Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Teaching Children Well: September Tuesday Musings

The tasks looked like a mountain on Sunday, and now for a moment I'm standing on a peak. It was a great day of teaching, one that found TeamFive, our amazing grade level of fifth graders, beginning to follow the many routines of our shared teaching/learning program with ease.

Ideas for Students Who Struggle with the Standards
The day also prompted me to reach out to colleagues to begin a discussion about possibly changing some of our programing related to students who struggle with grade-level standards. I made a proposition which was met with substantial feedback and all kinds of related ideas as well as cautionary comments. I'll continue to think about this in the days ahead as I'd love to see us make a few changes for the 2017-2018 school year. Usually big ideas for schools take at least a year to develop so starting in the fall is a good idea.

ECET2-MA2016
Further ECET2-MA2016 is catching fire--the RSVPs are coming in and we're wondering what the final count will be. I'm hoping that most of our invitees RSVP by October 1. After that we'll likely have to make a few calls to find out who else is coming and whether there might be room for a few more invites since some educators have demonstrated interest recently.

Field Study Postponed
We had to postpone our field study since the prediction for rain makes the trip more difficult than it needs to be. We'll reschedule for a spring day.

The Days Ahead
Tomorrow students will look closely at some of the technology that supports their math study and give it a try. We'll also meet with grade-level teachers from across the system for a newly designed professional learning event. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

As the routine takes shape, the team is really beginning to look at the many ways that we can differentiate the teaching and learning to meet every child's interests and needs.