TD Committee Debriefing
After our Visit to Elon Park Elementary 3/16/15
Recap
While we were at Elon Park we were able to see 5th and 3rd grades engaged in Math, Literacy, and Social Studies (4th grade was on a field trip).
Below are some of the things we saw, thought, & said. Also included are links to their website and email addresses of the TD Teachers and Principal. If you use or are planning to use any of that contact information, please keep our team in the loop.
Perpetual Questions- from Mr. Saxton
1. What TD instructional model does the school utilize?
(i.e. pull-out, co-teaching, parallel teaching, etc.)
2. Who, how, and when does planning for TD occur?
(i.e. during 90 minute planning, another designated day, Is there a TD team? etc.)
3. What resources are instrumental to the success of the TD program?
(i.e. William and Mary, Hands-on equations, etc.)
4. What key products/projects are produced by the students in the program?
(i.e. do they do additional projects? Quality versus quantity?)
Elon Park's Answers to the Perpetual Questions
2. Planning occurs once every 6 weeks (long-term) with the teachers who have the TD classes and once a week during their planning.
3. TD Teachers said that they use the TD resource materials, but we did not see them in use.
4. We did not see the TD students products. The 5th grade students were learning about an up coming project dealing with the characters in their Historical Fiction books. They seemed to do a great deal with questioning.
In math, workshop, seemed to be a big deal and there was a given structure. The importance of of math workshop was noted.
Glows & Grows (according to Google Classroom responces)
Glows:
- collaboration & planning
- importance of small group instruction
- Genius Hour (see Barnett for more info)
- Validation of great things we are already doing
- spiraling instruction that includes enrichment
- classroom management
- workshop groups using MAP Data for math
Grows:
- communication
- sharing plans with necessary colleagues
- getting on the same page (amongst teams)
Mary Slade, TD Teacher
Marie Deegan, TD Teacher
Chuck Fortuna, Principal
Possible Next Steps for Us (to Sell our Parents)
- Summer meeting with parents
- Follow up meetings w/parents
- Monthly Blog to update parents w/ pictures and a short narrative for the grade levels
- Short video of the work we are doing (Saxton wants this-take pictures in your classrooms or videos of your kids explaining their project-stress the importance of Higher Order Thinking rather than TD)