Monthly Archives: September 2018

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2018-2019 World Language Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum.
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

Description of Work Focus: Taking a deep and rich look at how we teach reading and the written word in World Language and how this skill informs both oral and written communication throughout the three divisions in Spanish, French, and Mandarin.

We will explore the common vertical strands, share student work, classroom techniques, and talk about how we assess the skills that are embedded in our standards for grading.

We will also have as a common objective to share resources, take stock of our current materials, and add to our current collections. We would like:

  • To take an inventory of our existing collections and resources that we are currently using in our classes.
  • To build our repertoire by visiting  libraries and world language bookstores that will help us develop curriculum and expand program.

Schedule for Work: Tuesday meetings usually work for us.

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2018-2019 Visual Arts Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum 
      • Completing a critical friends group cycle and/or doing focused intervisitations with a clear plan for debrief/reflection, conversations and goal setting.
      • Committing to focused look at student work as a means to better understand the efficacy teaching/learning in the department.

Description of Work Focus: Use the Critical Friends group protocol to do peer observations within and across divisions to support individual practice and with an eye focused on seeing the student progression through the K-12 experience

Schedule for Work: Tuesday Meetings as before.

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2018-2019 Science Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Meeting with other departments to discuss what skills we teach in common in our classes so that we can strengthen connections for students between what they are learning in the different disciplines.

Description of Work Focus: Engage in a series of sharings/conversations with the other departments about areas of shared practice to support better alignment/reinforcing of skills/habits, and to provide an opportunity for the department to reflect on practice.

(During times we can’t schedule a meeting with another department, we will use the time to work on implementing what has come out of those shared meetings.)

Schedule for Work: We are planning to meet during the Tuesday times set aside, but we are open to making it work at another time if it helps us schedule a meeting with another department.

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2018-2019 Performing Arts Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum.
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

Description of Work Focus: We have narrowed down our potential area of focus to the following items: Please view this doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DBpQmLDY8aObaK8wwtHrkFPzRw_ORwlbShHW4Ak6vj4/edit?usp=sharing

Schedule for Work: It will quite likely not be the traditional Tues afternoon time as this has never been a convenient time for the department. 

 

 

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2018-2019 Math Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant
      • Completing a critical friends group cycle and/or doing focused intervisitations with a clear plan for debrief/reflection, conversations and goal setting.

 

Description of Work Focus: We would like to have a consultant come in to observe classes and offer ongoing PD (similar to what the science dept did). We’d like to take an honest look at inquiry based learning in the math classroom. Another area of focus: differentiation — do we serve either end well? 

Other: How do we best support struggling math students? Can each division have a math 

Schedule for Work: TBD – if we can find an outside consultant or PD. Once schedules are in place we can organize classroom visits. We will need to agree on a protocol on “how best to observe.” Take advantage of dedicated Tuesday meeting time when needed. 

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2018-2019 Library Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum 
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

 

Description of Work Focus:  We worked at the end of this year with Ed Tech  to identify where aspects of digital literacy were being taught K-12 and where there were holes we could fill in or collaborate on. We will continue to be in discussion around practical application of digital literacy next year.  

 

Schedule for Work: We may meet as joint departments on Tuesdays and arrange another meeting days as needed.

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2018-2019 Learning Support Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus:  Committing to focused look at student work as a means to better understand the efficacy teaching/learning in the department. Some other area of focus to be proposed

 

Description of Work Focus: We plan to make our focus on students next year: bringing “case studies” to the department to problem solve and reflect. We will also do interdivisional visits again and schedule more school visits–these are always incredibly helpful to our practice as learning specialists. 

Schedule for Work: The Tuesday meeting times seems to work best for everyone. However if we can find a conference that we can all attend, we’d like to do that. 

 

 

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2018-2019 History Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum 
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

 

Description of Work Focus: 

  • Working on a developing cross divisional writing program that builds on what is done in the previous grade. We will also be working within each division to build a more consistent approach to how we how teach and discuss writing and research. We will also be looking out how geography is taught within each division.  

Schedule for Work: We hope to have two half day PD workshops.

 

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2018-2019 English Work Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum  
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

Description of Work Focus: To map the social justice/activism strand in our program as it exists with an eye toward the following: Where are we studying social justice or reading/writing with a social justice lens? Where are we asking or encouraging students to take action or engage in activism? Where are the spots in our curriculum where we aren’t connecting to social justice or activism or could be more deeply invested in that work?

To share specific examples of best practices around reading/writing with a social justice focus and moving from learning to action. The goal in this second step is to apply those practices to places in our curriculum where we need to invent or reinvest in a more social justice/activism-oriented component. Ideally, we’d all emerge from this work with new approaches to a specific unit, project, or assignment that we could implement. 

Schedule for Work: We think a full-day or two half-day retreats would probably work best.

 

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2018-2019 Ed Tech Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum 

Description of Work Focus:  Following our in-house retreat with the Library Department, we worked out a series of core tech literacies that we believe every LREI students should have at the end of each divisional level. We’ve identified classes for push in and collaboration where we can continue to support these skills and reinforce them throughout all three divisions. We’ll continue working and finding places to support teachers and students in these literacies, as well as continuing our conversations with Library and other departments. 

Schedule for Work: The Tuesday afternoon meeting times have worked for us, but we would also be interested in another retreat day to continue our departmental discussions.