Portfolio

Today and tomorrow, supporting those who help our students occurs in many fashions: collaborating face-to-face, watching pre-recorded videos, sharing resources, participating in classes (either in person, online, or blended), and in ways yet to be defined. The following is a sample showcase of how I support our teachers and leaders.

Coaching for Structured Collaboration

Individual Reflection

Small group collaboration

Bringing the ideas together

Have you ever seen 80+ high school students working together to address an issue for their organization where each person's voice was heard? I coached the student CEO of the Rocky Mountain FIRST Robotics team to develop a new structured-collaboration process which would involve all members in establishing the strategic goals and initial design for their competition robot.The objective was to engage all students, generate fresh ideas, reduce personal champions, and reduce input from adult mentors. Using a funding issue, the leaders piloted the new collaboation process so students could experience it and leaders could fine tune it. Watching 80+ high school students engage in a conversation was exciting.

Presenting

As learning becomes more individualized, video streams allow the learner to engage in their own time frame. Sh...What do you notice? discusses the importance of engaging students in discussions and reducing the amount of teacher talk.

Professional Development Facilitation Combined with Providing Student Help

Participants said the course is empowering, engaging,
inspiring, and the hands-on opportunity is invaluable.

So often we attend a professional development class and have high hopes of using the newly discovered strategies.  However, when we return to class, reality sets in and only minuscule changes occur (if any at all). Part of making changes in the classroom is having the opportunity to experiment with the new found strategies. Using a creative approach to professional development, I facilitated a professional develop course which combines helping students. Students participated in the course so teachers could try the new strategies. Then teachers reflected and planned new lessons. 

Participants engaged in discussions, conducted active research, experimented with strategies, and observed teachers in the development of fluency with basic math operations. Sessions split between working with students who are struggling to develop fluency and participating in reflective discussions based on experiences and observations. When working with students, teachers were able to participate in active research, experiment with strategies, and observe other teachers. The second half of the meeting time was for discussing our findings, collaboration, and brainstorming how we can integrate these strategies into classroom instruction.

Literacy Intervention – Safety in the White Board

The intervention students I work with often struggle with self-confidence, and they often do not wish to share their thinking for fear it is wrong. While working with students on various strategies, I allowed the students to write their initial thoughts on the white board. These may be key details, questions they had while reading, unknown words, etc. Because the board was viewed as temporary, they become more engaged in discussions and are more willing to be a risk-taker. They saw the white board as a fun way to participate and it allowed them to easily change their thinking as they talked about their ideas with classmates.

Literacy Intervention –  Working Inside the Text

As students became more familiar with identifying key literary elements within a complex text, they moved from using the white board to small group discussions before independently marking their text. In order for students, to deepen their, I taught them the Language of Response and provided prompt cards. They enjoyed challenging each other’s ideas and kept their discussions more focused upon task at hand. Language of Response includes prompts such as…

• I noticed that…
• I agree because…
• I disagree because…
• I’d like to go back to what _______ said about…
• I wonder…
• Where does the text support…
• Do you think that…
• I was confused when…
• What does ________ mean?
• I’m not sure what you are trying to say, can you say it another way?
• We are getting away from the text. 

Online Resources

You know what you need, but searching the web frequently is a time consumer. Gathering resources and placing them into a single location saves time for other people. As my school implemented close reading strategies, teachers needed new strategies for supporting students. I gathered various instructional strategies and provided a quick reference in the Reading Instructional Strategies Livebinder.