Reed's Reflections

I would like to ask and discuss the following questions with our leadership team and ultimately all faculty. Does our vision statement, mission statement, and curriculum support and promote these skills in ways to help our students become life-long learners that are valuable members of society? How are we teaching and encouraging students to think beyond the test?  How can we best train and equip our teachers to build and use these skills as part of the daily fabric of their classrooms? I can honestly say that I don’t know the practical answers to these questions. I know what it may partially look like in my classroom, but I would love to brainstorm with our administrators as to the best way to make these skills the expectations of all teachers and students--make them a part of our culture.  Wagner (2016) and Galinsky (2013) promote essential life skills that are similar. They both agree that students need to be able to effectively communicate, be able to think cr...

Confession: Spelling is NOT my favorite. And now thanks to modern technology, my students are even worse at spelling than I was growing up. We have weekly spelling tests and now that we are almost halfway through the year, students are writing their words in cursive for the test. This has been a major speed bump for some of my students. They are terrified of cursive. Some of them press down so hard that their hand hurts after one word. I've now started using Flipgrid to record their spelling words so that students can take their tests at their own pace. This way they can hear a word repeated as many times as they need, and students can also use as much time as they need to work on their cursive hand writing. My kids love this because now they are sitting wherever they want in my room, just taking care of business. Game changer!!!!