As you may have noticed, I've added a new item to the Faculty Meeting Agendas: a section titled
Best Practice in Action. The goal is to highlight effective practices from our fellow teachers and staff. As you work with your teams and observe effective, efficient practices, please post your nominations by commenting to this page. Please include your team member's name and a brief description of the effective practice that you are sharing. All nominations will be reviewed and if selected for the faculty meeting, I will contact your team member by email to ensure that the individual is comfortable sharing. I look forward to reading your nominations.
PJ shared with me something that she saw in Mrs. Lockhart's spelling group today. While she was working with one spelling group, she had the other group making a word find for each other. She gave them a piece of graph paper that she found online. The students then used the glossary at the back of the book and wrote spelling words across, down, and diagonal. They filled in the remaining boxes with random letters and gave it to another person in the group to find the words. Great way to keep kids engaged in something meaningful while waiting for the other group to finish!
ReplyDeleteThat is wonderful! I will definitely add her to the March Faculty Meeting as long as she's comfortable sharing. Creating word searches was something I was always trying to do back when I was in the classroom but I never quite figured it out. Looks like Ms. Lockhart really did a great job on this AND I REALLY like that the kids are creating them. This is such a great way to practice spelling words as opposed to the ol' write each word 5 times!
DeleteI have one for Sandrock. She used problem - solution response cards as a TPT with her first graders as they learned about this story element. She made sure the kids could read and recognize the wrods then read them very brief stories and directed them to hold up the applicable card when they heard the problem and solution. Then they did the same activity for the core knowledge story. She did a great job of scaffolding and the kids were really into this. This gave students a task to focus on during a Listening activity (teacher read aloud of the story).
ReplyDeleteI would like to share Mrs. Berry's TPT Buckets. She made a bucket for every table in her room. Each bucket has envelopes with response cards (A,B,C,D and True/False), Individual White Boards (piece of copy paper laminated so it can be reused), markers and erasers and other TPT items she can use for a lesson (I can't remember what all is in them!)
ReplyDeleteDawn-Would you be able to take some pictures of the TPT tubs and their contents? I think that adding some visuals when we share the Best Practice nominations will really add to the experience. You could email or text them to me. Thanks!
DeleteI saw a great idea in Heather Fox's room today. Heather has 2 groups of Reading. Her independent group had a great activity to keep them busy. She wrote a paragraph (for first grade it was 3 sentences) that talked about the weather today and what they should wear to go outside. She gave them story/picture paper. They were to copy the paragraph and draw a picture of what they wrote. She also made two errors in it (capital and period) and asked them to edit the sentences. I think it was a meaningful seatwork idea and also gave them practice writing, editing, and drawing a picture for it.
ReplyDeleteGreat example for meaningful seatwork....It is challenging to find meaningful seatwork for the younger ones and for our students that don't have many skills yet for doing things independently. Do you think you could obtain a copy of what Heather developed or a student work sample from this if it's not too late? If you could would you scan and send it to me?
DeleteI want to nominate my team for coming up with a writing form together. It will be used for all writing in the classroom, so expectations will stay consistent. It is also set up like a piece of lined paper where all of the scaffolding can be removed when your class comes to that point. An example would be the arrow for indenting. After a class gets good at indenting the teacher can just delete the arrow. If you would like a copy I will email you one!!!
ReplyDeleteTai- I would love a copy!
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DeleteOn our Educator Evaluation Rubric for component 2d-Managing Behavior, in order to score at the highest level the observer needs to see evidence that students are self-assessing their own behaviors. This is one of the more challenging items I've seen in this rubric. Ms. Kane (who then gave credit to Ms. Kirsch for the original idea) was using a half-sheet Point sheet template that caused the students to keep track of their points for the week and then it required them to turn in the sheet at the end of the week. I thought this was a great way to help involve students in assessing their own behaviors. Way to go to Ms. Kirsch for the original idea and way to go for Ms. Kane on implementing it! I'm sure either of these ladies could explain this in more detail if you're interested.
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