Monday, February 25, 2008

Celebrating risk-taking in teaching!

Cheers to 8th grade ELA for getting those blogs up! All student blog addresses are located in a Google Doc called "Eighth Grade Blog Tracker 339;" feel free to leave comments to former students!

Congrats to 803/4 and Ms. Dixon Hall for getting Google Docs up and running for editorial writing!

Cheers to Ms. Johns and Mr. Blanchard for getting their 7th graders set up on Blogger over the weekend for field trip reflections :)

Belated - I'm sorry! - but enthusiastic cheers to Ms. Mason-Escoe for a really, really engaging lesson using MTA bus maps and the SMARTBoard. I wanted to participate..

Cheers to Ms. Guzman and her students for their commercials, which now live in iMovie ..

Cheers to the 8th grade Social Studies teachers - Ms. Kaelin, Ms. Stuart and Ms. Tiller - for launching Teaching Matters, and to Ms. Tiller for co-teaching!

Cheers to Ms. Averbach for attending the Digital Documentaries PD over the break!

and .. cheers to staff for integrating instructional technology into classrooms in such a meaningful way. We had a visitor from iTiL in the building right before break, and this was her feedback to us in an email to me and Mr. Levy:

"I wanted to take a moment to thank you for hosting my visit to see how things are going at your school. Because of you and your staff I was able to take meaningful information back to our Office to inform our work. It was great to see all the online and onsite systems, structures, and environments you and your staff have set up to enhance planning, teaching and learning in your school. Christina shared how well the ongoing Monday after school PD sessions have been going as well as the hands-on support delivered upon request during teachers' common prep/planning periods. She also shared how great it has been to work with an AUSSIE consultant hired specifically for his instructional technology expertise and the success she has had with ongoing meetings live and via Skypecasting. I was impressed with the strides shared by you and Christina that were made this year to ensure that technology integration is sustained in your school. Your staff and students definitely benefit from the acknowledgement you provide teachers for their successes using https://339-home.wikispaces.com for online Principal Daily Notes, your coaches' Technology Weekly newsletter, your school's Celebration Blog http://celebrating339.blogspot.com and your student's Celebration page http://339kids.googlepages.com. The fact that you are walking the walk with best-practice modeling and a seamless use of innovative structures is quite powerful."

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