Another project (but this one might get completed)

A bunch of posts have piled up in GoogleReader for me over the past couple of days (I’ve been busy with Play Group and marvelling at Ben sitting up by himself).  As I was skimming through those posts this morning (gee, it’s definitely afternoon now) I found a back-post from NCS-Tech about Internet4Classrooms.  Of course I had to explore the site.  I am impressed.  No longer do I have to use Google to search for helpful websites then ditch most of the finds because they’re unsuitable.  From now on this will be the site I check first.

While I was exploring the site, I found lots of references to ‘task cards’.  I was wondering what these things were, so found out. Task cards help to organise your classroom, for those students who devour all the work you can throw their way, for those times when you need to quickly assign a relief, for a zillion other reasons. Internet4Classrooms even provides templates to get you started making task cards.  Now that’s pretty cool.

I know I’m ‘a gunna’ person.  I quite happily jump on the bandwagon of every new idea going, and find it hard to complete tasks. I need to make sure I keep working on this one. If there’s one thing that experienced teachers have over me at the moment, it’s resources.  Not necessarily access to online resources (I’m sure I’m quite capable there) but resources that they have made themselves.  All those assignments that they (rightly or wrongly) can edit and reuse year after year.  All those sheets, tricks, and tasks they have ready for last-minute relief lessons (either their own or to cover other peoples’).

I plan to create at least one task card a week until I start back at work.  That seems like a do-able target.  I know I could probably do more, but with Ben crawling, harvest only just started, and us hosting Christmas, one a week is achievable. Once I’ve achieved that, and I’m back at work I can set a new target.

I’m thinking my task-cards might be A4 pages that initially at least will be collected in a display folder.  Because I work with middle-school students I don’t think I need the rigidity of actual card, and they seem to like things that look more professional (ie. aimed at adults rather than children).