Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Pinterest

I'm just going to say it...it's a beautiful thing.  Pinterest is, I mean.  

It took me awhile to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon.  Then when I did, I was disorganized and confused.  And overwhelmed.  Definitely overwhelmed.  

I feel like I have finally gotten my Pinterest wings...as a teacher anyway.  

About a month before school ended, I started planning next year.  Don't we all?  Here's the thing though, this year was my first year at a new school in a new job with a new role I had never had before.  So I jumped in and floundered.  I made it work, but I wasn't in love with what I was doing.  I knew I could do better but the reality was that I was just trying to get by.  

For this coming year, I feel like I have a better grasp on exactly what I want to do with my students and how I want to approach it.  Granted, I'm fully willing to accept that once life starts, I may flounder yet again and need to just get by.  However, until then...I have Pinterest!  And I am pinning away!

Let me go ahead and give you just a very small sneak peak (because I'm just not done) into my plans and then I'll show you the board that goes with it!  Each month, I'm focusing on a skill or tool that will help my students with their homeroom assignments.  In order to learn the skill or tool, we will work on a whole class assignment that is linked to Catholic Identity (we're at a Catholic school soo....).  Once that assignment has been completed, the students will have a menu of choices of projects they would like to do.  

The first full month (Sept) of school, we are going to be working on Digital Citizenship.  I haven't come up with the Catholic Identity assignment yet, but I'm thinking something to do with the 10 Commandments.  But I need to teach my students about all the pieces that fall under the umbrella of Digital Citizenship.  I need to figure out what the bulletin board will look like.  I need to have ideas for the menu.  

ENTER PINTEREST!
For me, I just knew that I had to be selective about what I pinned because I would get overwhelmed and never look at it again if I pinned too much.  I needed to be realistic about my pinning choices. These are for 5th-8th graders...they will not appreciate the ADORABLE ideas for primary students.  I also needed to be realistic for me.  I am not going to spend 10 hours crafting.  I'll be lucky if I max out at 2 hours.  However, if I can make it in Google...I will spend hours doing that!  

So now I have my guidelines, I have my framework, and I have my Pinterest.  I'm ready to go!


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