TA DA! One PD session down and 2 to go!
It was a wonderful, productive and interesting day today. Francine, Cheryl and I led our 4 Intermediate level teachers in a full day PD session. The Intermediate teachers are a neat bunch because....they put up with 7 and 8th graders all day, they are well informed about current practises, they don't mind a little conflict, their kids had really interesting writing to mark and ....some of them only have 9 or 12 kiddies in their split classes. Boy, can those immersion kids pump out pages and pages of creative work! Mon Dieu!
We started with a prayer and an overview of what Francine, Cheryl and I have been up to, our goals, what a TLLP is etc etc. Then, we watched a few videos from The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (hereafter called the LNS). We watched a clip of teachers moderating a piece of writing and we shared our thoughts and reflections afterwards. Next, we looked at....an LNS monograph. (Yeah I know...monograph is not a word ya see every day. It's just a piece of writing reflecting on one topic and showing research based best practises). We discussed the pitfalls of discussing and marking work together and agreed to some "Norms" for how we would conduct ourselves. We agreed to limit the brawls to 2 minutes and that name calling could only be in French!
Next, we looked at one piece of grade 7 writing as a large group. We ran into a few glitches. For example, the rubric had a few vague words and unclear qualifiers. We agreed to revise it for next time out. Also, some of the teachers let the kids do the work in 2 sessions, or write a draft and a good copy. Although, this wasn't how we had envisioned the on-demand task being administered, we agreed that next time we would more clear in our directions. Another glitch was a long discussion about whether the text form, genre, format should have been written on the answer sheet or whether we should expect 7 and 8th graders to determine the "best way" to write on a specific theme.
I can see Francine, Cheryl and I making some revisions, and tightening up our rubric for February. We were glad to receive the feedback and the discussion was very enlightening.
Next, we had a fabulous lunch of sandwiches and delicious little MandM brownies. Delicieux. The best part of PD is lunch! Why...well, we talked about all kinds of things and had a laugh and we compared some things happening in our classes and some of the struggles we are experiencing. We also talked about Differentiated Instruction and some MISA Ministry thingy that I knew nothing about.
After lunch we were on fire. Having gone into great detail looking at ONE piece of writing and experienced all the pitfalls, we were able to more quickly reach consensus on the rest of the gr 7 work. We then moved on to the grade 8 writing samples. It was really cool from a grade 3 teacher's perspective to see what the older kids can produce.
All in all a productive and busy day. Did we finish everything on our list? Nope. Did we remain focussed, productive and collegial? You bet. Did we wish we had 3 more hours? Uh huh. So...next week we shall meet again.
In the meantime, tomorrow is a new day, a new set of writing to assess, a new set of teachers to provide PD to and of course, a new delicious lunch to enjoy. The junior level teachers arrive in Formosa for 9 am and boy are they gonna have a hard time topping today.
