Dear colleagues,
Please make to most of the last school week of the calendar year. Past week was busy with Matt Glover. Big thank you and appreciation go to all the faculty for your flexibility, effort and willingness to learn together with your students how to best use the workshop model to nurture writers at their different developmental phases. Another huge thank you goes to Kim who organized it all including TGIF. The detailed and collaborative planning of Mr Glover’s visit ensured smooth transitions and optimal use of Matt’s time for planning, modeling and presenting. Thank you Kim!
Enjoy the week!
Supervision: Link to Master schedule
Time
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12:15-12:40
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12:25-12:55
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12:25-12:55
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12:15-12:40
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Week
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Cafeteria Tables
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Playground
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Playground
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Healthy lunch guide in the cafeteria line
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12/14/2015
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Saiko
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Karen
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Jerome
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Trevor
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Matt Glover
Matt Glover provided many exciting opportunities for us all to learn about teaching in general, and specifically teaching of writing explicitly. Matt’s common sense approach, useful reminders about the zone of proximal development and his student-centered modeling helped us to enjoy learning. Here are some of his messages noted and interpreted by Heikki:
“ Nudging vs. Pushing: teach the most appropriate and helpful thing from the student point of view at a time instead of many.”
“Approximation: Make sure that your expectations are aligned with the student age and each student’s place in their unique journey of learning.
“ Telling, reminding and correcting are not teaching. They are only applicable and appropriate strategies when students have been explicitly taught and successfully learned the skills they are expected to apply.”
“ In order to design engaging and appropriate writers' workshops, start with developing the stack of texts; then develop a plan for mini lessons and conferring, and only then go and check how well the plans are aligned with the standards and benchmarks”
“Writers’ Workshop is the most effective model for differentiating writing instruction, that we currently have available for responding to the needs of ESOL and Learning Support students.”
Secret Santa!
This is just a reminder to spread the holiday cheer if you've joined Secret Santa. The finale is this Wednesday at the Town Hall meeting, bring a final gift adding your real name!
Coordinator's Meetings
- KB-G5 will wrap-up reflections for UOI#2. Please make sure to reflect with your teaching partner in advance.
- Literacy meetings this week will focus on reflections from time with Matt Glover and continuing to resource unit folders.
- Town Hall Meeting and Tankyuu: Sharing Learning so far in the BBTAround the school this week:
- Thursday: Last ES Assembly of the Year! 14:30-15:20 in the BBT.
- Patomime in the main theatre on Wednesday 16th December at 6.30pm
Future Dates
There will be another blog on report writing and report cards this week. Keep on checking.
