Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Book Study, this FRIDAY! Feb 12th!

We will have a book study this Friday, Feb 12th. Each group will have a facilitator, to help guide the meeting. We are on chapter 2, Lesson Prep. This will be good review and time to talk about what is working in our lesson prep.

Remember, you do not have to answer all the questions. You can pick which questions you would like to answer as a group.

Please read chapter 2, Lesson Prep, Pages 22 through 51, before FRIDAY. When you are done with the book study, please reflect on the most valuable things you have learned, from the book and the discussion with your colleagues, and write a 1-paragraph reflection.

Post your reflection on the blog. Do not post answers to the questions.

Book study groups:
Group 1) Noel, Julia, Paul, Melissa, Sandy and Katie
Group 2) Jeff, John F., Erin, John, Matthew, Vonnie and ChanaSue

3 comments:

  1. The most valuable thing I learned from Ch. 2 was that we should focus on bringing the students up to grade-level instead of "dumbing down" the curriculum to lower the bar enough that ELLs can pass. As I see it, the biggest challenge to doing that is having sufficient time (lesson planning and instructional time) and resources (visual aids, realia, etc.) to provide the kind of scaffolding that the book says we should be doing. My experience so far has been that we often do not have the resources at school to provide this for our students.

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  3. Matthew, I appreciate your reflection; you did a great job and this is what I am looking for. Reflect on your learning and think about how you will apply it.

    There is so much we can do with SIOP that we do have resources for. Think of all the wealth of cultural resources in the community. You can ask your students to bring in realia from time to time. This would be REAL realia, things that students can relate to. For example if you have an idea to use dry-fish in a lesson, ask your students if someone could bring some in. Then guide a class discussion in the sequence of steps necessary to make dry fish. At the end of the lesson, maybe everyone could have a piece of dry fish. Just an idea that may spark other ideas of your own that relate to lessons that you are teaching.

    There are a lot of strategies and interaction activities that do not require more planning time, just a little practice integrating them into your practice. Try to focus on these things that do not take more time or resources.

    Thanks for sharing. It is good to know what teachers are thinking and working through.

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