Summer- Break and Learn

LAST BLOG OF THE YEAR...

I committed to doing this for a year.  That was something I wanted to do for my personal PD.

Did you set a personal PD goal for the year?  All of you did in your PGP.  Did you accomplish them?   Did you work on them at all?  What will you do with it next year?

Things To Do This Summer:

1.  TAKE A BREAK AND REJUVENATE.

2.  Make Professional Growth.  Here are some ideas.

a.  Read a book- Not sure what one to read?  Just search online.  Search what books to read in the content area of Fill In The Blank...

b.  Seek out PD- Make it a family trip...sneak in some PD for a few hours while there.

c.  Talk to other educators- A teacher in our building organizes summer meetings with other teachers in the county in the same content area to talk.  Great practice.

d.  Reexamine your curriculum map- Get your map out, make adjustments to it.

Have a great summer.  Enjoy time with your families and loved ones.  

Literacy Across the Curriculum-TECHY

Here is an article from Educational Leadership which is a monthly publication by ASCD.  You can find the online magazine by visiting ascd.org and clicking on publications, you will find Education Leadership (EL) there.

The article you will be looking about is revisiting the idea of how can literacy (reading/writing) being more integrated through all the parts of our curriculum.  As I was reading it, the digital notebook part especially struck me.  I thought it would be a good article for us all to look at.

As a year comes to an end, hopefully, you are thinking of some goals and new ideas for next year.  Especially knowing students will have their own computers to use next year.  This article may help you think about some of those new ideas.

Questions To Consider:
1.  The opening paragraph talks about a resource called Studysync.  As I looked at it, parts of it are free on a trial basis.  Specifically, the online library is free.  Take a look at it.  How could you use some of these resources?
2.  Digital Notebooks seem like a very neat idea.  I know not everyone would be comfortable with them, but I know a few of you could do some cool things with them.  I think that note taking could really change with this method also.
3.  Publishing some of the digital notebooks would be an extensive learning experience for our students.  I know some teachers would really like to explore that.  How could you do that?

Advice for Graduates-Jon Gordon

As we get closer to graduation, I saw this post from Jon Gordon.

Jon Gordon has quite the story.  I know we have read about him before in my blog.  You are more than welcome to search the internet and find out more about his story.

I would encourage you to have a quick read of this post.  It has some really good advice.  Feel free to share some of it with your classes.  There might possibly be some information in it that could be useful to you also.

Questions To Consider:

1.  "Where you are, is not where you are going to be."  This is good for someone of any age to consider.  Maybe it's not your choice of career field or college but maybe it is a relational position, family position or something along those lines.

2.  "You are here for a reason. You have a purpose and you are meant to live and share it."  Not so much a question, but a thought.  It is neat to think about our graduates, what is their purpose?  How will they share it?

3.  " If you believe your best days are ahead of you, they are. The best is yet to come"  How can this be put into practice?  Do we as adults live like this?