May 6, 2011
Dear Teachers,
We are approaching our final two Reading Street in service dates for the 2010-2011 school year on May 24th at MacDonald Middle School from 4:15-5:15 p.m. Followed by a voluntary June 13th in service (paid at the curriculum rate) at the same location for those that can attend, from 8:30 a.m. –3:30 p.m. We will also begin to disperse more of the Reading Street materials to buildings and classrooms as the pace picks up for remaining PD this year and as we look forward into the summer and fall. The logistics of disbursing materials to schools is complicated by current staffing considerations. As many of you know staffing patterns for the 2011-2012 school year may look a little different than they do today. This will require building principals and building teams to shift materials as staffing changes take place. We are keeping a tight inventory of what is being shipped to buildings in order to make changes down the road.
Your ELA elementary chairs continue to press forward with professional development considerations and recognize feedback from you as being an important part of their planning. We are working on the design of your PD and hope to provide engaging experiences that provide a model of implementation for Reading Street for a typical classroom day/week. While questions certainly remain, the non –negotiables for each grade level are defined in the attached document. Here are a few others thoughts:
There is much to work out yet in terms of implementation. We all know that good teachers know that new programs take time to implement and they require a collaborative effort on the part of everyone. Your support of one another will be important. PD will be built around common grade level time for conversation, planning, and implementation strategies. We anticipate that grade level meeting time will begin as part of the June 13th voluntary PD and perhaps on into the summer should teachers choose to meet on their own time as teachers often do.
So, the journey with Reading Street has just begun as part of the district’s RtI / literacy initiative and alignment with CCSS. Insuring that we have a strong core reading program as part of our tier one work with students supports our ability to intervene early and often with students as we build great readers of many genres. Our current genre units will be reviewed and kept in your classroom for now. As the district makes a transition over the course of the 2011-2012 school year to the new Common Core State Standards a determination will be made as to what portions of the genre units may be applicable. Conducting a gap analysis between what we are currently doing and the new CCSS will be an important undertaking next year. For now we are still teaching to the current GLCEs, but are informed by the new CCSS as we take the cross walk between the two sets of standards. Reading Street addresses genre and provides support and access for current GLCEs, as well as the CCSS.
When visiting schools that have implemented Reading Street, teachers have observed some very good methods of both organization of materials, and their instructional day/week. This information can also be shared with grade level teachers as we move forward. Buildings will have to determine how best to organize material for their use and then appropriate building funds and space to support the organization of materials.
We’ll see you on Tuesday, May 24th for our Reading Street PD and again, if your schedule allows, at the June 13th full day voluntary PD before heading into the summer months. Please anticipate that the remaining sets of building and classroom materials will be arriving at your schools shortly. We will identify which materials you should bring to the remaining PDs. See you soon.
Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions-
Grades 5-12
As we discussed in some of our professional development sessions, strategies done before reading are most useful for students' reading comprehension.
Often times, introducing new content or new concepts can be overwhelming for students and teachers alike. Through the use of Seed Discussions, students are able to preview the new content or concepts for things that they can relate to. They seek out information that looks familiar to them, things they don’t quite understand, and things that look interesting to them, including new vocabulary. Seed Discussions allow students to identify and develop topics important to their own thinking. (from ReadWriteThink.org)See this lesson, and related handout for how to do a Seed Discussion with your students.
Research:
Children who read on grade level by the end of third grade are more successful in school, work, and in life. This KIDS COUNT special report affirms a commitment by the Casey Foundation to help ensure that all students are proficient in reading by the end of third grade and help narrow the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.
Click on the title above to download and read the entire report.
The next Reading Street Professional Development- Grades k-6
May 24th, 2011 4:15-5:15 MacDonald Middle School.
Topics:
Technology options of Reading Street: Leveled reader database, lesson planner
Assessment in Reading Street
Materials : Teacher Editions, First Stop Manuals, Fresh Reads for Differentiated Test Practice, Baseline Assessments, Assessment Handbooks and Weekly Tests.
Sharing our Professional Development Experiences- K-12
As you can see from my last post, some teachers attended MRA and are sharing information here. If you attended a professional development session outside the district and would like to share anything, please let me know, or "comment" on the MRA post to share your own sites and materials.
