Ms. M's Tales of a Teacher: My Personal Teacher Blog

Let's take some time to talk about opportunities that everyone can benefit from: Focus Groups!  Since April of last year, I've had a wealth of opportunities to participate in different focus groups. Most of these were from Scholastic, however, I recently joined a new focus group with CEC (Council for Exceptional Children).  It was during this focus group that I expanded my scope even further to realize the power of these types of meetings. Whether formal or informal, a focus group can be very beneficial. As teachers, it's vital to maintain a steady rhythm of learning and networking.  In my experience with Scholastic focus groups, our main discussion points were on various aspects of Scholastic; book clubs, flyers, placing orders etc. But the true melody of these groups were the moments when someone would speak from the heart and strike a chord in the rest of the group, and the conversation would develop from there. Those are the moments that I appreciated the most, and want

 I am thrilled to be back to posting blogs this week. I know there has been some stagnant time since the start of the month and this post, however, I decided to take the advice of putting myself first and taking time over Spring Break for self-care. Although I do admit, I missed writing, I think taking time to read, exercise, and re-energize was just the key to powering up for the final blog in this min-series.  Recently I've met with my co-op to talk about a few different tech. tools she has been learning about, and I've been infusing into classroom learning. Shout out to my students for trying Blooket for the first time! It really is the updated version of Kahoot ! Based on a recent poll, my students enjoy both, but Blooket was the fan favorite due to its accessibility and it shows the answers in the blocks (traditional view.)  What I appreciated most about my co-op's work was that the game directly reflected the concepts in one of our math lessons we recently completed.