In a previous blog post I noted how quickly our release days associated with this project seem to fly by, and today is yet another example of that phenomenon. For those newly involved in at TLLP or who are wondering what it might be all about, here’s a synopsis of how my colleague and I are spending our day today:
First, we spent some time catching one another up on how things had been going in our respective classes with the new toy. Dale’s been using it a lot more for math “bansho-like” lessons, whereas I am just beginning to get into that aspect of it, and have been focussing more on the Oral Language stuff.
Then we reviewed the results of a staff pre-survey we had recently sent out to colleagues via Survey Monkey, and arranged a meeting with our principal to share the results and plan for how best to serve the PD needs that emerged.
Afterwards, we had a discussion about teaching the problems we had “culled” from various sources in a more developmentally appropriate manner, so we decided to begin sorting the problems thus. We also spent some time on a blank template for putting together our problems, so that there would be some consistency for the students in terms of presentation. (As an added bonus, we figure this will also be a great model of effective use of headings, which we are trying to teach through "features of print and text" in Literacy!)
As we began putting more lessons together and posting on the “Lesson Plans” page of our site, we realised that things were becoming rather cluttered, and that we had better develop more pages in order to sub-categorize lessons for more effective surfing. (We hope you like the new drop down menus and sub-menus under the Lesson Plans tab!) We also found ourselves rather distracted by the capabilities of the Smart Board software, which we have not yet really had a chance to explore! So we did a bit of that. (Pretty neat stuff!)
Finally, we created and posted more lessons, as well as a blog post, and a Facebook link.
In some sense, we got a lot done. At the same time, I was amazed at how quickly the day seemed to fly by yet again!! Thankfully, we still have a few release days left this fall, which we hope to use to complete our math problem lesson schema, as well as visit one or more colleagues in other schools using bansho and/or IWB in their classrooms.
Then we reviewed the results of a staff pre-survey we had recently sent out to colleagues via Survey Monkey, and arranged a meeting with our principal to share the results and plan for how best to serve the PD needs that emerged.
Afterwards, we had a discussion about teaching the problems we had “culled” from various sources in a more developmentally appropriate manner, so we decided to begin sorting the problems thus. We also spent some time on a blank template for putting together our problems, so that there would be some consistency for the students in terms of presentation. (As an added bonus, we figure this will also be a great model of effective use of headings, which we are trying to teach through "features of print and text" in Literacy!)
As we began putting more lessons together and posting on the “Lesson Plans” page of our site, we realised that things were becoming rather cluttered, and that we had better develop more pages in order to sub-categorize lessons for more effective surfing. (We hope you like the new drop down menus and sub-menus under the Lesson Plans tab!) We also found ourselves rather distracted by the capabilities of the Smart Board software, which we have not yet really had a chance to explore! So we did a bit of that. (Pretty neat stuff!)
Finally, we created and posted more lessons, as well as a blog post, and a Facebook link.
In some sense, we got a lot done. At the same time, I was amazed at how quickly the day seemed to fly by yet again!! Thankfully, we still have a few release days left this fall, which we hope to use to complete our math problem lesson schema, as well as visit one or more colleagues in other schools using bansho and/or IWB in their classrooms.