Part of my Professional Learning..

Over the next few weeks, my blog will be changing focus a bit. Part of my Professional Development plan for this year is to read Checking for Understanding by Dr. Douglas Fisher and Dr. Nancy Frey. I thought that since I'm reading the book, why not have some fun and write my thoughts about what I read. My plan is to write a reflection after each chapter of the book. I'm not sure how long this will last... Hoping to really commit to reading over the next few weeks. Instead of watching TV (specifically college basketball... I love college basketball by the way), I want to spend an hour or so reading each night (life long learner.. not sure I like that phrase but anyway... I digress).

So I begin...

Walkthroughs!!!

I've been doing "walk-throughs" for just the purpose of seeing teaching and learning. They've more been for a gauge of school climate and for me to find out how the teachers operate. I've taken some time each week to walk the halls and pop in for a few minutes to each class.

So, now that I've "settled" into the principal position, I am trying to spending more time focusing on learning. I read Deron Durflinger's post on Walkthroughs and created a template on Google Docs to use with my IPad as I travel around classrooms.

Here's the link: Walkthrough template

I did a preliminary test, making sure I could get it to work and the data came back in a useful way. I then took the data and the template to our school improvement team. I asked if this was data they wanted or what else they would like. There response was great.. they wanted to be able to explain what was going on before or after I was there.

I then went back and created a template to give to teachers with the data and comments from me with also room for a conversation to start between us. I haven't gotten this to google docs yet, as our school hasn't made the move yet.

This is a start. I want teachers to be having conversations about what good teaching looks like and how they can improve. Just as our students, we should be Always Learning!

Tests and Assignments

Dr. Scott Mcleod sent out a tweet with a quiz regarding Harry Wong's The First Days of School book.  I'm posting a portion of my corrected quiz.

I want to look at number 13....

Is that best practice? To write the test and quiz at the same time? I'd appreciate your thoughts.

A rant....

I'll be honest, this post has been a long time coming.

I understand that the purpose of blogging and twitter in education are meant to be collaborative. The things shared are shared for sharing purposes. I don't expect anything in return, they're my thoughts or someone else's in which I found value. The reason I'm upset, and that's a harsh term... I'm irritated... I have 777 followers on Twitter. Most are education folks, so my posts on the blog may pertain to them. On my last post, I had visits from a grand total of....40 visits.. Yes 40..

Now, I appreciate those 40 visitors. I really do. I appreciate the comment I received from Bill as well! The reason for my irritability is the lack of views.. I know that I am not the best writer in the world... Really, I have very minimal writing training, it's not one of my strengths by any means, but there are at least 737 people who for some reason or another follow me on twitter and didn't view the blog. I sent out a tweet with the link to the post, it was nicely retweeted by my brother, Bill Ferreter and my sister... Thanks family!!!!

Is there a reason, don't know. Not sure I really care. But it does beg some questions. Do we follow people on twitter just to increase our followers? Is the number of followers like a status symbol? I will say, I follow most of my followers back, not sure why.. a lot of them are from Iowa so I feel that necessary.

I am just as much to blame. I follow people, don't read all there stuff. Can't say I have time to read everything. With the new job, I can say blogging, blog reading, and twitter have taken a back seat to work and family..

So, thanks for listening.. I don't expect many responses or anything, this is my blog. I can write what I want to... :)