First marking period is over and our routines are established. Many teachers would say that the next three months are the most important months of the year. We have worked hard so that every minute is valuable this marking period. I am very happy with where we are as a team. I am happy with the positive attitudes about challenge and accepting mistakes. I am excited to see where this takes us.
Wednesday we started talking about this picture of an orange that shows Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning. If we want to push the brain to continue to grow it is important for us to focus on the verbs that will let it grow. I began meeting with reading groups and brainstorming with each group about the kinds of activities and questions we could ask that are further up the orange. We have had class meetings to talk about the first two sections of this diagram which are remember and understand. We will now take some more time to focus on the last four that really promote brain growth.
Teaching is a constant state of reflection about what we do well and what needs to improve and I am fired up and ready to continue to evolve and improve. Some of our over-arching focuses for the marking period are going to be expanding our vocabulary, looking for relationships in math, supporting our writing with facts and evidence, and learning to take each thing that we do to a new level.
We had a fun experience in writing yesterday where the students wrote instructions for me to put on my jacket. As I tried to follow their directions, I was silly and did things very literal. We laughed and talked about the ways that directions can be more or less clear. I want to push them to think about getting in touch with their audience as they write. Out next two writing projects are going to be working on an opinion position and writing instructions to play a game. Both of these pieces of writing will greatly benefit if students can visualize their audience as they write.
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