Hello Fellow Book Lovers!!
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| Building our classroom libraries around student interest and choice |
Today was Day 1 of the JCCS ELA Unit-Roll out for Cohort 2. It was a wild and rainy morning for a San Diego that has been dried out for quite some time. We all gathered in a small room at Marina Village. The rain was real, the flies were buzzing, and the AC was pumping (randomly!)... but I think the presence of so many books, the sound of the rain, and all the awesome people made the room feel kinda cozy. Melanie and I dropped supplies off for Maria to start, and then booked it back to the supply room to unbox the needed anchor texts for the training.
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| Box-cutting skills |
When we arrived back shortly to Marina Village the learning was in full swing. Maria led the group through the organizational style of the units, and the website where are the materials are housed (linked on right-hand side of blog under Resources/Links), and then we talked with our neighbor about the instructional shifts we were noticing, and what we were excited about.
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| Maria walking through a unit |
I'm not sure if it was the rain and all the books making me nostalgic, but I really connected to the memoir unit and the essential question: "What can the personal stories of others teach me about myself and the world?" I enjoyed learning that Leilah Kirkendoll likes to roller-skate (I do too, who knew?!), Alison Labastita loves cats, Donald Jackson has a '71 Chevy Malibu Chevelle he's fixing up and that Maria grew up on Kodiak Island! The more we get time to share, and learn together, the more we realize what Maya Angelou often said, "We are more alike than we are unalike!"
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| Cohort 2 Folks checking out the website |
I am looking forward to seeing the decorated Readers Notebooks, and the books my colleagues are all bringing to share out at the "Rock the Book Talk" tomorrow. I am also excited for this year as we all continue our journey to support each other and try out new things. As Shelly Goins said so truthfully in Staff Connections, "Well, sometimes teachers need support too. And it's okay. This is what it means to be a community of learners."
So True.
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| Cohort 2 Folks diving in |
Pick up your 2 Boxes of Books in the Parking Garage from 7:30-8:30
Tell us about the books you are reading and loving in the comments below!
Have a great day!!
It was a great day! I'm honored to work with the committed, passionate, diligent educators of the Juvenile Court and Community Schools. Their willingness to dig in and get to know these units, to envision them coming to life with their students was nothing less than inspiring. It's going to be a great year. And even better, I'm confident that by this time next year, I will be completely astounded by what teachers are doing with the ELA units! Thank you to Melanie Tolan and Sara Matthews for their hard work to help make this happen! I want to encourage all the teachers to reach out to Sara and Melanie as they begin to implement. Doing something new and complex by yourself never works out well! Use your brilliant coaches to jump in with you! I also want to know what your favorite anchor text ends up being, so far, mine is Fahrenheit 451. Maria
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