Whistle Talk

The  basketball unit plan  I developed took me back to college!  Not a bad place to be, but it definitely made me itch with anxiety because I had't put together a unit plan in some time. However, all was fine because I just had to remember that I am a veteran teacher (YIKES) now and it was time to put on my big girl pants. I really enjoyed putting together this unit.  I was able to think of activities for my students that I wouldn't have normally put into the unit.  It's real easy to go with what you know, but I liked the challenge and the freedom to create whatever I wanted.  The activities I created helped strengthen the unit and it will help strengthen my teaching. My hope is to allow my students the opportunity to work at their own pace to develop their skills and hopefully make game play more fun and engaging.  The first thing my students ask at the beginning of a new unit is "When are we going to play games?"  If the road to game play is a b...

I have to admit that I was getting pretty bored with teaching.  I felt like I had hit a plateau and was just going through the motions.  I am pushing on my 15th year teaching.  The excitement of being a new teacher has worn off and it seemed like I was staring down the barrel of 15 more years of boredom.  I definitely needed a boost and a change...enter St. Francis tech courses.  As much as I didn't want to start taking classes, I knew that I needed to.  Not just for the lane change but also for a teaching change.  I had to start making my classes fun and engaging again.  I have enjoyed all the courses so far in this program, however, I felt like I learned the most and got the most out of Engaging e-Learning. Using technology comes easy to me.  My dad is a huge tech guy and I have been on a computer since I was 4 when the old school Atari's were out.  My dad coded a vocabulary game for me to learn my letters and when I would press a ...

Artifact #1 One of the more exciting assignments that we were asked to do in EEND681 was a professional development plan from the I.T. perspective.  The assignment entailed coming up with a way to train a staff of teachers to use the website, Actively Learn.  I really enjoyed this assignment because we were able to collaborate with others in our class to put this plan together.  I was fortunate enough to have some amazing teachers in my group and we worked very well together.  We were able to set aside a time to meet up in a Google Hangout in order to tweak our plan and to make sure we were all on track to finish our protions of the assignment. The Google Hangout was a godsend because we didn't have to meet awkwardly at a Starbucks or a random school.  One of group members was even able to log in though her phone and listen in to the conversation until she was at her computer.  We were truly able to collaborate and it was a bonus that we were in comfort o...

This course was challenging.  There...I said it out loud.  I have so many mixed feelings about this course.  I almost felt I was back in undergrad when I didn't understand anything I was doing.  This course pushed us beyond our comfort zone into the world of IT.  When we, as teachers, are constantly bombarded with new initiatives, programs, software, hardware.  As soon as something new is presented, we have about a month to figure if we can implement it before it's on to the next new thing.  I swear, they should have infomercials to help us understand what is the limited time offer this month.  As much as we complain about it all, I can only imagine what the IT office sounds like when these come down from admin.  The IT staff has to make sure that all of these new programs and equipment run without issue. This means having a plan in place so that everyone is on the same page and understands the expectations. My Tech Plan is a small sample ...

The hiring process assignment was our first assignment for EEND680.  It wouldn't be an administrative course without an assignment on the hiring process.   We were paired up with another student and created questions for that student to answer.  We then, had to answer their questions in return. As I stated in my previous blog post, I am not a fan of anything administrative but I reluctantly tried to figure out what questions I was going to ask my partner.  I was paired up with Traci and she is brilliant.  I was a little nervous to send her my questions because I had no idea what to ask.  I started looking through the course resources and used Google...oh Google, how you have become my best friend and yet my worst enemy.  There is SO MUCH STUFF ON GOOGLE.  Just weeding through the first page of hits was enough for me to try to figure it out on my own. For example, my 5th interview question is about the 4Cs of education and if there should be a...

About 7 years ago, I started taking classes to get my administrative licence and 2 weeks into the courses, I realized admin was just not for me.  I love being in front of a class, being silly with my students and making connections with them.  Then, when I took EEND 680, I was dreading it a little. It wasn't about taking a class, I love taking classes and learning, I was dreading it because I knew there were going to be activities where I was going to have to leave the comfort of my gym and explore the "other side".  Enter our "Learning Walk" assignment.  For this assignment, we had to create a form that we would use to go into another classroom and observe what we saw and offer feedback to the teacher.  I can't tell you how scared I was!  The first observation was one of my friends that I am on a team with.  Her name is Michele and she is one of the Spanish teachers at my school.  She was so nice and understanding...Thanks Michele!  At first...

As a PE teacher, I often receive quotes from multiple genres...funny, rude, crazy, you  name it, I've probably heard it.  However, today we started our unit on Ultimate Frisbee.  I have never taught it before and my students have never played it before.  Talk about a learning curve for both of us!  I had my students watch a video last night about the game which helped because they at least knew what to expect when they got to class today.  We started with throwing and catching and then worked into small sided games.  The kids seemed to enjoy what was going on.  I would walk to their groups to give feedback, they would ask questions...we had some good conversations.  As we were walking to go inside, one girl who isn't too athletic but she liked to be outside and she likes to play runs up to me and says "Ms. Wood...I knew this was going to be fun...but the fun-ness totally exceeded my expectations!"  I can't tell you how that one sentence ...