Laurie---UoS
Even though I have used the Units of Study for three years over the past months I took a new look at the units and how best I can use them with my students. I really enjoyed delving more into conferring. I feel as though this is an area of my teaching that needs a boost. I am forcing myself to try a little bit of all the ideas given so that I can find the one that works best for me and my current group of students. I received so many great ideas about different tactics/strategies that I tried using. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to talk to fellow primary grade teachers and share thoughts, ideas and strategies.
The time to talk to colleagues and get ideas is what makes classes like this valuable. Too often we're given materials but no time to collaborate and learn with each other.
ReplyDeleteLaurie and I are right down the hall from each other and do not have time to do this. Jess is diagonal from me, and we teach the same grade. Our collaboration time is definitely very limited. There are just not enough hours in the day to make it happen!
ReplyDeleteI empathize with your goals to try new techniques for conferring. That was an area of my teaching that I’ve also chosen to focus on. It definitely feels more attainable when there is a community of others trying the new things and facing similar challenges. I’m lucky enough to have some common time with a couple coworkers, but it never feels like enough time to collaborate.
ReplyDeleteI agree that when revisiting the units, there's bound to be a new discovery every time! I also have focused on improving conferences and it has only proven to help me better learn about each student as a reader.
ReplyDeleteI'm so with you on all of this! Even though I've previously taught the units (though only for one year), it felt so good to be able to delve deeper into them. I'm also working on improving my conferring techniques and really trying to make time to conference with my students. Our time to talk to everyone in class has really helped me come up with new ideas, and it's so nice to actually have time do talk to other teachers! Like Becky said, it's so hard to find time for this in our regular days.
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