Our third and final teacher lab experience of the school year provided Covington teachers with power opportunities to observe colleagues in action and have rich professional discussion.
In Ross Burdick's 5th grade math class, teachers focused on the extent to which students were engaged during math workshop in a variety of different center-based activities. Students rotated through traditional and digitally-based math games in order to reinforce concepts already taught and provide opportunities for new content learning.
In Andrea Marks' social studies classroom, students applied the Notice and Note Nonfiction Big Question #2 “What Did the Author Think I Knew”. Andrea did a quick mini-lesson where she modeled a new strategy for the kids called “Sketch to Stretch” and then had them apply Big Question #2 and the new strategy to their Social Studies reading in partnerships. As guests in Andrea's classroom we focused our noticings and wonderings on student discussion.
We look forward to determining teacher priorities as we plan for next year's teacher lab experiences. We hope to invite more colleagues to participate and to grow this rich work.
Ross Burdick conferences with students as colleagues look on
3/4 and 5/6 teachers, who usually work apart, benefit from the chance to observe classroom teaching together
Guest teachers notice and wonder as they observe each other's practice in a teacher lab setting
Andrea Marks conferences with a student as he applies a new non-fiction reading strategy. Guest teachers circulate and observe student conversations.