Staff Development

I finally did get to work with a district on their opening staff development days on Comprehension. It was so much fun! We read lots and lots of Cinderella Books and then compared and contrasted the characters and made inferences about them. There are over 400 versions of Cinderella --well that is what I read--but we worked with about 10 of them. Here is some of the character analysis work that we did.

and here is some more

One important thing I learned from this work is...if you want to give your state test scores a bump, get everyone working on character analysis beginning with their read aloud work in kinder. If the children hear the same language and the same prompts surrounding character development as they are growing as readers, they will understanding the process and be able to answer all those types of questions on the state tests!

My student teachers met their classroom teachers and their new students last Friday. This is a really exciting time! It is an awesome experience to watch a student turn into a teacher right before my eyes.

Have a great new school year!

Comprehension

It is that time of year again. I am currently finishing up a staff development presentation on Comprehension - Going Deeper. There is a spotlight on comprehension right now - as there should be! I have spent lots of time working with teachers on beginning reading and I think we have all done a great job on teaching strategies for getting into words and using a constructionist viewpoint on following the child on his path of learning to read and now we need to go back (as we so often do in education) with a stronger emphasis on understanding. Children need more conversations with others about the text, and interactions with the text and reflections on their readings. As we start our new year you may be interested in some of these books:
I just finished a couple of tpt products to help children with retelling.




http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Retelling-a-Story-With-Jabber-the-Reteller-1370729
graphic from Scrappin Doodle