What I have learned this year

This has been an exciting and rewarding year.  I feel that I have grown as a teacher and a learner.  This morning, I opened up an email from a friend and the first line was a comment about how much I have been on Twitter and about how three years ago she would not have imagined me on Twitter.  This is true.  Three years ago I had small, Nokia, cell phone which I only used for phone calls.  I emailed people from my home computer but my main type of communication was talking on the phone.  Now I have a Samsung (and I can text), iPad, iPod and a SmartBoard.

It has been a year with a huge learning curve starting last April when my Smartboard arrived.  I was so excited to have it that I started to use it immediately.  First I used downloaded lessons from Smart Exchange and showed You Tube clips and DVD's and now I feel confident creating my own lessons.  My students, this year, also felt confident using the Smartboard and several even played with the Smart Notebook, creating dice games, flashcards, maps etc.  It was exciting watching them create on the Smartboard.  The Smartboard has become my right hand and I use it all day long when teaching.  It is a great tool for teaching and engaging students. It really enhances any lesson.  I could go on and on about how wonderful a Smartboard is and this is from someone who never used an overhead.

This was my first full year of teaching since 2000.  Last summer, my teaching partner, Lora, encouraged me to go on other teacher blogs where I learned lots of new ideas.  Then we tried to incorporate all of the new ideas and the Smartboard into our teaching.  Starting with the Daily 5.  Then on her insistence I joined Twitter in February. Without her encouragement I don't know if I would have realized the value of Twitter.  She also encouraged me to go to Ed Camp with her in February where I met Karen who inspired me to introduce more technology to my students.  I saw what grade ones could do with technology and was inspired to give my students the opportunity to use technology more.  During Spring Break, Lora and I set our students up with Kidblogs as well as created our own proffessional blogs.  Then we headed back to school and jumped full force into learning using technology.  It has been a wonderful journey where I have met lots of educators along the way.
This year I learned that:
*the Daily 5 is a good way to introduce students to independent work and choice.  Students don't all have to do the same things at the same time.
*students are more engaged when given a choice to use different materials to show their learning such as Smartboard, iPad, laptops, chartpaper, felts, sentence strips or just plain paper.
* students don't have to sit down to work.  They can work standing, they can work lying down on the carpet, they can work on the floor in the hall and they can work at  a table or desk.
* students know a lot about technology and are not afraid to explore and use technology in their learning.
*it is okay to learn along with the students.  I don't have to know everything.  Grade ones know a lot and are able to teach me.
*I learned about "wonder charts" and saw the power when the students were able to come up with their own wonders and then figure out how to find the answer to their wonders.
*Twitter is a great way to collaborate with teachers and to open up classrooms to share learning.

This was my first year back to full time teaching in 11 years and it was a wonderful year!  I look forward to another exciting year of teaching and learning.