The Semester's End, a quick reflection

So the first semester has come to an end.  It was definitely a interesting and sometimes chaotic with all life has thrown at me outside the classroom (in a really great way of course, but twins are no joke, we play straight up man to man defense on them instead of zone).  Added to that, we switched up the pacing guides and maps to a more thematic approach, and am teaching 7th grade along with my usual 8th grade.  So it was hectic to say the least, scrambling during my morning planning to finish a lesson or completely throw together something, especially for 7th grade since I have it at the end of the day.  All in all there have been some really good things and definitely a lot of room for growth which I'll take into next semester.

First the good:
Technology in the classroom - We've had a bunch of really good things happen as far as this goes. We were fortunate to where we've become the guinea pigs for being a potential 1:1 classroom.  I'd say we've had laptop access roughly 75% percent of the semester, although the computers stay in my room rather than go home with the kids.  We've been able to successfully use both gaggle and google drive for assignments.  Google Drive has been great as we've done collaborative work in partners, small groups and even as an entire class.  It definitely has put a nice spin on some of the projects we've done and added some engagement to the boring old KWL chart, where now everyone has to be involved and participate.

After a rocky start with our first unit, the thematic units have gone pretty well.  The students haven't really struggled too much with the idea that we're bouncing around time periods.  It's been a lot easier to come up with our common assessments too which we have to base off of the NCES.  Rather than have several standards that we may touch on in a week, we can focus on just 1 or 2 and their clarifying objectives.  There is definitely ways to improve and go deeper into some topics next year, but I've been pleased with how they've gone this year so far.

Now the opportunities for growth, to use my administrative cliches:
7th grade in general hasn't gone well.  Mostly because of what I mentioned earlier where I'm not really able to plan out or be as effective as I'd like to be.  I've found some really good ideas, lessons, and projects, but I've thrown some of these in without the kind of proper scaffolding that they need at this level.  I think the content is interesting and there are lots of things that I can do for world history, I just need to take some of these lumps to really improve my final product for next year.  Luckily the last 3 units will help, as we're going over Economic & Social Change, Governments & Leadership, and lastly War & Conflict.  The first and last units are the same as my coinciding 8th grade units, obviously focusing on world views rather than national and state ones. Hopefully some of the tweaks I plan to make along with the content will help my student engagement and overall learning in my classroom.

I've used the technology as a crutch sometimes, which I need to stop and get back to teaching rather than just simply assign a project or assignment and completely sit back and facilitate.  There has to be a balance of this, but at the middle school level, they still need me teaching, explaining, guiding them along the stories of history rather than just showing them where to go online and assume that they can all come up with adequate outcomes from the readings or projects I assign or create.

So some fixes for the next 90 days!

1. I'm going to use my whiteboard more as a place where I and my students to put down ideas to go along with the smart board we have.  For much of the year it's just been the place I've kept my learning targets/I Can statements and really has become a wasted space.  This way there is more that I can do, more movement for me and the students, etc.
2. Students will have to write down the learning targets/I Can statements each day for the week, and I'll have more quick formative assessments to make sure that they students actually are understanding what they are supposed to be learning.  I think on Fridays I'll even have a little quiz (not a fan or quizzes but hopefully it'll be easy grades for class if I do this correctly) or something to help review them.  It'll help them learn and I can make sure that I'm teaching the standards like I'm supposed to be but doing it in the fashion that I want.  
3. We did timelines at the beginning of the year and as I've mentioned it was a bit of a disaster.  So I took them all down and I think that I'll put up just white paper.  Not sure what I want to do with it yet, maybe a place for formative assessments, students to show work, whatever.  I got the idea from Dave Burgess and his outstanding Teach Like a Pirate book.  I'm sure I can turn it into something fun.
4. I need to really work on my transition times, there are times I get stagnant or I take a minute or two too long to do something and I lose the class for that moment and have to bring them back.  And when you only have 40 minutes or so, each minute is even more precious.  Definitely going to work on my hooks and everything else to get them working and moving along as smoothly as middle schoolers will allow.
5. Lastly, I have this 15 minute block with my homeroom that we're supposed to use for reading and literacy, but I think I'm going to try to use that time for genius hour.  I've been really intrigued by what I've read on twitter about it, and I think it's the right group of kids that we could read or do current events a couple days a week and then genius hour the rest of the time.  We'll see how it goes, I definitely will be writing about that a bunch I'm sure.

Well that's what I got, hope to make 2nd semester better than the first.  Thanks for reading, would love to hear any feedback or ideas to spice things up if you have them.