Sunday, April 3, 2016

The Educator Collaborative Gathering April 2

I am linking up with Margaret Simon who hosts DigiLit Sundays on her blog, Reflections on the Teche.


Yesterday, I participated in some fantastic PD and all from home in my pjs. Can you get better than that? Chris Lehman put together some wonderful superstars in his The Educator Collaborative Gathering. If you didn't know about this or weren't able to watch the webinars yesterday, they are archived and you can go watch and learn when it's convenient for you - just follow the link, The Educator Collaborative Gathering.

I began with the keynote by listening to Smokey Daniels and Sara Ahmed. I was fortunate enough to hear them speak before at a conference in New Orleans in January 2015. These two are fantastic and really explain the importance and relevance of inquiry and collaboration in the classroom, the importance of listening to your students, and really following their interests. Speaking from personal experience, I know if my students have choice and voice, then I don't have to work on buy in. It's there and their level of dedication, involvement, and investment are off the charts.

Another session I listened to was Notebook Time: Bringing Discovery and Play Back into the Writing Classroom with Rebekah O'Dell and Allison Marchetti. I really enjoyed this session. They talked about the first 5 - 7 minutes of class time being devoted to notebook time and what that looks like. They said there was lots of modeling that went on at the beginning of the year, so students understood what risk taking looked like, with a gradual release. They used free writes, poems, sentence study, data and images. The only thing I don't currently use is data. I find this really intriguing because they said one thing they hear from colleges is that students don't understand how to interpret statistics. I thought this was a great take-away and I plan to implement using data this week into my classroom. I love the idea of having students look at and interpret data. I think this will be a great spring board for both conversation and writing.

There were so many fantastic sessions yesterday. If you weren't able to participate, it's well worth your time to take a look at the archived session. I know you'll come away with something new to try in your classroom.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for linking up and reflecting on your sessions. These were both sessions that I didn't watch. I totally believe in an element of play in writing. My students enjoy experimenting with voice. During the SOLC, a few boys had intruding voices in their pieces. Not sure where they learned that craft move, but they sure had fun with it. Thanks for linking. I hope you will join us again for DigiLit Sunday.

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  2. I have been following Allison and Rebekah's blog for a while and was thrilled to hear from them "in person." I love the message that they are providing. It is clearly needed at the secondary level. Notebook Time was a fantastic session.

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  3. Janie, thanks for sharing. When we walk away with practical ideas for teaching we spend a good day. I like that you have a goal for your lessons this week that you garnered from the Ed Collab Gathering. Have a great week of learning.

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