I'm fortunate to be in a position that provides me with great leaders for my future work and focus.David Culberhouse is an educational futurist that I look to to help me for that focus. The state of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is also doing some great work in this regard, and of course, many other members of my wonderful real time and online PLN are filling me with ideas, questions, and challenges regularly to right my teaching/learning ship.
I like to have a good map for future endeavor. When I'm doing the routine work, I like to be thinking about how that works connects to the bigger picture and the questions I'm pursuing as a teacher. So at the end of a morning of big think, I'm once again mapping the direction where I'm headed.
Solidifying and Enriching the Math Program
This summer I'll collect all of my math program pieces and put them together on my Magnificent Math Website to guide my future teaching and learning in math. I'll also read Routines for Reasoning as one way to deepen my ability to foster deeper math talk, think, and share. Further I'll assess the work to date to determine with a focus on what's really been enriching and wonderful teaching, and what can be retired. I've also ordered Jo Boaler's new book, Limitless Mind, which I'll read at the start of the school year next year.
Solidifying and Developing the Science Program
Our team has taught a lot of science this year. I want to make time to bring all those pieces together in one website that will guide the teaching ahead. I also want to embed the computational thinking science unit for fifth grade into our STEAM plant packets unit. Further I'll assess the work we've done to date to see how we might develop the program more in the year to come. While I'm tempted to take a science course, I think that we have a lot of information to work with now and it's a matter of organizing that information into engaging, meaningful units of study.
Building a Nurturing, Respectful, Confident, Engaged, and Happy Learning Community
Again we have lots and lots of resources for this, and I want to focus on synthesizing those resources and integrating them into the year in meaningful ways.
These efforts will take time and result in three rich go-to websites that capsulate the best we have to offer for fifth grade at this time. Then next year I can think about how we'll develop this further to account for the ever shifting and changing landscape of education and the world we live in.
