Inspired by the Teachingchannel.org, I am joining other teachers in Reflection Fest to review one of my most inspiring teaching moments of 2013. As I look back through my blog, I did a Wordle to determine the strong words from my blog this year. Here is my word cloud created with Tagxedo.com:
Writing, sharing, giving thanks, posting, slicing, reading, tweeting and linking are related to the little words that jump out at me. I believe writing is the boldest as I have continued to work at making writing a more regular part of my life. With that in mind, I think one of this year's most inspiring posts came on a cold January day, when I worked with one of my first grade students at the time, to warm up her "writing" brain. Here is a link to the post, "On a Cold, Cold Day".
As a Literacy Coach this year, I have returned to telling this story many times. I know that a lot of students struggle with what to write about the minute they hear it's time. I also know that teachers sometimes struggle with how to help the students who experience this problem. Taking the time to sit and chat a little about things students could write about often works away the anxiety and the writer's block subsides for a spell. I can say with great honesty that sometimes writing brains just need warming and then they're on to work!
While we get ready to ring in 2014, I hope you'll be inspired to remind your students of things they could write about just by having a little conversation with your writers and jotting their ideas in an Alphabox chartlet inside of their writer's notebook!
What's one of your most inspiring moments of 2013?
My biggest moment for sure was when one of my students, not the one I would have thought, floored me with a moment of understanding I really didn’t expect. I was concluding a lesson plan on graphing quadratic equations and attempting an anticipatory segway by introducing polynomials with a third degree polynomial and asked how might one solve such a problem. From the back of the class in a hesitating tone “I would graph it”. I said OK, let’s graph it. Now what are the solutions. I was surprised again when the same person told me “the solutions are the zero’s are (x= -3, -1, and 1). The student clearly understood what the roots of a polynomial were and how to find them quickly. My take away was keep teaching and don’t give up on anyone. Incorporate the use of the prevailing technology (calculator in this case) every day. Allow for and provide an opportunity for the different ways that students use to communicate what they know and understand.
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