End of the Year Reflections

Wow!  What a year.  I've learned to make a list of changes and a list of keeps for next year BEFORE I let me brain rest for the summer.  Over the summer I will work on making the math smartboards more engaging to promote better discussion and student participation.  I will use resources from the web to add to instruction (ex. songs to help counting and identifying coins).  My students this year needed more practice telling time and counting money, so I will make a point next year to gather more/better resources and dedicate more time to these units.  I will keep the organization of class (whole group instruction, group work/partners/individual depending on skill, and then correction/homework time) to start the year.  The second grade team starting giving pretests before each unit.  We will continue to use this pretest data to form our group work/partners/and individual work time.  'Group work' continues of the students who need the most help from the teacher.  In my room, this is the group that sits at the kidney bean table with me (usually consisting of 4 to 5 students).  Students who need a partner are the students in the on-level group.  My philosophy is two heads are better than one when students have questions.  And then students in the 'individual group' get to work alone at their own pace.  These students then have time to do activities to further challenge them after their workbook work is done.  Our team also decided to connect the pretest to the unit test at the end of each unit.  We put the results on an attachment called "Math Results" so students and families can see how much students improved from their pretest.  The only thing I don't like about the pretest is that it is multiple choice.  The actual test is much harder than the pretest, so every once in awhile it doesn't show student growth (even though the student did improve).  I know making the smartboards will take up most of my summer work time, so maybe next summer I can work on making pretests that are not multiple choice.  Or maybe I can give the review test (in the workbook) as a pretest.  This review is very similar to the unit test and would eliminate some of those factors making the pretest easier.  Thoughts to ponder!