More From a TC Visit...

Last Tuesday, I wrote my slice of life post about our visit from Teachers College Staff Developer Christine Holley. Over the course of the year, we have several days when one of our three Staff Developers come and work with teachers within our schools, usually within our classrooms. I love these days, as they are always full of new learning and inspiring ideas for curriculum and instruction.

During her presentation, Christine had us watch one of the CCSS videos that are on the Teachers College website. You can access all of the videos here and, if you have not already delved into them, I highly recommending doing so. Now. Okay, maybe not now, but it's a raining, gray Sunday morning as I write this post. Together, we watched Amanda Hartman teach young students about close reading and shared our take-aways:

• Think ahead for important vocabulary--we want students to USE the vocabulary in their discussion
• Refer to and use text evidence
• Use the document camera to involve kids with close reading. (Love this idea! How fun and how powerful to ZOOM right in on text and pictures to model close reading!)
• "What does that mean?", "Let's look at the pictures really closely!", "Try to give your partners an example of something that tells what you mean" are great lines to use when teaching and inspiring kids to read closely
• Use dramatic play a lot. Ask kids to show us what it looks like.
• Have students give re-tells, using the text.
• Model rereading, trying out new ideas. Amanda played with different ideas for headings and the students were all so engaged and with her on this!
• Encourage students to keep the author in mind. What does the author want us to learn? What's the message that the author is trying to tell us?

As we watched Amanda teach the lesson, we were all impressed by how much time she spent on so few pages. Isn't is amazing how much there is to teach kids???

All of the videos are such gifts to the reading and writing teachers of the world. They are categorized by teaching points and types of writing to make it easier to find your mentor lessons. That being said, they are all worth watching!

Enjoy the long weekend,