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COHORT CORNER
D.C. REGION PILOT COHORT / SEPTEMBER 5, 2011

Issue # 3

Action Items
PLEASE SEND YOUR TRACKING/DIAGNOSTIC DATA For those of you who are administering diagnostics, please be sure to send the results my way by September 14th! By doing so, I can be looped in about where your kids are and we can use the data to inform next steps in our work together. Many thanks in advance to those who have already sent those results in!

Announcements














UPCOMING PDS What: Stay tuned for logistical updates in this weeks TAL mail!
When: 9am-3pm on Saturday, September 10th. Please note: our cohort is starting an hour earlier for this rst PDS Where: Gallaudet University FREE IPAD DISTRIBUTION! What: If you registered one, dont forget to pick up your FREE iPad (donated by Apple and TFA)
When: September 11th, 17th, and 18th Where: Check for the location that you registered to pick it up at! POST-PDS DRINKS AND APPETIZERS What: Get together with other CMs from within and outside of our cohort to enjoy some food and Sangria after PDS When: After 3pm on Saturday, September 10th Where: Julia Sadowskys house (417 K St NE)

Innovation Spotlight
Over the past several weeks, Ive been inspired by all of your bold and innovative ideas. Whats even more exciting is that Im beginning to see the embers of these ideas catch re through email exchanges, cross-cohort collaboration, and conversations on our Facebook group. During the coming year, Im excited to work with you all to develop and amplify the impact of your ideas so that we can steepen our collective learning curve as educators In the meantime, I want to spotlight a handful of the many powerful ideas that are bubbling up in hopes that it sparks some thought and conversation! sense to them. By doing so, she will help her students develop a higher-level understanding of what theyll be learning about and increase student buy-in in the content. *The Idea: Inspiring Vision in Students: Indira wants her students to develop issue awareness, and then to act on their awareness to change their worlds. To stoke the ames of this activism, she did not tell her students about her vision but rather helped them realize elements of it on their own. Dressed in all black, she led her students on a gallery walk that encouraged them to reect as they read headlines from *The Idea: Students Present their newspaper clippings of troubling events Dreams: In an effort to help students from around the world as they listened to a develop a concrete schema for and genuine song in Spanish that emphasized the investment in their short and long-term importance of realizing our shared goals, Megan is setting up vision humanity. Afterward, she pushed students conversations with her K students where to consider what they were going to do she plans to talk with students about their about these events, and how their hopes and dreams and then post them in awareness of them would govern how they the classroom. She also plans to host a operated within their classroom and community event in which students will broader world. By the end, students thanked dress up as what they want to be when they her for this eye-opening experience and grow up and announce this goal to their worked with her to brainstorm an inspiring friends and family members. By doing so, set of class norms and values that were shes combining her penchant for strong rooted in their budding class vision. parent and family communication with a creative twist on long-term goal *The Idea: Engaging students in investment. I cant wait to see how this inquiry-based discussions: Eager to event turns out and the inspiration these spark her students love for inquiry, Eliza vision conversations stoke within her worked to develop a scenario that students students! could discuss, form hypotheses around, and then test. The question: if Im running and I *The Idea: Student-Driven drop my keys and want to get the keys into Curriculum Mapping: To ensure her a cup (or bowl), do I drop the keys before kids are able to make strides toward the cup, over the cup, or after the cup? After creating a truly student-driven considering this question, students who environment, Beth Dukes plans to charge shared the same hypotheses formed groups her students with mapping out the and were then challenged to develop a way sequence of content theyll be learning to prove their assertions. Eager to throughout the year. She plans to do this by collaborate with others around similar providing her students with a title and questions, Eliza is working with her inquiry general overview for each unit. Shell then coach to put together a series of monthly ask students to use these unit descriptions, workshops that she is going to advertise their prior knowledge, and reasoning skills and encourage science teachers to attend! to sequence these units in a way that makes Stay tuned for announcements :)

Resource Spotlight

ACHIEVEMENT NETWORKS VIDEO LIBRARY

Check out Achievement Firsts full video library of professional development clips and learn from some master teachers at work. You can access the library at this link and by inputting the login afvideos and password respect. elementary contexts.
STUDENT-DRIVEN VISION SETTING Check out how Josh Johnson used a Frayer model to help his students establish a vision for their class culture take a look at the class vision that Beths students created with her help! RELATIONSHIPS AND CLASS CULTURE BLOG Need some ideas for building great relationships with students and facilitating class culture? Check out the blog that Jordan Bocks Ed Psych professor started which shares lots of concrete culture-related tips! GET BOOKS FOR YOUR CLASSROOM Looking to expand your classroom library? Get free books through Books for America! You can do so by completing the following form and shooting a request for the types of books you want for your classroom to GRANTS@BOOKSFORAMERICA.ORG. Once your request is approved, you can go to the organizations warehouse in Fairfax and pick up your books! (Thanks to Alex Krupp for this tip!) LITERACY WORK STATIONS RESOURCE Looking for a superb book on establishing strong literacy centers in an elementary classroom? Josh Gillerman recommends that you pick up Debbie Dillers Literacy Work Stations. If you ever want to borrow the book or discuss its content, send Josh an email at jgillerm@gmail.com! Hed love to get some conversation going!

Team Shout Outs

Indira and Gillon for sharing how they delivered their visions. Both gave me big time inspiration!--Campbell Glenn CJ Libassi: for starting a really great blog!--Alex Krupp Nicole Spoelma: for doing such an effective job of facilitating a sense of team and community in her classroom through her use of daily community meetings. I loved seeing how her kids shouted each other out, discussed the ways in which theyd exemplify class values, and reected on the state of culture in their classroom. It was inspiring for me to see her middle schoolers encouraging, learning from, and celebrating each other.--Joaquin CJ Libassi: for all the wonderful resources and education news that he shares.--Jordan Bock Meredith Ackerman: you (and the amazing bread at Paolos) made me so excited for this year! Major shout out for being so genuine and sassy with your kids and for therefore rocking the rst week with them :) --Kelly Gleischman Chelsea Kirk: for being a team player and sharing concrete resources and tips that shes used to teach her kids how to revise their writing with a Spanish teacher in our cohort. Its exactly this type of crossdiscipline collaboration and best practice sharing that is going to help us get better for our students.--Joaquin Shajena Erazo: for reaching out and asking me to observe her most challenging block of students. Even though she has experienced signicant wins in other classrooms, I was impressed that she sought out feedback for this block so she can continue to grow and get better for all of her students.--Joaquin CJ Libassi: the fact that you actually took the time to come and observe me on your day off meant the world. Thank you for your feedback and for just being a friendly face in the back of the room--youre wonderful :)-Kelly Gleischman Nicole Spoelma: for having an earthquake day planning day party with me!--Abby Wihl Gillon and Lauren: for facilitating strong visions lessons that red their kids up about their goals for the year. After each lesson, one of Gillons students left this inspiring exit ticket message and several of Laurens

students were in (grateful) disbelief that they would have the opportunity to take such a rigorous history course.--Joaquin Kelly Gleischman: for letting me observe her classroom and for letting me steal lots of ideas for my own room. Her execution was super impressive!--CJ Libassi Molly, Jordan, Clair, Eliza, Gillon, Kelly, Anne Marie, Beth, Alex, Shajena, CJ, and Nicole: for sharing resources, thoughtful questions, concrete strategies, teaching tips, and encouraging words on our Facebook group over the past week. Keep the conversations going--we all benet from a steady stream of inspiration and ideas in this work!--Joaquin Clair Briggs: realizing that she would need to provide her students with additional instruction to help achieve high marks on the SAT II Biology Exam, Clair lobbied to carve out weekly Saturday school sessions for her science students. Im impressed by her willingness to go above and beyond to meet the needs of her students, and I am excited to see how her thoughtful planning and determination impacts their achievement in the coming weeks and months.--Joaquin Molly France, Megan Gilbert, Julia Sadowsky, and Carolyn Byrne: for signing up to work with me, other ECE MTLDs, and each other to establish an ECE Transformational Teaching Working Group. Im excited to work with them to research best practices, engage in cross-region collaboration, and pilot new ideas that will help them make progress toward realizing their visions with their students!--Joaquin Josh Johnson and Beth Dukes: for sharing resources they used to help their students establish classroom visions. Check out how Josh got his kids brainstorm their ideal classroom, and how Beth helped her kids establish a vision for a democratic classroom. If you want to learn more about how Beth facilitated this vision setting activity, heres a quick description that she typed up! Im inspired by their effective efforts to create truly student-driven learning communities.--Joaquin Shajena Erazo: for providing me with some great icebreakers that really set my classes up for a strong start this year!--Clair Briggs Anamika Dwivedi: for coming up with a really creative way to help students visually identify the common goals they share. After students drafted their goals, she typed them up into a Tagxedo and turned them into goals posters. She then plans to blow up prints of these goals posters and hang them up as a way to reinforce the adage: a goal not written is only a wish.--Joaquin

Most Viewed Videos of the Month

1.
Spanish Parent Night (Secondary) 2. 100 Percent (TLAC resource) 3. Guided Reading Lesson (Kindergarten) 4. Welcome to English Class (Shajenas Class Intro Video) 5. No Opt Out (TLAC Resource) 6 . S t ro n g Vo i c e ( T L A C Resource) 7. Teaching Study Skills (Upper Elem-Secondary) 8. Do Not Engage (TLAC resource) 9. Rigor in 6th Grade Science 10. Building Relationships with Students (SecondaryPaul Holloman)