Making the Web Work for Me

Inspiration came to me today in the form of my sister, Lissa.  While at the PEAK conference today, I attended Lissa’s presentation titled “Making the Web Work for You.”  She helped me remember why I keep this blog.  I want to reflect on my teaching and learning while also connecting with other teachers.  If I’m never posting on my blog, how am I supposed to achieve this?  One thing Lissa said to me after the presentation was “It takes a little extra time now, but the time it will save in the future is worth it.”  So now I am taking that time.

My school has each teacher set a goal to help us grow as professionals.  A colleague and I set the same goal for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that we both had interest in the same topic.  The second reason is we wanted to help keep each other accountable.  Our goal is to incorporate inquiry-based strategies for literacy through centers, daily plans, and weekly plans.  We want our teaching of literacy to be more authentic and natural.  We do not want letter of the week or other phonic programs because we do not feel it is authentic.

My current understanding of authentic inquiry-based literacy learning is that it is student driven.  When students start asking questions about letters and sounds is when it should be introduced and talked about in the class.  It should not be introduced in alphabetical order, but rather based on student interest and connections to other topics being discussed in the class.  One strategy is by looking at the first letter of each of their names.  My understanding is that students will start to notice letters and the sounds words make and naturally want to know and learn how to make these letters.

Our plan to learn more about this goal is to do personal professional development and observe other teachers that we know already have this in place in their classrooms.  Lissa has also inspired me to reach out in the twitter world to find others that can help me reach my goal.  Now that the inspiration has come, I will do my best to continue to reflect as I learn.

Building Relationships

My sister sent me a link to George Couros’ blog.  I have not gotten a chance to look through his blog, but his twitter is amazing to follow.  George shared a TED talk that I felt summed up one of the biggest reasons I became a teacher.  The point… students don’t learn from people they don’t like. Click here to watch it.

 

The Love Of Teaching

So I have now been in Kuwait for about 5 weeks.  I am loving it which is evident in the fact that I signed a contract.  Since I have been here I have worked a lot but I have also found some time to do some fun things like ride a camel!  Even though I am having a lot of fun there are those people I am missing at home.  To lessen the pain I have Skyped with my parents, siblings, friends, and my little first graders.  I think I have skyped with my old class about as much as I have with my mom.  After I finished Skyping with them today Tammy sent me a picture of a letter one of my students wrote.  I am very proud that she had all the parts of a letter I taught her about 🙂

It reads “Dear Miss Moore, can you come back please.  Love Brianna”

I will be honest in saying it brought tears to my eyes!  I knew I found a special place in my heart for all of them last semester but I guess I didn’t realize how hard is was going to be not to finish the journey of first grade with them.  I understand it will be hard to say goodbye to my students at the end of each year.  I guess the only way to make it easier is to find a place I love and stay there forever so I can watch them all grow into adults.  It doesn’t make me miss room 5 any less though.