Lists are the one easiest things for a new writer to use to organize her thoughts, so forgive me while I list away until I get my writing mojo back.
At the end of the school year, I start compiling data from my students' work--what does their writing show that I need to teach better next year? What did they master? How did I help them achieve mastery?
And then I start asking them questions--What did I do well this year as a teacher? What improvements do I need to make? What did they like in the curriculum? What did they hate? How do they feel they have grown? How could I have supported their growth better?
Here is what I've gleaned:
1. Most students love musical partners. What this tells me: I need to incorporate more movement and more music into my classroom this year. I need to research games that contain movement and/or music, and I need to craft a class playlist. I've been playing music as my students come into my online learning classroom, and I like the vibe that this creates.
2. They love it when I have a discussion question for them at the beginning of the class, and I allow them to discuss in groups before we have a large group discussion. They wanted more discussion times. They like working/discussing in groups. (note to Jami: remember how you organized your tables and constructed group discussions this year--I think that is what they are talking about.)
3. They want more games (of course). I HATE GAMES and any type of competition!!, so I need to get over myself and find ways to incorporate more competition into the classroom.
4. The students overwhelmingly loved the writing templates. However they also overwhelmingly wanted more chances to be creative. I need to add more space for creativity in my classroom next year. Note to self: Jami, you used to do this with Choose Your Adventure time. You could project images for students to choose to write about and then at the end of Choose Your Adventure time, you could allow them to share and award Jolly Ranchers.
5. Shockingly (sarcasm!), they hate Membean (vocabulary practice). I think it is good for them, so I need to find ways to make it fun--class competitions, awarding Jolly Ranchers bi-weekly for successes, etc.
6. They like Daily Slides and the organization of the class. I really want to amp up my Daily Slides next year. Online learning has challenged me to think of different ways to convey assignments and organize my slides. I want to work on that more over the summer. Note to anyone who might actually be reading this who is a teacher: Follow @heyashleyg on Instagram and TikTok. She has great tutorials on how to spice up your Google presence as a teacher with different fonts, layouts, and backgrounds.
7. The last project in both honors and CP worked really well. Keep those, future Jami. As a reminder, in CP, you found a CommonLit research project, and in Honors, they did creative projects to wrap up the year. Look at your online learning slides.
8. CommonLit worked really well in general. Incorporate this into weekly learning. Maybe during Choose Your Own Adventure time? If you are a teacher, check out CommonLit it is FREE and very cool.
9. The students want to read with me more. They want me to read aloud and ask questions as we read. This delights me hard core because this is my absolute FAVORITE THING TO DO IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.
10. Dear Future Jami, don't forget to enjoy the presence of your students in real life classroom every single day. Even though they smell HORRENDOUS at times, leave nasty tissues behind, and cannot glue things to save their lives, they are so special. Enjoy the fire out of them. It's worth it. Your joy will begat their learning. I promise.
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