This morning I volunteered in my daughter’s 3rd grade classroom and also spent a few minutes in my son’s 2nd grade classroom. It was the first chance I’d had to see their classrooms in action. Last year I wrote about how excited I was about the teachers my kids had, and this year, it looks like we hit the teacher jackpot once again!
I heard teachers talking about personalizing learning and avoiding much whole group instruction. And I saw so many things that excited me:
- Two students sitting on the floor working together.
- Students taking turns leading the class, asking math questions for their peers to respond to.
- Students choosing activities to do on their own after work was completed.
- Using white boards for individual responses.
- Students at tables instead of desks, with pockets on the backs of the chairs to hold books, much like I once had my own classroom set up. Just seeing this made me start itching to teach again.
During my volunteer time, I got to work at a center with some students on math games. It was so much fun! The kids enjoyed the games, cheering for each other and also getting faster at the skills they were practicing.
My daughter’s class had started learning cursive earlier this morning, which reminded me of the day I decided to become a teacher – my own first day of cursive instruction over 30 years ago.
And to top everything off, her classroom had a chart with sticky notes featuring student responses. Sticky notes are one of my favorite learning tools, something I use regularly when I’m working with adults. I was probably a little overly excited to see this. 🙂
All in all, it was a really great morning, I was so impressed with what I saw and I’m excited about the learning opportunities my kids will have this year!
