This year my room will not look like this. It already looks very different (I don’t have a picture of that). Tables have replaced individual desks and there are working nooks, created for students to work together uninterrupted. Each group will have a large whiteboard for collaborating on problems, a la @bowmanimal, and smaller individual whiteboards for working independently.
Group work has always been the norm in my room. I also feel that students used to be better at it. Now students believe group work is dividing up a problem and copying one student’s work. For group work to be successful there needs to be discussion about the problem before any work is done. I want to spend a lot of time teaching how to do group work at the beginning of the year. There needs to be a lot of processing while students are working. I think Dan Meyer’s beginning of the year activity stacking styrafoam cups is a great way to start teaching group work. The marshmallow challenge is another idea for teaching group work. While it isn’t directly related to the curriculum, it is a great way to see how students work together.
Technology! This is the first year that we have laptop carts to share for each grade, as well as projectors, wireless, and document cameras in each room.
1) Class Dojo is at the top of my list. This was a source of conversation at BLC12. The way that you can engage students in a discussion about behavior and what they want the classroom norms to be is very exciting. And who wouldn’t love the little monsters?
2) Edmodo is also going to be implemented this year in my classroom. I was using another website, but I want students to have the opportunity to interact with the site, ask questions, and answer each others questions. I also hope to start posting pencasts to begin flipping my classroom. I say begin, because I am not ready to commit. We’ll see how it goes.
Wow! I didn’t know I had so much to say.
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