Monday, August 19, 2019

Back to School - Year Fifteen!

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School starts up in a couple of weeks here in Nova Scotia, and I can hardly wait! I appreciate having the summer to relax and reset, and to find time for independent professional development, and I also love heading back to school. I've had another commitment that is keeping me very busy these last couple of weeks before school starts, and I'm feeling the itch to get into my classroom and get set up.

Similarly to last year, I have sent out a letter to each of my incoming grade 8 students, and prepared our Google Classroom and Flipgrid introduction topic. I've also written a letter to parents/guardians this year, inspired by Monte Syrie and Allison Krasnow, which will go home the first day of school. My letter outlines things I want them to know, and also invites them to tell me about their child.

Here's a copy, feel free to modify & use if you wish!

 

It's important to me to maintain positive connections with my students' caregivers, and it's not something that I've always been particularly good at doing. Over the past few years, I've made it a priority to communicate regularly, sending both important information as well as personal notes about students (I use the add-on Email Parents to help organize this) I've received a lot of positive feedback from parents about this practice, and I feel very good about the open lines of communication that this creates.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Picture Book 10 for 10


I had planned to present this as a blog post, but then a Twitter thread seemed more logical. Here are my thoughts on the ten books above :