Here in the Midwest, many teachers and students are already heading back to school. That means it鈥檚 time for me to start packing my school/teacher bag. There are two ways to pack that bag鈥攐ne, literally, making sure I have my class list, syllabus, reading materials, other things. The second bag is more figurative鈥攚hat do I need to do, think about, plan for the upcoming semester. Here are some things I always seem to focus on as I prepare for the coming school year.
Classroom Management
Classroom management is an area where I feel all teachers need to constantly adjust, change, and grow with their students. The English Journal article 鈥溾�� provides some advice and insights from interns in education.
Community Building
It鈥檚 important to engage students in thinking about the process of learning and the behavioral and community needs which support a productive classroom environment. Read more about this in the lesson plan “.”
Creating/Maintaining a Classroom Library
BuildYourStack is a new initiative from 起点传媒focused exclusively on helping teachers build their book knowledge and their classroom libraries.聽 What are your book recommendations? Share on social media using聽#BuildYourStack.
Communication with Families
Teachers and schools communicating with families and families communicating with school and teachers adds to the success of the school year. The Language Arts article 鈥溾�� describes three teachers鈥� use of journals in creating and maintaining a two-way dialogue with families and some of the results of this communication.
Technology
“,” a themed issue from Voices from the Middle, brings a rich selection of recommendations for digital tools and strategies for using them.
Find or Become a Mentor
In contrast to a conventional concept of mentoring as a one-to-one relationship, a model of distributed mentoring taps into the combined knowledge and wisdom of a team to focus attention on the quality of instructional practices and the processes involved in problem solving, as described in from English Journal.
Staying Current with Trends in Education
By reading others’ posts and participating in discussions on聽聽or on social media, I feel like I can gain easy access to others’ best ideas.
What will be in your bag as you plan for the upcoming semester?