I have grown a lot this year, and it's not because it was forced on me (thank goodness!) but because I had the opportunity to! I had the most amazing group of students this year on top of small class sizes. Not having the stress of dealing with poorly behaved students combined with less grading to do opened the opportunity to assess and improve what I am doing in the classroom. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity, and proud that I really took advantage of it!
I have turned my classroom into much more technologically centered. This is mostly due to the fact that all my students were provided iPads by the school this year. This had both a positive and negative effect on my classroom environment. Yes, kids were playing games on their iPads when they should have been learning (nothing a little tap on the desk and a threat to take it away didn't fix), but, and this is especially true with my freshmen, they loved ANY excuse to use their iPad, even if it was - gasp - classwork!
One big thing that I changed, and that needed to be changed, was my Bell Ringers. For years, our school had SMART Boards, and I had adapted all of my lessons to this interactive tool. Then last summer, they took it all away and gave us a large flat screen TV with AppleTV. No more interactive activities. I just could not come up with a way to adjust my lesson plans to this change that I felt was satisfactory, and so for the longest time, I changed nothing, and I had opening activities with absolutely zero accountability. Then in April, I woke up one day and decided that making any change, even if I don't think it will be completely satisfactory, is better than keeping things the same. So, I changed the entire way my lesson plans are presented to my students - from a Notebook file to an MSWord document.
I was skeptical on the effectiveness of the change, going from something seemingly technologically advanced to something simpler, but sometimes simple is good. And this experiment proves that. The same information appears on the document as it did on the notebook file, but the Word document allows much more flexibility in the presentation. Everything is on one page, where previously I had separated them, so students can see the objective statement, the agenda for the day, and if they have homework that night as soon as they walk in the door. And last, but not least, a word document allows for a much greater flexibility in the Bell Ringer. I can post a link (and a QR code for easier access) to a Google Form Survey, or a code to a Socrative or Kahoot Quiz. Kids can log in and complete the activity while I hand back papers and take attendance, and then we can jump right in and start class.
I am really happy with the changes I have made this year and will continue to use next school year. I also want to continue this growth and hope that I continue including new and fun activities in my classroom!
