Skip to Content

Expeditionary Learning National Conference

Take Aways from National Conference Baltimore 2013

Ida Beal 

Southwest Baltimore Charter School

  • Intensives- interventions all students are involved in at the same time and students are either being extended or having an intervention. 40 mins long Monday – Thursday. Students change 3 times a year.
  • Students use NWEA data to set goals and graph to show their continued growth.
  • All crew groups are mixed and they stay with their leader.
  • Crew has a crew leader (student) this students runs all parts of the crew with the guidance of the teacher.
  • A part of every trimester students reflect on how they have improved in each subject area and what their next steps are going to be.
  • Internal Profile Assessment- identifies the most important words that describe you internally. Students, teachers, and administrators all take the assessment, the words are posted in the classrooms and it is a common language used to address all the needs of students and staff.

 

Student Lead Conferences using Voice Thread

*Students write their own scripts for their portfolio picks.

*Students choose 4 artifacts to share with their parents.

  • Discussion about what makes high quality work.
  • Students use Ipod touches to take pictures of their artifacts.
  • Parents are asked to reflect on their child’s work and leave a message for their child on voice thread.
  • Voice thread is only done once a year with student lead conferences.
  • Voice thread could also be used for brainstorming on writing in a story, working on fluency.

 

Preparing Leaders through the Habits of Mathematicians

*Students are given a problem to grapple with. They are asked to:

*Make sense of the problem and persevere in solving them

*Reason abstractly and quantitatively

    • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
    • Model with Mathematics
    • Use appropriate tools and strategically
    • Attend to precision
    • Look for and make use of structure
    • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning
  • Using a KWS chart (What you know!, What you want to know!, Are there any special conditions?) to tracking thinking

 

 

 

Supporting Students through the Revision Process

  • Teacher and students look at artifacts for what they are trying to create. The teacher and students create a criteria list that includes what the artifacts contained that they must include in their product. The criteria lists are then used by the students to create their product.
  • Students fill out a reflection piece that asks them what are the next steps they are going to take to have a high quality product.
  • Classmates and teacher provide descriptive feedback to help aid the student in their revision. This can be done as a gallery walk and sticky notes.
  • Authors websites are used to make the connection to real authors who go through the revision process.

 

 

Empowering all Students in Literacy Instruction 

*Students used poetry binder to work on fluency. Two voice poems and class created poems were included.

*Students and teacher had a calendar to set date of next meeting.

*CAFE online~ www.ccpensieve.com $69.00 can be carried from year to year with student information.

  • Have students tape themselves and then have other students listen to the tapings for listen to reading. It motivates students to be more on task and fluent.
  • 7 steps from assessment to instruction:
    • assess individual student
    • discuss findings with students
    • set goal and identify strategies with student
    • student declares goal on menu and in notebook
    • teacher fills out individual conferring sheet
    • teacher fills out strategy group forms
    • Ready for instruction

*SNAP Concept Chart 

Purpose- the concept chart could be used when students need to summarize information and create a visual representation of a text.

  1. read text
  2. Build a concept chart that includes the following information:

*S- Summary of the text

*N- New Learning- include as many key ideas as needed

*A- Information the reader(s) already knew about the topic

*P-a picture that represents an important aspect of the text

3. Include the title and author of the text.

No Responses to “Expeditionary Learning National Conference” Leave a reply ›

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment