Best Practices?

So when I heard grade two would be the first for presenting their best practices this year I was worried as I have barely had three weeks to have any practices let alone any best practices.   Deana pointed out I could use any teaching best practices experiences but… with the rush of the new year and getting used to a new grade I can’t think of anything right now it seems.   So I am going to add two things to this blog.  The first is what I spoke about for my best practices last year… the idea of professional development and different ways teachers can develop themselves without the traditional forms of PD. The second is simply plan that I have for Grade 2 and I hope it turns out well!

Professional Development

I am always interested to find out about new ideas or best practices in education.  As a result, I have found a few different ways to do this…

Educational Journals come in a variety of specialties and I am sure you can find different ones to appeal to your area of focus or interest.  

Two of the journals I have subscribed to include The Reading Teacher and Teaching Children Mathematics.  These are an extra expense but I find the information interesting and informative.  From these journals, I have found a few good lessons I can use as is or ones I can adjust to make work for me and my classroom.  I like the fact that they provide professional information with articles that have been peer-reviewed and usually have quality research behind them.  

I also find good professional development books and information from the ATA Library.  If you follow this link : http://library.teachers.ab.ca/Presto/home/ATADefault.aspx it will take you to the search page.  You may have to contact the ATA librarian to obtain your login information… (it’s been awhile so I don’t remember what I had to do) but once you have it you can search out materials that interest you and have the library mail it to you (home or school… you give them the address).  The materials will come in a box or padded envelope with a return label and it’s as simple as keeping the packaging and popping on the return label when you are done or it’s time to return them.  I’ve received many good books as well as DVDs that pertain to different areas of teaching.  

New Best Practice

Now!  Since I did already use that as my ‘best practice’ last year I suppose I should present something brand new and this is something that I hope to use this year.  It blends a bit of formative assessment as well as hopefully encouraging students to use metacognitive strategies to reflect on their learning.  I have created a data binder for each of my students and included inside some checklists for concepts they need to know.  At this time it includes some sight word identification checklists, some skip counting checklists, and other simple concepts.  I hope to include more as the year goes on including rubrics for projects etc.

I intend to use these with the students to help them fill in the checklists to see what they know and to (hopefully) watch their knowledge grow throughout the year.  I intend to link this to their goal setting and hopefully use these to help them plan smaller goals throughout the year.  At this time the checklists are simple and I have only used them with a few students on sight words so far. Hopefully, I will be able to have a positive update for this blog as the year goes on!