We have a new teacher system at our school called LEAD goals – as I have been focussing on the content of these goals I haven’t actually researched the acronym but it involves formal and informal teaching observations with reflection time, and also the setting of professional goals both personal and organization orientated.
For my personal professional goal I want to focus on; documenting student thinking and learning, and creating an inspiring student centered environment. Both goals are focused on the work of early childhood educators in the Reggio Emilia Italy. To show my research and implementation of this thinking/practice I set up the following;
Reading
If you click on the Library tab at the top of the page I have created a visual database of the books I have on these topic – some are on my Kindle account, some are on iBooks, and some are hardcopy. As I read these I will be making notes and posting them to the blog. I also have a collection of journal articles from JSTOR academic database that I have on my reading list.
Collecting
On Pinterest I have created three boards connected to this;
- Documentation: a board of examples of thinking and learning documentation from around the world.
- Research: articles and websites that support my understanding of Reggio inspired documentation and learning
- LEAD Goals: my own examples of documentation.
- Environment as the Third Teacher: examples of classroom and school environments that exemplify the philosophy behind the Reggio Emilia Approach.
