Join the Teacher Collaborative
I recommend that you join the Teacher Collaborative and its virtual network as one way to develop your craft and connect to the many opportunities that exist to develop your education practice and opportunities.
Use Professional Learning Events to Develop Practice and Strengthen Team
Today our fifth grade teaching team will meet with educators across the state at a teacher leadership conference sponsored by Education First. We'll use the day to look for ways to develop our collaborative teaching model in ways that make a difference for students, their families, and colleagues. During the meeting, I'll share a problem of practice with colleagues from my school system and other systems around the state. The problem I'll share is my quest to deepen math teaching/learning in ways that make math more interdisciplinary, culturally proficient, collaborative, relevant, and meaningful. Essentially I want to deepen math learning in ways that the researcher Jo Boaler has noted as more successful ways to teach and learn math. I'll be interested in what colleagues have to say in this regard. I'm looking forward to the ways we'll utilize the resources, information, and share at this conference to impact our current teaching model in positive ways.
Multiplication
Next week students will practice the area model, partial product algorithm, and traditional algorithms to multiply with proficiency and skill. To learn this simply takes lots of practice. As students master this, they'll then have the opportunity to practice many math concepts and skills that are easy to learn and somewhat enjoyable to practice. Essentially it's a back-to-basics, nuts-and-bolts math week.
Good Character Campaign
Last week students spent time talking about the developmental stages of students in K-5. Later they divided up into groups and took perspective of each grade's developmental stage as they created posters to inspire good character for that grade level. The project was led by a talented intern, and as students created they continually conversed about good character. Next week we'll discuss the teamwork needed to make these posters, complete the posters, and figure out how we'll advertise and forward the Good Character campaign we've started.
Book Group
Our book group completed their first book, Swindle, which was an action packed story. At our last meeting we watched a small part of the film that was created based on the book. it was enjoyable to discuss how the movie clip was both similar and different than the book, and how the movie's depictions of the characters were similar and different than we imagined as we read. We'll begin a new book next week, and as we begin reading the new book, we'll discuss how we can use a story elements framework, our imaginations, and attention to fully understand and enjoy a story.
School Concerts
There are many evening and a daytime concert planned for next week so that will bring a lot of excitement and some tired students the days following the concerts.
Faculty Meeting
We have an ambitious hour-long faculty meeting next week which will focus on how to best teach students who face trauma issues, the creation of a book stop that focuses on books celebrating diversity, grant opportunities, and details related to a peaceful, healthy, and happy school.
Extra Help Homework Club
Students are invited to come for extra help on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings at 8am. These extra help sessions have allowed students to complete their homework at their best learning time in the morning. Plus there's help available. I believe these sessions have been a help to students, families, and teachers since, for some, there's less frustration, more practice, and more help. This has been a win-win endeavor.
Math RTI
Students will practice computation, study divisibility rules, and play games in the two weeks of math RTI to come. I'll use that time to catch up with a number of students with one-to-one math meetings as a way to learn about the way they are learning in math with greater detail and potential.
To think ahead about the week to come, is to be prepared for the week ahead and to make space for the weekend fun ahead. Onward.
