Teachers working together

As the science lead teacher for my grade level, it is my goal to make sure my team learns everything tey can about Science instruction. This week, we had a Science TDE (temporary duty elsewhere). On these days, we get subs for our classroom so that we can meet as a team for professional development. Our day began with a great demo lesson from one of our fellow teachers. The lesson included just the engage and explore phase of the 5 E's for Science.












Then we went back to the conference room and debriefed the lesson. Then as a team, we wrote the rest of the lesson plan for that benchmark. Our next step was to review the components of the 5E's and discuss how that fits into a workshop model. We spent the rest of our time, taking the 2nd 9 weeks Essential Questions and writing 5E plans to go with them. The best part of the day was that the teachers were able to spend time collaborating with each other creating lessons that each of them had ownership in. What more could we ask for!

Teachable Moments

Have you ever had a time when something just happened by chance and you realize that WOW...that would be great for the kids to learn. Well that has been my experience this week. On Friday, I adopted a new stray kitten found outside my classroom. He had a sister but a friend took her. Our new addition is about 4 weeks old and his name is Rafiki. When I shared this with the kids they were ecstatic. I realized that documenting his life cycle would be a great learning experience for all of them. Many kids don't have kittens or have ever seen a kitten this young. Each week or so I will post new information on our class blog about how Rafiki is growing and changing and taking pictures all the while. I think the kids will learn more from this real life experience than any book could teach them.

Each month we complete a board outside our classroom. This is our Standards Based Bulletin Board. A standards board is where work that meets the "standard" is displayed. The teacher includes what standard the work meets, a task to explain what the work entails, work samples, and commentary. Our first standards board was a math board that included Patterns as our work sample. Here are some pictures of our board. (If you click on the individual picture it will enlarge).