KAGAN Structures Workshop

What are your thoughts about Kagan Structures?

Site Based Budget

It's time to evaluate our budget.  We need to look at how we spent our money last year, and what changes we may want to consider for next year.  I am seeking input from everyone because everyone is affected.  Site-Based funds come from the state and are distributed through the district based on per-student spending formulas.  You can open the budget attachments to see how our money was budgeted for this year and how much we have for next year.  What works well for you in this process and what would you like to see different?  Keep in mind this money is completely separate from our Activity Fund.  Activity funds are generated through fundraisers such as the Coyote Fun Run. 

In-House Professional Learning

I appreciate our facilitators giving us an update on what they've learned from the content coordinators.  I felt like Lynn's presentation on CLOSE reading was a great way to provide more in-depth learning on something we all need to know about.  If this is a good model, I would like to continue to look at having more in-house professional learning.  If you review my Belief Statements on this blog page, you will see that I believe we have more to learn from each other than any other source. 

Boys in Elementary School

Do boys and girls learn and behave differently?  There is a lot of research to suggest that boys and girls react differently to the elementary school environment.  I have attached a veteran teacher's perspective who provides some ideas on how to create a boy-friendly environment.  After reading the attached article, what are your thoughts about boys in elementary school?  Click on the picture above to access the full article by Kelley King. 

Small Group Collaboration

PE, Music, Special Ed, EAs, Math teachers, and others had the opportunity to work together yesterday for several hours.  The idea was that like-minded teachers will get more done in smaller groups discussing relevant things than being placed in a large group setting with information that doesn't directly pertain to their work.  Having so many different breakout groups on campus days is a new thing and came about because of the feedback we received from you after last year's staff development days.  Please share your thoughts about yesterday's sessions, what went well, and what you might like to see in the future. 

Walker Creek Writing

Writing can be a very difficult thing to teach and an even harder thing to grade objectively.  Making sense of planning, teaching, and assessing writing is a challenge at every grade level.  The purpose of having Norma Jackson come and work with us was to provide you with practical tools for the writing process and to begin building vertical alignment with our approach to writing at Walker Creek.  The focus is on excellent writing and not on STAAR.  We want excellent results on STAAR of course, but we are really looking at something much bigger.  We want to develop life-long writing skills in our scholars that will continue to build throughout middle school and high school.  As I listened in the afternoon session yesterday, I thought about two things.  If we all have the same framework for the writing process and if we use the same tools for assessment, our scholars will be better equipped to write as they move into fourth and fifth grades.  While we don't have a writing crisis at Walker Creek, there is room to improve.  I believe this is a matter of getting on the same page with instruction and assessment and not about more, more, more writing.  What are your thoughts about the tools from the Norma Jackson's workshop and how they apply to us?