professional development

At our first VES Professional Reading Group 2009-2010 meeting we covered a great deal in a very short period of time. 

The main highlights of our first meeting studying Units of Study were:

• Covering the lessons the first time around seems to take much longer than expected
• We decided we needed to create a mentor text list per grade level. Please Check this out:and THANK YOU Seattle!

http://www.eledblog.com/content/writers-workshop-book-lists-units-and-comprehension-strategies#comment-190

I’m sorry I haven't blogged much recently. As if being a first year teacher is quite challenge enough, my partner and I have been planning a wedding as well which only adds to the time and stress load. As we approach the end of the academic year, I’m in the process of completing some of the contractually agreed tasks associated with the profession. This is also the time of year when teachers find out if they will have a job next year. With the economy in the state it is, there are quite a few teachers in Washington State who won’t have a job next year. First things first though, I have to make it through this year.

Today I had one of those 'aha' moments, not in my classroom but at a training focused on blending National Urban Alliance (NUA) strategies, like thinking maps, and balanced literacy.  A coach involved in the training demoed a series of lessons on priming students for comprehension strategies with text.  She prefaced the demo by sharing that when she taught Stephanie Harvey's Comprehension Toolkit lessons, her students never had the comments that Stephanie's students did or went away with the same level of understanding.  In retrospect, she realized that when introducing students to a comprehension strategy with the Comprehension Toolkit, she was requiring students to learn a new strategy, a new text, a new subject and a challenging

This year I was fortunate to be invited into a literacy cohort for professional development (PD) along with two teachers from my school.  The PD is intended for newer teachers who teach in the K-2 grade band.  This year I'm working with English language learners in first through fifth grade at all levels of English proficiency.  However, what I'm learning transfers easily to the 3-5 grade band and beyond. 

As our contract continues with professional developers from Columbia Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project our PD day consisted of two workshops. Of course, not everything was pretty in the morning or well organized in terms of logistics. When we arrived, on time, there was basically no parking. After driving around for ten minutes the organizers were a little smart, telling us, "There's lots of parking on the other side." When I informed them it was full, we were hustled along.