Gooooaaaals!!

Finally I am sitting down to make goals for this upcoming school year. It seems like this summer has flown by because I feel like I have been busy every single day. I taught summer school for two weeks in June and had an absolute blast with the students. My goal for that from my last blog was to make reading and math more exciting for the students instead of just using textbooks. I feel like I accomplished this goal because each day I tried to come up with a creative and fun math activity for students instead of what we typically do for math (Saxon Math). Students were not dreading coming to summer school and that was one of my main goals. I also started to build relationships with students who are going to be in my fourth grade class this year. It was so cute because one day a future fourth grade boy could not remember my name and wanted to tell his mom. To make sure he remembered my name, he asked me if I could write it down on a sticky note and so he could take it home and tell his mom. :)
 
This blog is all about gooooaaaal (World Cup!) setting for this school year. I could not think of a better blog topic because usually I think of a few goals, but I never sit down and write them out. I feel like if I have them written down this year, I will be more likely to stick to them and really work on meeting each goal. Without further ado, here are my gooooaaaals!

1) Be Positive!! I went to my classroom today and worked all day on getting things set up. I got really excited for the beginning of the year even though this year's fourth grade class is... you know...that class that every teacher isn't looking forward to. I have a lot of students with behavior issues and they are known for being very disrespectful towards one another and teachers. I decided that I don't want to judge these students before they enter my classroom. I want to get to know each one of them and have a positive outlook. I can't wait to start making an impact on these students. There is nothing more fulfilling as a teacher than seeing improvements in students' attitudes, behaviors, and school performance.

So my main goal is to be positive around my students, co-workers, husband, and everyone else. The school district I work at does not have the best reputation around the state because of some things that have happened within the past few years. Usually when I tell people where I work, they ask what the heck is going on with my school. It makes me so sad that people focus on all of the negativity at our school and the positive things that teachers are doing are not being displayed for the public. As a teacher of this district, I know that I am doing what is best for students and focus on how I can improve my teaching. :)

2) Volunteer more for leadership positions!! Usually I am quiet and reserved when it comes to volunteering for taking charge in leadership positions, such as committees or special programs at our school. We have committees that we are supposed to sign up for at the beginning of the year. Since I have only been a teacher for a few years,  I feel like I don't really know what I am doing. This is my third year of teaching at my school, so I know more of what is going on. I want to get involved as much as possible and be in more of a leader position this year for committees.

3) Use technology as much as possible!! We are getting an iPad cart for each floor in our school and I want to make it a priority to incorporate them into my lessons. I'm very thankful that my husband uses his iPads in class on a daily basis because he will be a great resource to go to for apps that will work well for my students. I want to make sure that I am using technology for educational and learning opportunities, however. I'm sure there are many great apps out there for me to use in my classroom for reading, math, and writing. If you have any suggestions, don't be afraid to comment or let me know! I seriously need the help and plan to start researching soon!

I also am in the process of creating a twitter wall for my students to use. I am going to make a classroom twitter page and tweet out some top tweets that students write throughout the day. I plan on teaching students how to use social media correctly. When I get my classroom twitter page, I will blog and tweet out what it is called so you can follow it. It will be a major goal of mine to keep this twitter page updated with tweets every school day so parents and others can see what we are doing in our classroom.