Staff Development Q & A

I thought it would beneficial to post the questions and responses to today's staff development on our blog in case other teachers have suggestions, comments, etc. that they wish to add. For those who did not attend this morning's session please feel free to provide your suggestions and comments as well.

Setting Objectives

• How do you currently share your class's current objectives? Essential questions on the board; Teachers goes over verbally; Have children read questions to each other;
• Do you currently set a language objective along with your content language? Vocabulary; Language objective covered in essential question;No-but we think about it; Yes-because of SIOP training; It is embedded in daily reading and writing-building background knowledge helps to integrate language instruction into content areas;
• What was one idea about setting objectives that really jumped out at you? Projecting brainstorming ideas for students; Surveys for parents & students; Created rubrics (generic, teacher or student created); Student/Teacher generated scavenger hunts;
• Do you think South Fork should consider setting reading goals as a summer enrichment initiative? If so, what ideas do you think would help in accomplishing this? Funding for (PreK-5) books; Check in, check out program; Communication with families; Packet to go home-picked up by parents; Book mobile to coincide with summer feeding program; Include Math and Writing; Prizes; Look at objectives students are weak in;

Providing Feedback

• What are your thoughts about using peer feedback? Have you used it in your classroom? Have students tell each other what they learned; Share writing and ask how they can improve; Teacher question students while in line;
• Feedback to your students...how have you done it in the past? How will you do it now? Share an example. Conferencing and quick score results (immediate feedback); Summarization-write in journals; What they did well in and what they need to work on; According to grade level-age appropriate; Immediate feedback as well as incentives for long term goals; Writing conferences; Comparing work samples from earlier in year; Graphing how many sight words they know; Graphing minute math
• Are you currently using technology in the classroom that generates immediate feedback to students? If so, provide an example. Online assessments; AR; Games (give answers);
• What are your thoughts about granting a student who does poorly on a classroom assessment an opportunity to make corrections based on feedback? Do you agree or disagree? Support your answer. Yes; Older students also need to be prepared for middle school; Based on teacher judgement; May be an issue with teacher, necessary to RETEACH; Gives students a chance to learn from mistakes; Take home to do; Give extra points/grades averaged;

Setting objectives and providing feedback

We had another good session on setting objectives and providing feedback with the specialists and the second grade team. Although we talked about different objectives, we still found that we could use similar strategies to receive feedback from the students when we are checking for understanding.


We talked about ways to write the essential question. We found that we could have one broad question for a unit and then more specific questions for lessons within the unit. We would keep the unit EQ up for the duration of the unit and the day to day EQ's would change based on the desired objective. These can be displayed on the board, on sentence strips, or posted on a unit board.

We then talked about ways to check for student understanding in closing the lesson. There are several good ways to assess if students learned the objective. A few of those are: 1. A ticket out the door- ask students to write down a sentence answering the essential question. They then hand it to you on their way out the door. 2. Think-Pair- Share- Students are asked to think about their answer to the essential question, or whatever objective you are checking. Then they turn to their neighbor to share their answer, then- they chose which answer to share with the group. 3. 3-2-1- You ask students to think about three things they learned in this lesson, write down 2 of them in their journal, paper, card, then share one thought with a partner or the group.



What other ideas do you have to add to closure activities to check for understanding of objectives?

Feedback from TWC Survey

Thank you to all who filled out the questions for the TWC Survey. Your responses were very specific and informative. I have and will continue to take your responses, suggestions, and criticism to heart and incorporate what I can for next year. If you did not turn in your responses- please do. I would like to hear from all of you.