Welcome to My Page

Time to Reflect

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 21:09:57 -0500

I can not believe how much time has flown by! At first, I felt really badly about not updating my website but then I realized that the reason why I have not had time is because I have been in your classrooms. Really, I think my time is much better spent being with students and working with you than updating. However, I do promise to not let this much time lapse again.
I feel like this month has been full of opportunities to take risks, and I can celebrate some successes while also finding things to improve upon. I must say how excited I was to get to work with first graders on the think aloud process, the students did awesome with helping me create a list of steps to monitor and clarify. The main reason why they did so well is because their teachers and Kindergarten teachers have already set a lot into place about the reading strategies and how to decode. I was nervous to try out the vowel circle for LiPS, but again, the teacher already had all the parts of the LiPS program in place and it went very smoothly. It has been so much fun working with the younger students because that is a new experience for me. Some risks have taught me how to revisit and try again. I planned a lesson on a Marcia Prove It strategy that did not work out as well as I had hoped, however, I had a great opportunity to work with a teacher to reflect on how to improve. I also found out this month that I need to retake some parts of the National Boards to achieve certification. Again, this is giving me an excellent opportunity to plan a writing unit of study in a fourth grade classroom and co-teach with a former teammate. This month, more than ever has been full of opportunities to try new things and reflect upon the journey.
I now have podcasts on the podcasts page if you would like to hear a mini-reflection and a CHAMPs revisit. Let me know what you think! On December 16th, the CI coaches have a county meeting and I will be sure to report back to you then.

Coordinator’s Wednesday

Wed, 8 Oct 2008 08:58:35 -0400

We are into October and PVES is on a roll! Today we will be focusing on collaborating with our colleagues to focus on the VSC and planning Language Arts. We will take some time to look at the Theme Test alignment and the upcoming theme test. While we plan we will take a closer look at the VSC and work together to differentiate concepts. I have the links for VSC toolkit, Performance Matters, Language Arts and make some time to check out Laura, Andrea Broomell, and Stephanie Kilchenstein modeling team planning on a podcast! I thought about planning in a different light after listening to this short, yet powerful podcast. Next week, we will be continuing to explore think alouds during our Wednesday afternoon. Happy Planning!

Vocabulary Development

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:39:36 -0400

WOW! The students are doing such a great job with helping me collect the data each Friday of our vocabulary quizzes. The students get together, add up the grade level totals, graph it, and write a message to be read on the morning announcements on Monday morning. I know that even though it is easy to see what the students do when they come down on Friday, the only way that this working so well is because of all the teachers’ hard work in the classrooms. EVERY class has been on-time every week and the data shows progress. That really amazes me since we are only in the third week of collecting the data.

As we talked about last Wednesday, using the L to J process is a great way to monitor our growth, but we can’t forget how we are teaching the words. Several teachers have stopped me to share how they are using the strategies that Laura and I shared and have already found one or two that they really like. In case you would like to look at some of the highlighted research we found, here is the powerpoint we shared- vocabulary.ppt If you would like to see how the strategies from the document we shared apply to your vocabulary, we would love to sit and plan some activities together!

We Made It!

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 22:36:58 -0400

We made it through the first week! I was eager to talk to students in the cafeteria and almost every student knew CHAMPs. It was a good sign that some students even said, “ I know, I know, we keep talking about the CHAMP.” That is a good sign! The student engagement committee met and we have more common area CHAMPs being created as I write this. If you are starting to feel frustrated with the new math or just want to see a lesson from a different perspective, please let me know. It is new to all of us, and I am eager to help as figure out the series. Thank you so much for welcoming me into the Perryville community. I am so excited to be here!

Welcome

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:12:26 -0400

WELCOME!!! Thank you for visiting my site! I hope everyone has had a great summer and feeling refreshed for the new year. I am going to get to meet some new co-workers August 4th at a vocabulary workshop so we will be ready to start the year off focusing on essential vocab. This summer has been full of fun activities. Above you will see a picture from the Kenny Chesney concert. I was too far away to get a good picture of him, but you can see my view. I got to spend some time at the beach too. I am so excited to get to meet everyone and hear about your summer events!