Update and Staff Development Day #2

I've been on overload lately, and cannot believe it's mid-October. I guess that's a good thing? Classes have been good this year. We've done several lessons involving the "Magnificent Seven" and "Power Tools":

Learning Inventory
Building Community
Coding the Text
Marginalia
Golden Lines
Making Connections
KWL charts
Reciprocal Teaching
Making Predictions

We've been using the "Reading Essentials" book, which is a companion to our text. We have also used several articles, one on the scientific method and one about a new planet that has been discovered in a far-off galaxy.

Jan came for an official SURN visitation, and she said we were doing a great job. She took pictures of my Community Learning Wall. I thought my students were pretty rowdy that day, but I guess they weren't that bad after all.

We have our second staff development on November 2nd. We are splitting the eight of us into two groups, and each are responsible for a 45 minute session. Staff will rotate to each of our sessions (there is another unrelated session as well). My group will be working on Explicit Teaching. We are planning to start with an Anticipation Guide, and then we will use "Determining Important Ideas" to mark the text and complete a Mind Map. We will be using a selection about adolescent literacy, similar to one that we used at the iTunes conference. Wish us luck!