Community Connections

(Part of @teachthought 30-day Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge) more info here.

Day 23- "Write about 1 way that you "meaningfully" involve the community in your classroom, or write about 1 way you would like to bring that into your curriculum."

Currently, I am working on involving the community of my students' parents and families by connecting them with what we are doing in our classroom through tweets and pictures posted on Twitter. This happens almost daily on our classroom Twitter account. Not all parents are able to come in to the school during school hours, and this is a great opportunity to let them "see" what we are doing and have a chance to talk with their child about it at home that evening.

Another way I'm planning to involve the community in our classroom is to team up with the local ARL in a project with my teammates (Mrs. Carlson & Miss Campbell) as well as an author, Jena Ball, and co-producer, Marty Keltz, from the CritterKin series books. We will be reading one of Jena's books, "Lead with Your Heart" and doing some project based learning activities with the students. Our plan is to involve the ARL and their humane education department to help spread the word about their animal adoptions and the importance of caring and kindness to animals.