I had so much fun this morning working with a great group of English Language Arts teachers at the Escondido Union School District where I have been working for 2 of the last 3 summers as part of the Escondido STEM Integrated (ESI) team around cross-curricular project based learning.
Today, I got to be with all ELA teachers (a departure from our usual science & math heavy summer institutes) and talk about meaningful note-taking with them. I was so excited to start my day with these teachers–even after a 2+ hour commute:
2.25 hour drive but I made it to the @EUSD #esiliteracy PD. Excited to work w/ these awesome teachers! pic.twitter.com/h9nHPSEapN
— Betina Hsieh (@ProfHsieh) September 14, 2016
It was such a great experience, full of rich conversations about how we, as readers, engage in sense-making, and how we, as teachers, can get students, not just to take notes, but to make sense of texts in various ways:
Charts of some of @eusd teachers’ awesome conversations around sense-making & note-taking #esiliteracy pic.twitter.com/sZneuxvoDr
— Betina Hsieh (@ProfHsieh) September 14, 2016
After talking about our experiences (including successes and struggles) with helping students make sense of texts, we engaged in two sense-making activities. One, a traditional GIST strategy and the second, a “GIST with a twist” using todaysmeet.com where teachers got to “tweet” (micro-blog in 140 characters) their GIST statements. Here’s a sample of the conversation (around a text excerpt from Reading Rhetorically):
The teachers then chose 2 GIST statements that they liked that were not their own and discussed what stood out to them about these GIST statements.
Using Todaysmeet.com (or social media as I do in my work at the post-secondary level) as a tool to help share ideas and make (more) public one’s thinking in an engaging and efficient way was awesome. I was bowled over by the thoughtful GIST statements and the depth of conversation with these wonderful teachers.
Now, I’ve got to switch hats and go teach in my own classroom, inspired by the work of these wonderful professionals and hoping to support my students in becoming thoughtful, engaged, reflective professionals themselves in the near future.
#Lovemyjob #Loveteachers