Did I participate in too many pro-d activities this week?

This week was very busy… on top of the usual happenings of our class (field trips! tea parties! birthdays! projects! assemblies!) I ended up attending numerous professional development activities…

Tuesday Math– In the morning I attended a workshop about differentiated instruction in math with my school advisor and other intermediate teachers. With a class as diverse as ours all of the ideas the speaker was sharing seemed highly relevant. I found her presentation style to be very engaging too. An idea she mentioned that I really agree with is that we shouldn’t rush students along to abstract thinking too quickly! The concrete demonstrations that can be achieved through rich problems and manipulatives do not water down the math learning, they only enhance it. I loved the cuisenaire rods she uses to teach fractions. They are beautiful materials!

Wednesday Literacy– On Wednesday I went to an evening workshop on Changing Results For Young Readers (CR4YR). Faye Brownlie was amazing, she does such as good job of modelling the strategies she teaches. I was able to use some of the ideas from her workshop the very next morning with a book called Salmon Twins, a simple read aloud that I was able to revisit in a very rich inquiry minded way after this workshop. The LST from our school just happened to observe this lesson and even she was impressed! Some of the content from the workshop was a refresher for me on strategies I already knew and some ideas were brand new to me. I knew enough that I didn’t feel lost but had enough to learn to keep it interesting! This workshop was so good I would honestly attend it again. As an intermediate teacher I’ve been finding my background in literacy research and intervention to be much more valuable and applicable than I expected. Intermediate classes have a range of readers from primary to high school!

Thursday More Math!– Thursday after school was a small workshop on division for intermediate teachers with the district’s math coordinator. She was very nice. I really appreciated her perspective on algorithms. Some teachers still choose to use them but I felt like she gave me a lot of other options.

Friday District Pro D, Aboriginal Education– Friday was District Pro D at the Longhouse. I learned more about coast salish culture and the whole experience was very interesting. The workshop was really powerful. At one point hearing from a survivor of a residential school was difficult. Being in the longhouse made me feel like I was part of a community of learners who were brought together to make a commitment to contributing to truth and reconciliation. Our part is to try and understand and incorporate aboriginal knowledge, culture and ways of knowing. Our part is also to support young people so they can be leaders of the community. I also got a chance to briefly meet the district Aboriginal Curriculum Implementation  Mentor Teacher. She is coming to my school next week to meet with me about the language arts and social studies unit I have coming up.