Third PLN Reflection

 Mr. Tom Barrett of the EDTE.CH blog recently tweeted a blog post from his own blog in which he listed twenty some different ways in which to get to know your new class.  The ways come in the form of a Google Presentation.

Couple of notes here:  Some of them are not terribly useful to the Secondary MAT crowd.  Some suggestions are for a slightly younger crowd.  Also, some of the suggestions are better for learning about your students (new class bingo was used at the Meet & Greet, e.g.), whereas others are better for learning your students names (Alliterative job titles). 

I'd like to focus on the latter.  I think this material is really relevant to some of the concluding remarks from our 502/504 class, and much of what we do in Teacher Moves.  In order to build an environment of mutual respect (and be that "no-nonsense nurturer"), we basically have to learn the names of 150+ students in a very short period of time.  Much of the discussion of laying down the procedures, rules, and hierarchy of consequences (particularly the demonstration of any of these items) requires immediate access to, at a minimum, student names.  There are several strategies in the presentation that link student names with categorical words beginning with the same name.  Others involve sorting students (by birthday, etc.) in a way that allows you to form an order in which to remember your students, if only initially. 


The other interesting note is that I saw this post early this week, and I believe it was 26 Interesting Ideas.  Which is just to observe that this presentation really is a product of collaboration and includes ideas from teachers all over the world (Barrett is based in the UK) who confront the same issues we will.  Excellent illustration of how twitter / our PLN can enable us to work smarter, not harder.