I decided this year to make two sets of New Year's Resolutions. (I've just stuck with all my resolutions so well, you know, I might as well tag on a few extra!) I decided I needed a few resolutions for myself in general and then some "school resolutions"!
Here are my school resolutions:
Here are my school resolutions:
- Resolution #1: Plan with my teacher associates EACH and EVERY Week. (we'll see how many weeks we make it....don't hold your breath) If you saw my earlier post about working together as a team, you might know I'm big on teamwork in the classroom! However, I'm HORRIBLE about the paperwork and actual SIT DOWN meeting time with my teacher associates! Our schedule makes it difficult to spend much time together planning together or even touching base on issues, since our planning/cleaning/break time is all supposed to take place during nap/rest time! WHAT! Yes, we do all of that while those sweet little angels are napping. If our group actually needs a nap and sleeps every day, this works out well. If not, we don't get around to much planning!
- Resolution #2: Daily anecdotal notes. I generally feel too busy to actually write anecdotal notes throughout the day. Instead, I sit down at the end of the day. Not the best idea. It's more difficult to remember exactly what the children did. I do take lots of photos, which helps jog my memory, but we do need to work on actually taking those pads of sticky notes and using them to write down what we see the children doing throughout the day!
- Resolution #3: Spend more time planning for, making use of and engaging the children in outdoor learning. I wrote about this earlier. We just don't make use of the outdoor space we have. A few of us also are not big fans of the cold weather! No names will be used here; but you know who you are! (No, it's not me, although I would prefer there not be ice on the sidewalk as I'm walking down it!) We have a few challenges in this department. Have you ever tried to wheel a wheelchair through snow? There are quite a few things that we can do, though, that we are NOT doing now. For us, this is a big one! We're currently looking at some ways to make our outdoor space a bit more accessible for our children in wheelchairs and walkers. This would offer us more freedom of movement and increase the chance that we take more of our learning outdoors.
Hi Pam
ReplyDeleteI found you via Jenny's blog "Let the Children Play".
Re developing outdoor spaces for children with additional needs and accessibility. It's basically the use of common sense and applying indoor knowledge outdoors, e.g.
- Making sure paths are suitably wide and of a suitable material with decent drainage
- Having ramps up to or down into big sand pits (Have a look at "Sandpits Roar" post on my blog - in H&S section in blog index)
- Having wheelchair accessible water features - there's a photo of this on my "Zoning" post (see the blog index - scroll down to school grounds section)
If you contact me via email then I can forward a couple of useful info sheets.
Best wishes
Juliet
Juliet- thanks so much for the info. I will e-mail and check out the blog post. This is basically where we're starting- with surfacing etc. but are interested in where we can go from there. wheelchair accessible water features definitely sounds interesting. Thanks!
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