Lots of fabulous things continue to happen here at UTE. I am always amazed at the hard work and dedication of all the folks here! Thanks to you all for your many hours of important work and learning.
Best Practices I've observed at UTE this week:
- Anticipation/Reaction Guide in use with 2nd grade Science.
- Frayer Model posters in use with primary reading vocabulary.
- Current, proficient student work posted outside intermediate classrooms. (Please keep it current.)
- Student choice of their own work to post.
- Student reflection and accountability of center work in 3rd grade.
- Math and reading centers in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades.
Next week promises to be an exciting one with great activities planned for Read Across America Day. What will be our school learning target for these activities? They are all literacy rich, and we want to make sure and send the message to students and parents that these activities are educational and rigorous. Although they are fun, they do have a meaningful purpose. Please make sure to read the notes from Leigh on this. I want to thank Leigh and Jackie for working so hard to pull this together. I am very much looking forward to it.
CSIP
It is time for our I&I check on the next two components of the CSIP. So, please take time to look these over and get me any comments, concerns, suggestions you have by February 29th.
Each day that I visit with students and teachers here at UTE, I am comforted by the fact that we are doing everything within our current knowledge and power to make sure our students are succeeding at high levels. The trick is for us to keep learning and staying abreast of the latest and most current research. I hope that I am helping you by sending you links to professional articles and discussions on current education topics and issues.
I will leave you with this thought for the week from John Maxwell on striving for excellence.
"Learn to say no to the good, so that you can say yes to the best."
Every Child...Every Day!!!
I agree with trying to implement the intentional teacher talk.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to share another great classroom management idea that Mrs. Clary showed me they are using for centers in K. They have taped the students centers rotation card to a notebook for each child. Each day they go to centers, the students have certain things they must record as a means of reflection and accountability! Great idea Jeanie! Thanks for sharing! Who else has a strategy for reflection and accountability that is working for them?
ReplyDeleteCreating Strategic Readers is a wonderful resource. I plan to use the phonemic awareness activity "Think Sounds" next week in my RTI groups with vocabulary words!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed our day with Ms. Ellery as well. I have to say that although our school year has been filled with change I am very pleased with the success of my students. I am proud to say that I have tried anything and everything coming and going to give them every advantage with their learning. Ms. Ellery gave us a few extra ideas of ways to keep the learning fresh and interesting for our students and that is a tremendous help. Mrs. Napier and I are currently planning to use the word trains in our centers.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peggy for all your effort and positive energy with this change!
DeleteCreating Strategic Readers is a good resource. I want to use the sounds game this week and the rhymning jar with variations to make it appropriate for kindergarten.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed all the activities that Valerie Ellery had to share with us. In fifth grade we plan on using the Stretch it stragegy with our vocabulary words as well as our spelling words. I plan on making my students the book marks Valerie gave us with the text traits on them to help reinforce the vocabulary we are constantly using while reading. I agree with Michelle, Creating Strategic Readers is a very good resource full of ideas!
ReplyDeleteThis was my first opportunity to be apart of the Creating Strategic Readers. I thought all the activities that Mrs. Ellery could be very helpful for our students. I am still a little overwhelmed by all the activities since this was my first experience seeing any of them. I plan on using the activities that will help build my students reading comprehension.
DeleteOur spelling words last week were oi and oy words, so we used the sound activity where the students break play dough into the number of sounds they hear and then sorted the words. This helped them to see oi and oy are just one sound. We also plan to use the rhyming jar. We thought it was good to see Mrs. Ellery present a variety of activities that would help our students.
ReplyDeleteKeri and Jason
I enjoyed getting the opportunity to listen to Mrs. Ellery. Third grade has been using the foam dice to work with the vocabulary words in this weeks story. Her activities she presented will help our students and will be easy to incorporate into centers.
ReplyDeleteThe teacher talk is where the learning takes place. I think it is the most important thing we can expand on from the pd session. All the activities given and shared are excellent, but without the teacher talk, the students are just scratching the surface and really don't learn on the level necessary to use the skill in the future as needed.
ReplyDelete