Growth as a Blogger and a Teacher

The most notable way that I have grown as being public as a teacher this quarter has been via Pinterest and through blogging back and forth with my cooperating teacher.

At the beginning of Winter Quarter, I started a blog for my daily reflections. I did this at my field supervisors suggestion, because I am experiencing so much right now, and it will be helpful to reflect back and see how much I've learned over time. It is also a space for me to think back and reflect on any obstacles or problems I ran into during the day. I decided to give my cooperating teacher accessibility to the blog as well, and now I can gain her insight and feedback on the days as well. I've found this to be useful in my current placement as my cooperating teacher and I don't often have time to chat during the day (we are so ridiculously busy!) but having my thoughts and questions up on the blog gives her a chance to see them and to comment back on them when she has the time. This is an example of me actively seeking and giving feedback on my professional thinking and it is directly applied to my growth as a kindergarten teacher in my main teaching placement. 

Pinterest and the teachers I have followed has helped me to delve into professional conversations happening in the community of teaching. I feel like my unique placement of kindergarten is really supported by a site like pinterest, where you can see exactly how other teachers modeled their thinking and exactly how they gave visual support to their students. I have been talking to my CT about implementing a sort of "kindness campaign" in our classroom (we both agree that it is definitely needed!) and I've been using Pinterest to get ideas of how to embark on something like that in our class. I've been looking into books like "How Full is Your Bucket" and all the assorted workshops and projects that you can have students do along with reading the book. I've found that my students retain the knowledge best when they can visually see and kinesthetically act out what they are going to do. Pinterest has provided me a plethora of ways to do this!

Transition Songs!

Exciting news! Today I found a blog from a teacher who is just as excited about using music for transitions as I am! For those of you who have no idea what I'm so excited about, let me digress. One of my teacher idols, who has many fabulous ideas, had one particularly fabulous idea to use music as a signal to students to transition to another activity or subject. She chose a few songs (lots of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I was a fan.) and when students heard the song, they knew it was either time to put things away and move to the carpet, to clean up for lunch, to get ready for the day, etc.

One of my least favorite things in my main placement is our transitions during the day. We usually do a count down and by the time we get to 1, students should be seated at the carpet, or wherever our next lesson will take place. It actually takes a lot of effort that I, as a student teacher, could use that time getting set up for my next big lesson. Every second counts! So I've been doing a lot of reflecting on how I could make this better and improve on what method we already have for transitions throughout the school day.

So I am ridiculously excited that I found this blog from a teacher who uses music in her class transitions- oh, and did I mention she uses her SMART BOARD to do all this?

I am just downright impressed. This is going on my list of things to do when I get my own classroom. With the exception of the song list. Maybe I could have students help me choose the songs and we could have a collective class list of music. I'll admit though, I will draw the line at any Miley Cyrus songs because 1) Copyright infringement, and 2) those songs are way too catchy and they would get stuck in my head immediately. This idea is a work in progress!