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| brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson |
Welcome back to the first FULL week of school! I have to admit, it was nice to ease into the school year with the two day week and then the four day week... now we're ready to take on the full five days... and so are our learners.
I was in and out of a few literacy classrooms last week and I noticed a trend of teachers working REALLY hard to get to know their learners and to build community within classrooms. This important work of getting to know our learners serves as the foundation for everything we do. While we sometimes put pressure on ourselves to fit everything we need to into a day, we must remember to grant ourselves the time to just listen to our learners. Listen to what they say. Listen to what they don't say. Take the time to get to know their stories. I'm currently reading brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. In this book Jacqueline Woodson shares her story. As I read this book I've been reflecting on the stories that belong to our learners... each as powerful and as valuable as the story of Ms. Woodson's. I'm thankful to see you all making the time throughout the day to build relationships, to listen and to truly understand the little people you interact with on a daily basis.
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| brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson p. 278 |
In literacy PLC this year our work will focus on getting to know our learners as readers, writers and as people in order to develop a learner experience that grows each and every one of our learners. Our goal this week is to norm around the administration of running records so that this assessment can become a tool to help US get to know OUR learners, rather than a data point that we submit in a system for someone else. At our next PLC we will norm around the analysis of running records. This is where we study what the learner did or did not do in order to determine areas of strength & next steps and to plan for intentional instruction.
Marie Clay says, "If a child is a struggling reader or writer, then the conclusion must be that we have not yet discovered the best way to help him or her learn." Let's put our time and energy into listening to our learners and into studying our learners this year so that we are able to discover the best ways in which to help every child grow.
Vertical Literacy PLCs:
Hawthorne STEM - Tuesday, September 13 @7:30 in the Collaboration Space
STEM Randall - Wednesday, September 14 @3:15 in the Collaboration Space
I hope your week is filled with the space to listen to our learners' stories.
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