Support from PLNs
According to Torrey Trust, there are four ways PLNs can support educators. These categories are social, affective, cognitive, and identity. After watching our Thinglink, I believe I use my PLN most in the cognitive sense. I use my PLN to find new resources and tools to help support my students in the classroom. Even though I have participated in Edchats and online professional development, that is not what I do regularly. I use sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest to find ideas about how to supplement district provided materials. I have to admit I do not engage on these sites or share ideas myself, so I am not getting the social aspect from these sites that I do at in person professional developments.
Pinterest Deep Dive
I have had Pinterest for years and often go there for ideas both for teaching and in my personal life. When I was in my “island years” of being the only third grade teacher at a small Catholic school I joked with veteran teachers about not knowing how they taught before Pinterest. My current classroom board is like an archeological dig through my teaching history. You can see the grade levels I have taught and supported and how my pins changed over my transition from Catholic to public school. This year's pins could be summed up as SOS I’m teaching sixth grade now what!?
That being said, I liked the idea of creating educational boards specific to certain topics. Now that I am more familiar with my current grade level and have learned I will again be teaching sixth grade again next year, I can organize different topics to help support my team better next year.
Pinterest boards
One of our big focuses this school year has been engaging our sixth graders in productive independent work during guided reading. Our students are spending 150 minutes a week working independently. It is important for us to find a way to use this time to think critically as well as hopefully inspire excitement to read.
I decided to create a board I could use to collaborate with my PLC which includes three sixth grade homeroom teachers, EL teachers, our building literacy coach, and our district literacy coach. I thought this would also be a great resource to share with the other intermediate grades in my school or even to other schools if our district literacy coach was willing to share the link. The board is linked below for you to check out.
Teaching sixth grade, I quickly learned how important it is to build a strong classroom community not just the first week of school, but throughout the year. I thought it would be beneficial to organize community building and team building activities together in one convenient location.
It's great to be able to collaborate on a board with your colleagues. We do something similar using Wakelet.
ReplyDeleteHi Rachael! I also use those sites cognitively but do not share myself. I do not see my self as an "influencer" online but rather an influencer in my own school community. I feel more comfortable sharing my own skills and techniques with people I know. I also feel like I am gathering my resources for my specific grade and school environment. I am in my third year of teaching 1st grade and I feel confident in the resources I have and how they align to the standards. If they asked me to teach 6th grade I would be so spooked! I see Nicole commented above about Wakelet. I loved using Wakelet in our past class and I continue to use it in my personal life. Thanks for sharing Rachael!
ReplyDeleteHi Rachael, thanks for sharing how you use Pinterest in your professional life! I am also someone who uses social media in a cognitive matter, I think it is great how many sites we have in order to find resources for our classrooms. I really like the idea of making a board that you can use collaboratively with other people on your team. I love how you created a board specifically to building a classroom community. I feel like that is something we all think about in the beginning of the year, but it is great that you are finding resources to use throughout the school year to reinforce your class community!
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