Unpacking Standards in PLC Meetings
During my principal residency, I co-facilitated many PLC meetings with our Curriculum Coach. We led teachers through the process of determining what students must be able to do in order to achieve mastery of a specific standard. We used the North Carolina Unpacked Standards documents to help teachers create learning targets and plan effectively. In addition, we utilized the concepts of Understanding by Design by helping teachers determine their assessment questions and/or evidences of mastery prior to creating their daily lesson plans. School leaders must be intentional about making time for instructional leadership.
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SoJo Consortium District Information Session
On the workdays at the beginning of the school year, I co-facilitated a session on core instruction and our JCPS Instructional Model for fourth grade teachers from Meadow, Four Oaks, and Benson Elementary at our SoJo Consortium meeting. The Curriculum Coach from Meadow and I shared our superintendent's vision for the upcoming school year and revealed our county's new Instructional Model. We discussed the three components of the Instructional Model-Plan, Implement, Reflect-and asked teachers to consider how the model could be used in planning and adjusting instruction to meet students' needs. We also reiterated the purpose of PLC's, and helped teachers think through how the Instructional Model could be utilized to make PLC meetings more effective.
This session proved to be a great opportunity to become acquainted with the SoJo Consortium community. Bringing all elementary schools in our feeder pattern together at the beginning of the year allowed teachers to network and ensured all educators heard the same information about our district's expectations for the year ahead. |
Creation of the Master Schedule
Prior to the start of school, I was able to work with the School Improvement Team to create our 2019-2020 Master Schedule. The team started by identifying the positive and negative aspects of the schedule from the previous year. We made adjustments based on feedback from all grade level, enhancement, and special education representatives. We discussed the need to build in PRIDE time in third and fourth grades to allow for remediation and test preparation throughout the year. Once the agreed upon schedule was set, I created a visual version in Google sheets to showcase how each grade level is utilizing their time in terms of instruction; this document serves as a helpful tool for administrators to reference when conducting walkthroughs and planning events.
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Teaching a Lesson while a Teacher Conducted a Peer Observation
During my principal residency, I taught a beginning teacher's class while she conducted a peer observation. The beginning teacher had several students with challenging behaviors in her classroom and as the Mentor Coordinator, I wanted to provide her with an opportunity to observe a veteran teacher with strong classroom management. I offered to teach her reading lesson while she was out of the room in order to preserve precious instructional time. In addition, allowing her to learn from a master teacher improved her own ability to manage student behaviors; better managed classrooms ensure students spend more time engaged in learning.
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