Innovations in Learning: We were pioneers; the first in New Haven to host a Cornerstone lab day. We won’t pretend that we were completely confident that it would go smoothly. But boy, it did. Okay, well there were a few minor kinks, but all in all it was a complete success! Our day began with a meet and greet and a warm welcome from our supportive and sharp-witted principal, Barbara Chock. She gave a brief synopsis of our Cornerstone Journey, thanked the participants and then it was time for the first professional development session. With the assistance of our talented colleague, instructional coach Laurian Kehoe, we gave a brief workshop on classroom environment and crafting. Laurian provided the participants with Diane Sweeney’s “Observation Guidelines,” a protocol sheet for observing a model lesson, and three “look fors” that observers would be focusing on: setting the stage for learning (stating objectives and giving a purpose for reading); modeling; and opportunities for oral language (including think-pair-share). We hoped these would be meaningful intentions for our colleagues to notice while observing the demonstration lesson. The participants seemed engaged in the material and anxious to move into the classrooms. The second part of the day included four demonstration lessons. Several of our staff members willingly opened their classroom doors and taught parts of the demonstration lessons. We are overwhelmed with gratitude and pride that our teachers represented Bishop Woods as exemplary teachers. The participant feedback indicates that all four lessons were well planned and executed and the students at Bishop Woods proved to be involved in rigorous, meaningful daily instruction. The next 45 minutes was devoted to debriefing. Each demonstration teacher offered time for the observers to ask questions, make comments and spark a dialogue to share ideas. Room 1 was alive; a beautiful exchange of ideas was taking place. Both the demonstration teachers and the participants enjoyed this opportunity. “Halls & Walls” during a working lunch was next on the agenda. All of the classrooms at Bishop Woods were open for visitors to see. The teachers and students were proud of their accomplishments and some visitors actually asked if they could come back next time with their cameras. On the feedback sheet one participant said what they valued most was, “Seeing all the classrooms and getting ideas from all the walls/displays they have. It was great!” Our presentation for the next part of the day was entitled, “Bringing Books to Life through Strategies and Applications.” We took another look at the metacognitive strategies, identified text elements best suited to teach each strategy, and then we perused children’s literature to match books to strategies. Teachers appreciated receiving the follow-up activities to crafting. At the end of the day,
we asked the participants to fill out a feedback form as a way
to inform us of what is working and what we can improve on as presenters
and as a school. The feedback was positive,
helpful and truly made our efforts seem worthwhile. One form read, “I
completely enjoyed this whole day. Everything was valuable
and very insightful.”
Stillmeadow Elementary School participated in a one-day Lesson Study with their literacy leadership team members on Tuesday, October 17, 2006. Lisa Cammarota and Mark Woodard, Cornerstone Coaches, facilitated the process. Their goals for the Lesson Study were to have their literacy leadership team experience the process, learn more about the facilitator’s role and develop their student-observation skills. Mark Woodard and Danny Silva, Differentiated Coach, taught the lessons on “conventions in writing” in their 5th grade classrooms as the other team members observed. One item that stood out during the Lesson Study was the students’ use of the “WILF” or “What I’m Looking For”. Stillmeadow was inspired to integrate this explicit student objective strategy after participating in last year’s Regional Meeting in Springfield, MA. Since then, other teachers have begun to use the strategy. Thanks to Danny’s hard work in laminating posters for the entire staff, every classroom has WILF posters that they can use and reuse on a daily basis. Below are some examples of what the WILF posters look like in Stillmeadow Elementary School:
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