post-year reflection, and thoughts moving forward.

What went well?
The year as a whole was a success. I certainly felt more comfortable with the resources I was using, and with the pace that I was teaching at. As much as teaching is about data, it is also a social science where feeling and perception are important. On that end, it went well. Particular units/topics/pieces of instruction went over well. Studying the colonies and American Revolution were great, and our end of year CBA where students chose topics to investigate (deforestation, bike laws, video game violence) were all well received. My integration of technology into those areas likely helped those areas along, as we utilized netbooks for research and assessment (PowerPoint, PhotoStory, Publisher, etc).

I also felt like I did was far more effective with novel study. I used a wider variety of novel study books, all of which I'd read. I tailored my questioning to the books (as opposed to generic questioning), and focused on inferential/analysis questions. Kids were having really good discussions with their peers about books, which certainly made me very happy. I also felt like my classroom library lent itself to high quality reading. I bought a ton of books, and pushed them out to the kids. They responded by reading them (happily), and recommending them to their peers. This was a huge part of the 20 Book Challenge too. I'd say over 75% of the kids met the 20 book threshold, which I am happy with.

What could have been better?
At the start of the year I'd really wanted to integrate writing with social studies. In particular, I wanted to use the Units of Study throughout my social studies work. I abandoned that relatively quickly, largely because of the amount of time needed to make a piece of writing happen. Instead of having a few pieces of smaller writing to start with, I jumped into something a bit longer. That became a time vacuum, and I needed to move forward. It is something I want to continue but will investigate ways to better integrate it.

More discussion, particularly around analysis and inferential questioning. I did quite a bit with that this year. I'd still like to do more. I also want to better track my data using excel and pivot tables- more frequent, less invasive, natural harvest of data. I mean exit slip, short reading response types of things. I can do better.

What is ahead?
Lots of summer reading. Currently I am reading Chasing Vermeer, and have started the Golden Compass, and the Graveyard Book. I have about 20 books on my shelf. I also want to read Guiding Readers and Writers, but likely won't crack that open until mid July.