Shelly Fryer: Positive Tomorrows
Positive Tomorrows Mission:
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I absolutely loved reading this blog. So many of the things that Shelly Fryer mentions in is what I strive to do and become as a teacher. I think a significant part of teaching is building good and trusting relationships with your students and making school a safe, welcoming, and caring place for them to be. I believe Positive Tomorrows is doing a great job of accomplishing this and fostering the learning of the students. I find it awesome that the first few weeks of school Shelly focuses on building relationships and creating a positive classroom culture. She puts a lot of effort into making the classroom feel warm and welcoming from the start of day one.
Something from this blog that I could see myself incorporating into my future classroom is the idea of class meetings. I think this is a great way to get feedback from students and allow them to take some ownership of their classroom and learning. Mrs. Fryer also does a lot with technology and learning about the interests of her students. During a conversation with a student she said, "I love how you love science. You are going to challenge me as a teacher to create and share more science experiments with our class." I think this is amazing and exactly what teachers should be striving to do. Students seem more engaged and excited about learning if it's something they can apply to their lives and relate to. Another thing I took away from reading this blog is the importance of technology and this generation. This classroom does a lot of projects on iPads and each student gets their own. They create class podcasts which allow the students to share their voice and thoughts with others about their classroom and what they're learning. I enjoyed listening to the podcast sharing what the students loved about their school. Another cool thing this class did with technology was create Passion Projects. Throughout the year, the students learned how to use various apps on their iPads. For their Passion Projects, they got to choose something that interests them and learn more about that topic. Then, they got to pick a way to share their passion and learning with the class. I think this is another great way for students to learn about each other and for the teacher to get ideas of what he or she could incorporate into lesson plans. Be sure to check out this class's awesome Passion Projects. Overall, I found this blog to be inspiring. I liked how certain aspects of teaching that are important to me were discussed in this blog. I have gained several great ideas that I can incorporate into my future classroom. I look forward to reading more posts on this blog! |