Saturday, June 27, 2009

The joys of summer and my dvd watching


Well the school year is over and I must admit I felt somewhat lighter yesterday as I left the VSB, not that I have quite left yet. There is still more sorting and packing and a high school summer institute Thursday and Friday, but somehow my time now is my own and my time at the education centre is coming to a close and all the responsibilities. And next Saturday morning I will be on a road trip to the Rockies.
DVD watching was what I was doing Thursday evening and Friday morning. Jodi had ordered two new dvds from Choice Literacy, Intermediate Daily Five and Intermediate Cafe. Having introduced the Daily Five in quite a few intermediate classrooms this year it was really interesting to see this dvd. What did they do that was similar and what was different? One difference was the idea of having goals from the cafe menu. Now having used R5 with intermediate students one can see some overlap there with the cafe menu.
Many teachers tell me that it is so much easier to understand when they actually see what they have read when they are able to see what something looks like and these dvd's really do that. I am just reading the Cafe book so that it was especially helpful to see the dvd. There are clips in both dvds from grade four and six classrooms and it's interesting to see the sisters' adjustments.We now have quite an extensive dvd library for teachers to borrow plus you can watch clips on the choice literacy website. I have given you that link. I am already setting up my new classroom in my mind and thinking of how I may want to incorporate the Cafe "menu".
Instead of trying to do a wide angle focus on the whole district it's interesting to think of how I will be mainly be focused on one classroom next year.

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