It’s that time of the year again; time to start a new school year. We have a few days of planning before I meet my new students on Monday the 17th of August. This year I am teaching Grade 8. My students are 12-13 year olds, and I am excited to get to know them!

The last few years I have had a goal to open my classroom to connect with pupils and teachers in other countries using eTwinning and Skype Classroom. I plan to continue with these projects, and I also hope to connect with a friend’s class in the Southern part of Norway. I am certain we can learn a lot from each other, both similarities and differences within our country.

I also hope to go more paperless this year. I will explore using Google tools even more, and maybe it is time to let the books go too? I have a feeling I will need to use them to some extent, but this is something I want to try out. I would like to use real world events and more authentic problems and cases in my classes. One of the first topics in English and social science is The American Revolutionary War, and I plan to use the Storyline methodology, a method students often get really excited about!

In this spirit I will try out Kaizena when receiving texts and giving students feedback in my English (ESL) classes. It looks great, and I hope my students will like it too. I also want to put more emphasis on reading in class, and I hope to be able to use Curriculet for this. I had planned to use it with my Grade 10 classes last year, but time ran out when the last exams loomed in the horizon. This year, I’ll definitely give it a go!

Have you set any specific goals for the next school year? Have you used Kaizena or Curriculet before? I’d love to hear about it! I wish everyone a great new school year!