As I embrace this season of transition, I am taking time to reflect on many memories with special people in meaningful places. It is neat to visibly see changes over time, knowing that God has been transforming us through the experiences of the past five years.
Each Thursday this summer will be devoted to a #tbt (Throwback Thursday) post, highlighting various "then and now" comparisons. Enjoy!
#tbt Week 6: Literacy Cohort
Most Wednesday mornings at BFA began with a late start for students and early-morning professional development for teachers. Sometimes these meetings included all faculty together in a large group, while other times we signed up for cohorts on various topics.
This spring, I had the opportunity to lead a cohort about literacy. Our group included teachers from all different departments - elementary classroom teachers, middle and high school ELL, foreign languages, middle school English - which brought a healthy diversity of perspective. This also provided a challenge for me: to share information that would be relevant to a wide range of teaching contexts and styles! With only six morning sessions together, I carefully selected topics and gathered resources.
One week, I decided to model a management strategy ("literacy stations") while also presenting a few different instructional methods. Teachers went to several centers for hands-on practice with these methods. Each activity was also linked to our prior conversations about The Continuum of Literacy Learning, our primary resource for the literacy cohort.
Students use different colors to represent different phases of editing, such as marking all end punctuation in red.
This web site provides variations of the same article for different reading levels. A great tool for differentiation!
I provided copies of actual journal entries from my students, and teachers had to determine how they would grade them based on the expectations I had established with my class.
Teachers created displays for their classrooms as visual reminders of key concepts and terms, from sight words to academic vocabulary.
Leading the literacy cohort was a great learning experience. I loved being able to share resources and tips that I have found, as well as learn from the ideas of my colleagues! Hopefully our discussions and activities will be helpful to these teachers as they plan units and establish classroom routines for the benefit of their students.
For my fellow literacy nerds:
Have you tried any of these strategies?
What has worked well? What suggestions do you have?
