Update on Instruction

Update on Instruction
Posted on 11/28/2017

November has been a busy month for instruction and learning!

As a staff, all of the hard work we began in August on our stories of self came to fruition in a staff celebration where we publicly shared our stories. This experience is invaluable as we continue our work with students both in sharing their stories of self and in our classrooms.

We have also continued our work on Courageous Conversations, including viewing “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race” and the “Black Doll/White Doll” experiment.
We have also engaged in conversations locating ourselves on the Courageous Conversations Compass and exploring the definitions of race, racism, and racist.

At each grade level and on the Specialist teams we have been spending time examining student work (Math) and looking at videos of teaching (ELA) in order to improve our practice. Teachers have presented dilemmas and we have worked as a team, using a protocol, to offer praise, ask questions, make suggestions, and connect to our own practice. Dilemmas have included:

  • How do I make sure that I can end the period with an opportunity for students to summarize learning?

  • How do we help students become more self-aware about the quality of their work?


  • How can I better support students to make sense of real-world situations and persevere in solving word problems?


  • How can I increase authentic engagement and student buy-in around writing about literature?


  • How can I tighten up the routines at the beginning of my class? How can we be a guide-on-the-side and push students to think critically and creatively to come up with solutions while also maintaining their motivation and participation in their group?
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