Today was very productive. I had a full day out of my classroom to work on my own "Mentor Texts for French Immersion" project. As you’ll recall I am locating books that can be used as part of the Writer’s workshop as Mentor texts, and helping French Immersion teachers to use them.
First, I unpacked, stamped and organized all the books I have managed to locate since April. It was fun to see the books come out of their boxes and see the light of day. I organized the books by genre and then by grade level. I know now which teachers will be working with which touchstone books.
Next, I took a few hours to plan out the actual PD session that I will be leading in April or May. I broke the day down into goals for each hour-long block. I now have a pretty solid plan of what this day will look like. Next time I have some time to work on the project I will have to make up my personal "To Do Lists" for each hour block.
I next took some time to review the Lucy Calkins "Launching" module and I choose a section to share with the teachers during our PD. The section relates to using Mentor texts during a Mini-lesson. I made copies for everyone.
Perhaps the toughest part of the day was making up a useful template for the teachers. This template will guide the teachers through the books I have chosen, giving them options to consider, points to ponder etc etc. I had Denis, our francophone expert, look it over. Making this template took ages because I am so picky about making PD useful to teachers. I dread the thought that a teacher might attend my PD session and feel like his/her time was wasted.
