Friday, May 8, 2009

New School Structure

I've had to take a break from blogging over the past month or so due to my involvement in my school's restructuring for next year. Our school board has undergone a renewal process and launched the opportunity for schools to propose a new innovative school structure that involves teacher collaboration, project and inquiry based learning opportunities for students, flexible time tabling, mixed groupings and a focus on literacy and numeracy skills. Our school decided to take the board up on its challenge and submitted a proposal. In the end, we are one of ten elementary schools and four high schools to be chosen. We are very excited about next year.

I'm most excited to be moving into a classroom with a SMART Board. I will be moving into a larger classroom that will have room for students to work on project-based learning opportunities in the afternoon. I will also get to use the SMART Board for my literacy and numeracy blocks in the morning.

The structure we proposed is outlined in a Power Point presentation I created to present to our staff and parent council. I have posted it to Slide Share to include it in this post. I have also included the draft of the handout we produced to distribute at our Board's Annual General Meeting last week. I don't have a digital version of the final draft.

As we embark on this new structural innovation, I would love to hear from others regarding our plan. Have you implemented similar plans in your school or division? How have you used SMART Boards in your classroom? Do you have other ideas or suggestions after reviewing our plan?