Final Reflections

I have enjoyed working on this web this year for some very important reasons that became more apparent as the year went on.  I sent on a daily basis my recordings of each day to our team leader, Carol Vaage.  This became a wonderful way to collaborate with another teacher.  As at times I included my thoughts about an issue, asked for ideas, or just used her as a sounding board.  This was almost as important as the daily entries. 

As I wrote up the daily entries I was given the opportunity to replay my day and the activities in them and to reflect upon the events.  This process helped me grow as a teacher and it also helped me better plan for the following day.  It provided me with threads to connect to, and to reconnect the children to.  Again this process contributes to teacher growth and classroom effectiveness.   I began to see how important this kind of work is.  There is now a record of the literacy pathways that are developed through a year's learning journey. 

I found it was easy to present the lessons that went on in the classroom, the skills presented and the resources used, but this left a view of language learning as a separate entity not always connected to the whole.
My entries were not always able to capture the connections the children made from literacy events or skills taught, to them to their real world.   It did not capture the learning relationships that are formed in any school year between the teacher and the children, between the children and the children, and even between the teacher and the parents.  These relationships and close social connections, are also a very important part of the literacy journey, or for that matter any learning journey, in any classroom.

My work then did not include enough of the children's stories.  It did not include their voices, ideas, or culture as I had hoped.  I did not share their intent, their questions, in the way I wanted to.  This web then, has led me to another web that I wish to work on.

I would like to work on a web that can show education as a process based on reciprocal communication between teachers, children and teachers, children and children, parents and children, parents and teachers. 

The communication of the learning endeavours becomes of great importance then.  Visible documentation of the project work, and other learning endeavours, enhances both communication and participation.  Through listening and the documentation of observations, conversations of the children, teachers, parents, shared ideas, group work, and experiences, perhaps a truer picture of the participatory relationships can be better illustrated. 

I am hoping that through a more direct involvement of the children and parents in their work, more reflection and revisiting will be possible. It will allow the children to be more visible and more involved in the entries onto the web.  It will also continue to allow for teacher growth and improvement as we tie curriculum to children's real interests and learning
intentions.   

Terry