September 23, 2016

Collaboration

How much is too much?

One of the joys of my role, is that I have the unique opportunity to engage in reflective conversation with all of you - either individually or as teams. Last year, we had a goal of increasing our teaching collaboration. We learned a lot about collaboration. I noticed that we are collaborating far less this year, which spurred me to find out why. Here's what's been shared with me:

* We had to do some work ourselves - independently - to have something to bring to the table to collaborate.

* I had to wrestle with the work myself first before I was ready to work with others.

* Sometimes, working with others just confused me.

* We didn't always process things in a way that we could collaborate.

* Collaboration takes more time.

* It can be really challenging to share our ideas, our thinking and our process to someone else.

* Sometimes, the challenge of sharing/collaborating actually killed the passion for me.

* It reduced my personal creativity.

* Sometimes we just wanted to work through the hard stuff on our own.

* Sometimes it didn't work.

* It worked more often when we didn't collaborate on everything.

* We had different passions for different things - those passions drove what we were excited to do.

* Trying to persuade, inspire someone else to my way of thinking resulted in less productivity for myself and others.

* Sometimes we just want to dwell in our own thoughts and ideas and not have to explain and share them with others - rather use our thinking to begin to create for ourselves.

* Trying to lift someone else was exhausting.

* Lifting someone else was energizing.

* My own perspective limited me.

* Sharing my ideas with others exploded them to something so much better.

* When my idea exploded - I just wanted to go back and work on it by myself.

* I love what I could do through collaboration when I could carve out enough time to create the details together.

* When we each took a part, then came back together - that worked the best.

* I felt so excited when I could share my thinking and ideas.

* I needed a structure for this to work.

* Collaboration works the best for me when I have plenty of time to work on my own too.

A common trend this year? Most of us are backing off from the level of collaboration we intentionally created last year. We learned that while collaboration is important and powerful, too much actually diminishes our joy for the work and reduces what we can do.

Perhaps we can think about collaboration in new ways too? For example, wouldn't you label what Chelsea shared with us facilitating our professional development on Wednesday, collaboration?

So now I'm wondering - using what we each personally learned and took away from our experience, how has that shifted the way we ask students to work?

A Peek Into The Life of Our School

I know everyone will get a chuckle from these pictures! 

What an engaging and real way for our fifth graders to glean the perspective

of what it felt like to enter the United States as an immigrant.

Doug's duty was to keep the crowd corralled outside until it was their turn to

undergo inspection to enter into the United States.

The health check!
Can't have an immigrant bringing any disease into the United States!

Being assigned a 'new name'.

Legal inspection -Chelsea and Brooks spoke a foreign language
to these immigrants so they could feel what it would be like for
the immigrants who understood no English.

That's Billie under all that hair!
She's checking for lice!

The Power of the Teacher

What a joy it has been watching teachers support writer's to new levels.

Here is a precious kindergartner getting some specific feedback on their writing.

Be sure to ask Lauren or Kathy to share some kindergarten writing with you - 

it's a celebration to see the journey from where they start, to what you see them doing now.

The biggest celebration of all?

All of our children know they are authors - even our very youngest! The passion and enthusiasm our writer's have is directly linked to their inspiring teachers!

The 'Happy Jar'
in Mary Beth's room.
The kids write little notes about things they are happy about.

Did you ever wish to be a Unicorn?

Writing Conferences -

individual and table conferences.

Bethany from Kindergarten Assistant to Bus Driver!

Kim and Brittany's Crews

Preparing for the Cardboard Challenge!

The kids wanted to rush directly to constructing their designs from cardboard, but first had to wrestle with their minature protypes made from paper.

Remember this strategy we learned last year
for increasing the complexity of student thinking?
(It is also a great strategy for teaching vocabulary)
Great example for pushing thinking in a simple format such as your Morning Message -
one component of Morning Meeting.

Calendar

September 26 - 30th:

* Please remember to remind your families that we DO have school on Friday and that student's do not come on Monday, October 17th. Students return on Tuesday, October 18th.

Monday - 

Story Telling 9-10:00 a.m. Library and Gym

Tuesday - 

MTSS meeting 7:30 a.m.

Yoga - 4:30 Hanni's room

Wednesday - 

The Beat 9:15 a.m.

Professional Development - 1:30 Library

Part One of a three part series: The Functions of Behavior presented by Keith Sousa

Thursday - 

Visit the Cardboard Challenge Display

Friday - 

Challenge Day!

Skip to your cars to embrace the beginning of Fall Break :)

Teaching Tip

We studied together the protocol of using 'Cold Call' as one strategy for checking for understanding. 

Check on yourself. 

When you use it and a student doesn't have a response - you encourage that student to ask another student for help. When the selected student gives the response, do you go back to the original student and ask them to then again answer the question?

Have a Wonderful Weekend!

Deborah

I'm preparing for Fall Break!
I don't know about you - but I'm really looking
forward to some time for pleasure reading!
Since time is precious, I don't waste time on
a book that doesn't engage me right away.
I want to be sure I have plenty of options!