If you have spent any time with or next to me in a PD opportunity, you know how much I love to dabble with sketch noting (and I’m not a super artist)… it’s visual, helps connect learned schema and even aids the engagement factor. Below, in honor of the release of Syliva Duckworth’s new book November 15th, is an example of sketch noting and double bonus, a great graphic you can send home to parents!  Check out her stuff, it’s great.

Greetings!

Here is a quick snapshot at students and teachers in action.

In Third grade last week, we continued our goal of modeling and teaching students how to compare information across texts to answer an opinion question based on text evidence.  We started by taking notes in our Wonders materials and then moved them to the Discussion Web form. Once we had our evidence collected to answer the question “Was it fair to make immigrants wait so long to be checked and tested to enter the country?”, we were able to model think aloud strategies and model writing a paragraph response.  This week we will continue this process and begin releasing students to generate their own text based responses.

Our wonderful Kindergarten writers worked very hard to practice not interrupting conferences or other students during writer’s workshop time.  Mrs. Wilson shared the importance of constructive time during conferences and created an anchor chart to help remind students how serious conferring time was and how critical it is to not interrupt.  The writers continued to practice stretching out the sounds in words to begin writing sentences.  During our debrief and planning, we were able to deconstruct our unit and look at all of the instruction that had occurred through Unit 1 in regards to structure, conventions, ideas, voice and elaboration.

I am nearing the end of this round of coaching cycles.  If you are interested in a coaching cycle for my next round that runs from November 28th – February 10th, please click on the form below and fill out the survey.

Coaching Cycle Request