The Final Countdown!!

This is it! The school year is right around the corner, I can smell it it's so close! I leave for my village one week from today. My plane tickets are purchased, my trusty sidekick has an appointment for his travel certificate, and my stuff is slowly piling up in a corner of my room so I don't forget anything.

This summer has been awesome and I'm kind of sad to see it end, but I am so excited to see my students again! Now that I have one year under my belt and I know what to expect I'm much more excited and a lot less nervous than I was last year.

I'm psyched to add a ton more technology to my class set up in a much more effective way and gear up for an awesome-tastic year of social studies (election year, woohooo!!!!!).  This will also be my first time trying to incorporate some elements of a flipped classroom, which puts a lot of the learning responsibility on the student and creates a more individual experience for each kid. I'm thinking it will work well in the levels system our district has and it also gives me a chance to do more interacting with the students and less lecturing.

It also takes a lot of prep time!! Holy Cow!

I've already started in on the lesson planning with the help of some great apps I got for my iPad (see? technology.) and have started authoring classroom blogs for each of my three levels. Fingers crossed that I will have those done before I leave on Monday....

More to come soon, Northern Teacher is back in gear!!

And if you're interested in learning what the heck a flipped classroom is, watch this video- it's quite informative.

Yes, this is an ad for Camtasia Studio. I use iMovie and it works just as well =)