Reflection is such an essential part of teaching. Halfway through the year now and its time to start thinking about what to tackle next year. This years main goal was to embrace what I am calling Teacher on Demand. More to follow on that soon, but for now, what is the next big idea for me and my classroom?
I've been thinking about portfolios for years now and I'm thinking that next year I will weave them into my curriculum. I'm thinking of a self selected options based set of activities. Think of examples like, make a short movie explaining.. or take photos of _________ and put them into a online presentation to show that you understand... They will be online of course so that students may see them and gain insight from each other.
My first small experiment with this went well. I had Earth Science students use Storybird to write a short story about earthquakes or plate tectonics. They had a great time and the stories were fantastic. I liked the embed feature, although it would be great if the students could embed the work themselves.
Using web based portfolios will require a re-tooling of parts of the assessment structure I have in place, but mostly a shift from having all the students doing the same thing at the same time. I'm really excited and am going to start this on a small scale soon. I'll keep you posted!
