We had our first Personal Learning Communities (PLC) day today. I apparently had no idea what it would be like. I suspected a couple of meetings, but I have learned that it can mean a whole day of meetings. With the exception of a lunch break, we constantly had meetings from 8:00-2:00, and one more from 2:30-3:00. I had plans of completing two weeks of science planning today. I wanted to do this with the other fifth grade teacher since it is her subject to plan for, and I would like experience with collaborative planning. However, we didn’t even have a chance to get together until 3:00, but she is coming down with a cold and has prior engagements. So, I’ve learned not to plan on “planning days” to be actual planning days. I was able to stay late and plan my next reading group, finish week two of my upcoming American Civil War unit, and knock out this journal entry. And, I am currently eyeballing two stacks of homework, wondering if I should comment on those now or in the morning. I think I will do them in the morning so I will have something to do while waiting on students to arrive.
Though today was not what I expected, I still learned a lot of new things. There were professional matters such as, goal setting and getting a retirement fund started, but those were not the things I enjoyed most. What I enjoyed most were two demonstrations given by two different teachers. The first was a writing workshop; this workshop was in the mode of learning different activities to use in our writing classes, not an actual writing workshop writing time. Although, we did participate in some of the activities we learned about. The other demonstration was on a strategy I had never heard of, “Touch Math.” It seems to be a great way of representation, and then transferring from representation to abstract if you are familiar with the C-R-A method of math. If not, it’s the method of giving students experiences with concrete objects, and then transitioning to representation methods (pencil and paper), and eventually to abstract thinking where students can analyze more complex forms of problems, sometimes involving mental math. Here is a link to a page for "Touch Math":
Oh, I also was not informed that we didn’t have to be at school until 7:45…I arrived at 7:05.
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