New Year's Resolution- Professional Goals

I am linking up with Amy of The Resourceful Room 

for day 4 of the New Year's Resolution Linky at Blog Hoppin'! 

At the begin of this year, my principal asked us to think of a word that would inspire us for the year. One that we could use to remind us of what our goal for our students would be as we plan for them, create our classroom environments and develop relationships with each of them. 

Mine was simple. 

EMPOWER

I want my students to feel that in everything they do in life, especially in learning. Learning can be as deep or as superficial as we allow it to be and I wanted my students to SEEK LEARNING independent of me, the classroom and our school. I want to plant the seed of curiosity just enough that they, on their own, want to learn more about what they have learned and develop an environment of more questions than answers. 

One of the things that I have incorporated is using technology has often as possible. My students have full access of all the computers in my room (during anytime of the day that is not direct instruction). I model using Google to find answers to questions about just about anything and how to turn those answers into more questions. I encourage them to share any new information with the class during our lessons and love the discussions that they have from their independently found information.

My kids blog. Oh yes, and they love it! We use kidblog.org and the students blog about both given prompts and anything that might interest them. I was surprised by how much they wanted to do this (after all it is writing...lol) and some of the posts are just to funny to read. I am also really happy that we started this because I have two students that will be leaving me in the spring and this will be a great way to keep in touch with their classmates!! My goal with this is to make sure to comment more often and encourage it as part of their homework. We will be setting some new expectations now that we have played with it for a little while and this will be done as a class next week so that there is investment and ownership of what we are doing with the blogs (mostly revisit rules about grammar and punctuation, expectations for assignments vs. free writes and commenting etiquette.)   

Another focus will be the use of  The Genius Hour as a way to tap into what interests my students. I ran across this idea one day last semester as I was searching for ways to challenge and enrich my students classroom experience. This instantly peeked my interest and when I saw my super sweet friend Jennifer of Runde's Room (I just adore her!!) was doing it with her class, I became super...SUPER excited! My kiddos have already been introduced to this concept and are just dying to get started. I think that this is going to be amazing and a great way to balance out testing stress and anxiety for the kiddos (and for me too)! I will definitely be posting about this and am considering creating a blogging series about it too...YES!

Well, I am off to research laptops! My beloved laptop has seen her last days and unfortunately after replacing the screen, there just wasn't any saving her. Wish me luck! Big purchases make me so nervous!

Make sure to stop by Blog Hoppin' and share some love!