Reflections
2020-21 This year I transitioned out of the technology teacher role and into a homeroom teacher position in first grade. My goal this year has been on applying my past knowledge and learning all I can about teaching first grade effectively. With this in mind I have participated in several professional development opportunities to support my transition: Multisensory Math Workshop and the CDE Literacy Training. My key areas for focus this year have been creating differentiated lessons for all of my students: compacting curriculum and developing enrichment and extensions for advanced students; creating reteaching lessons for tier 2 students; incorporating academic talk between students -- even in distance learning. In my first year, I've mostly taught the curriculum as it is in the teacher's guides and as scoped by teammates. But I've also been noting areas that I'd like to add to or modify for next year. I'm excited to create more cross curricular lessons next year and incorporate more project based learning.
My first 6 years at Peak to Peak as the elementary technology teacher were focused on developing a robust technology/STEM curriculum for K - 5. Below you can see the major focus of my own growth (and the growth of the technology program).
2019-20 Continuing to develop our design thinking, coding, and robotics program was the focus of this year. With funding from the Peak to Peak Innovation Fund, I was able to purchase advanced robotics kits for fifth grade. With these materials, I was able to develop a highly engaging and hands on curriculum that incorporated creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. Working in groups of 3 or 4 students designed robots to complete a task. The unit taught not only engineering, coding, and design thinking skills, but more importantly taught and then gradually released students on team work skills.
2018-19 Redesigning the kindergarten technology special to a more age appropriate STEM special with more hands on building and design activities was a major focus this year. In addition to redesigning the kindergarten curriculum, I was able to integrate hands on design thinking activities in 1st - 3rd grades. As part of these challenges, "jobs" or roles were specifically taught so that students would learn to work together to complete a task. These challenges incorporated collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking and were precursors to robotics and coding activities in later grades.
2017-2018: This year I had two main areas of focus. The first was to integrate virtual reality into my classroom and help other teachers in my building use it as well. I organized a ThingLink Bootcamp at our school in November and explored ThingLink and Google Expeditions with students and colleagues this year. A second objective was to offer students new ways to show mastery of content through video creation with WeVideo.