Welcome 3 rd Grade Teachers!

1. Welcome 3rd Grade Teachers! August 14th District In-Service Presented by: Jennifer Ebert Please make sure you sign in and give your email and room number. Please sign in any fellow teachers who are not here and give their emails as well. Put a * by the grade level chair.

2. About Me • Jennifer Ebert • I was the literacy coach at White Knoll Elementary. • This is my 16th year of teaching. I have taught Kindergarten, Reading Recovery, and 1st Grade. I received my bachelor’s in education from Clemson University and my master’s from Carolina. I also received my master’s +30 and my Educational Specialist from Carolina. • jebert@lexington1.net

6. Getting to Know You • Tell your team: • Something you did over the summer • What you value in a colleague • What is a motto you try to live by • What is one goal you have this year • Fill out your Getting to Know You paper if you haven’t already done so

7. Passion • Definition: A driving motivation or attitude; strong, forceful devotion to a cause; a deep overwhelming feeling/emotion. • Life without passion is simply existing, not living. • How would you describe your teaching last year? Did you have a passion for teaching?

8. Passion Killers • DISTRACTION– Did all the other requirements of your job distract you from your passion of teaching your students? Did your personal life distract you ? • APATHY– Did you become apathetic in doing what is best for your students? Did you simply exist each day at work? Was there no joy or excitement in your teaching? Did you teach with a sense of urgency?

9. Motivation • When we as educators attempt to cover too much content too quickly… by sacrificing deep, rich teaching, we begin chipping away at our students’ motivation. Isn’t this also true for teachers? • Authentic interest is generated when students are given the opportunity to delve deeply into an interesting idea. --Kelly Gallagher Readicide (2009)

10. Teacher Effectiveness • Having a good teacher versus having a poor teacher, particularly in the early years, can determine whether a young student is put in an honors track or a remedial track. As Haycock notes, a student’s teacher may determine the difference ‘between entry to a selective college and a lifetime at a burger joint.’ ---Readicide (2009)

11. Haycock Studies • Haycock highlights the long-term effects of teaching when she notes that ‘even two years after the fact, the performance of fifth-grade students is still affected by the quality of their third-grade teachers’ (1998).

12. Continued… • The single most important element of any classroom program is a knowledgeable and effective teacher. Richard Allington & Cunningham 1997. • 59 percentile to 76 percentile with effective teachers. • 60 percentile to 42 percentile with ineffective teachers. • 32 point difference

13. National Institute of child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (2007) • The typical child “stands only a 1 in 14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience.” • Teachers are spending way too much time on drill-and-kill activities. As a result, students are not getting enough time developing deeper problem-solving and reasoning skills.

14. Study Continued • The typical teacher scored only 3.6 out of 7 points for “richness of instructional methods” and 3.4 for providing “evaluative feedback” to students on their work.

15. More Disturbing Facts • One of three high school students in the U.S. drops out of school • 50 percent of Latinos and African-Americans will not graduate • 55 percent of people who read at a “below basic” level are unemployed. • Half of the adults in this country do not read either to themselves or to their children. To Read or Not to Read (2007)

16. What Can We Do? • Discover your purpose for teaching! • Make it your passion! • If you have a passion, you will teach with a sense of urgency! • To keep the passion alive, be involved in continuous professional development with your colleagues!

17. Celebrate your life! Youtube: The Last Lecture Dr. Randy Pausch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ya9BXClRw

18. Literacy Specialist Role • Focus of Visits (focus of visits on one side and dates on the other side handout) • Professional Development – We are in the process of planning this and it will be offered monthly. More information to follow. There will also be videos you can watch, professional titles/chapters, etc. (Back of Getting to Know You sheet/1 point per hour/write ideas for professional development.) • Grade Level Planning – When I am at your school, I will be meeting with you as a group during your planning time. Put the dates in your planner so as to not schedule any parent-teacher conferences or other meetings during that time. • I will email you ahead of time reminding you of our day together. Please email me ahead of time any questions you may have that we can discuss that day. • There will be a focus tied to each grade level planning that we will be discussing. • Core Support – Pacing Guides, Resources, and district’s focus: Collaborative Planning and Common Assessments

19. Literacy Specialist Role cont. • Resources – website with specific information for each grade level • http://lexington1literacy.wikispaces.com • Data Analysis – problem solve with your Dominie data • Observations – I’ll be visiting every classroom while I’m at your school. I’ll also have a flip phone to video lessons to share with others. While I’m at your school, I’ll be looking for evidence that our focus topics are happening. I want to highlight good things that are going on and to see core implementation. I will email you ahead of time the observation tool for that focus. • Coaching in the Classroom – Coaching classrooms are available to go to observe practices being implemented. There will be a 2nd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade classroom as coaching classrooms. If you would like to see one of them you may make a request to your principal.

20. Quarter 1 Rotations Just through the 1st Nine Weeks See handout for the dates Please do not schedule conferences on these dates. PES: Sept. 8, Sept. 28, Oct. 15

21. New LCF • Due to budgets, we will not be getting new folders; however, the criteria for the information that is to be in the folders needed to be updated. This is why you just have one cardstock copy. You can staple copies of it on the front of the old Literacy Collection folder. You HAVE to make copies of this new folder for each child to fill out and place in his/her folder. You can use old LC folders or even use regular manila folders. • 3rd grade requirements: Teacher: Grade Three Aug. – May Aug. – May to Guide Instruction Informal running records with MSV in small group guided reading/reading conference records Aug. & May (Benchmark running record using Dominie with MSV) Aug., Oct., Jan., & May Writing samples dated and scored using district rubric *End of Year Text Level: Tier 1 2 3 (circle one) End of year minimum text level expectation =11

22. LCF continued: • At some of our grade level meetings, we will be using our LCF for discussions. • Dominie – Nancy Lind’s role/Dominie Trainer • Supervise the set-up and maintenance of kits • Provide training • Monitor for completion of benchmarks • Test overflow of students going to Tier II • Testing Windows (Sept. 9-30) • Reading conference forms for grades 3-5. These will be emailed to you. These three are suggestions for you. You may not like these forms; however, look at them for the information they provide to help guide you during a conference. Reading conferences are not “what are you reading, how is it going?”

23. Reading Conferences • Informal Reading Conference 1.doc • Informal Reading Conference 2.doc • Informal Reading Conference 3.doc

24. Definition of Core Our ELA program is standards driven. • The core curriculum is based on the 2008 academic standards for ELA. • Our core instructional model is balanced literacy and differentiated instruction. • Our core materials for the district are: • the adopted texts: Rigby Literacy (K-2) and Houghton Mifflin Reading (3-5) • leveled texts • trade books • Units of Study • Riverdeep Reading • Adopted materials are to be supplemented (NOT supplanted) by the other core materials.

25. Pacing Guides • Common Assessments = This is a district focus for the year. Training will be provided by the district on the Oct. 19 in-service day. • Pacing Guides were designed to keep your team focused on the indicators so that you can create and give common assessments. Follow the pacing guides. • Note at the top of the Pacing Guide: The following indicators should be introduced to students during the first nine weeks. Teachers are expected to continuously address the stated indicators throughout the remainder of the school year. • We will be having focus groups before the end of this year. Make notes about the pacing guides throughout the year for feedback.

26. Break

27. Getting Started with Reading Workshop… • First you need to get your literacy procedures, starting with independent reading, in place before any assessment begins. • Possibilities of Getting Started: • First 20 Days of Independent Reading (Fountas and Pinnell) • Daily 5 (Boushey and Moser) • Literacy Workstations (Debbie Diller) (These possibilities can be found on our literacy wiki-space site. Feel free to look at other grades on the wiki-space site too.)

28. Getting Started with Writing Workshop… • The 4 writing samples for the LCF need to be dated and scored. • The rubric needs to be posted in the classroom for students to refer to. Students need to use the rubric and be familiar with it as well. • Possibilities of Getting Started: • First 20 days of Writer’s Notebook (ppt. on our literacy site) • First 20 days of Independent Writing (Fountas and Pinnell; on literacy website)

29. Observation Tool • For each balanced literacy component, there’s an observation tool that we’ll be using. This will be sent to you ahead of time so that you’ll know what we’ll be looking for. • Questions to consider when planning • What is your instructional purpose? • How did you determine your instructional purpose? • What did you observe in students that helped you know your purpose was accomplished?

30. Focus for 1st Visit = Purposeful Read Alouds • We’ll be looking for evidence of purposeful read alouds during our first visit. • Purposes can include: • Building Community, Making Connections • The Relatives Came; If I Were in Charge of the World • Comprehension Strategies • Infer: Where the Wild Things Are; Annie and the Old One • Building Bridges [Explicitly Teach] with the Reading and Writing Indicators • Organization: Snowflake Bentley; The Important Book (Turn and talk to brainstorm what could be seen in your classroom even if you’re not doing a read aloud when we’re visiting you.)

31. Observation Focus for my 1st Visit: Purposeful Read Alouds Make a goal for yourself based on the Evidence side of the observation tool to strive towards for read alouds.

32. Observation Focus for my 1st Visit: Writing Rubric Use Make a goal for yourself based on the Evidence side of the observation tool to strive towards for writing rubric use.

33. Debbie Miller says… “My wish for you can define your beliefs and align your practices to these beliefs: How do you go about teaching kids something new? What principles guide you? How do you know if kids are getting it? What do you do when they don’t?”

34. “When getting done takes precedence over doing, when finishing becomes more important than figuring out, we’ve lost sight of why we became teachers in the first place, we’ve lost sight of what we know to be true…we’ve forgotten that children learn by doing. And learning by doing takes time. I believe learning is maximized when the lessons I design are purposeful, interactive, and engaging with real-world applications.”

35. Walkthetalk.com Nature of Success http://www.walkthetalk.com/pages/inspirational-movies.htm

36. jebert@lexington1.net