I recently shared a blog about changes to our professional learning practices at Rugby Public School District, we had our first professional learning day on August 28th. Teachers, support staff, and administrators spent the morning learning from Donalyn Miller and Valinda Kimmel. Miller has written several books on establishing a reading culture in schools. Kimmel is a literacy consultant that has been helping our school district with early literacy practices. The theme throughout the morning was developing a reading culture from preschool to grade 12.
Staff learned about the power of read alouds, book talks, and different ways to study vocabulary. We often think that reading a book aloud is only good for young children, but the research shows that this is a powerful practice regardless of age. The peak for read alouds often occurs around third or fourth grade. Book talks align with our focus on building classroom libraries and allowing more choice for students over what they read. A Book Talk is a method used to share a book with another person without giving away the whole story. Finally, teachers were able to gain some easy to implement vocabulary activities that can be used across grade levels and subject areas.
We will have three different book studies this year. Our first book discussion was on the book Fundamental Five. Teachers were mixed into different groups and they discussed the five instructional strategies found within the book. One of our teachers commented, “we enjoyed this book and thought it was a nice reminder of what we can be doing to make our lessons better. I also think that because this was a small group session and that we were mixed between schools, it was an awesome way to build community and trust with other colleagues. This was a good experience.”
In the afternoon, we held a debrief session with a focus on next steps to implement these strategies learned in the morning. Teachers then spent the remainder of the day in teams focusing on the following questions: What do we want students to know and be able to do? How do we know they know? What are we doing collectively to intervene when students don’t know? What are we doing collectively to enrich students that already know?
Our district appreciates the ability to provide our teachers additional time for learning and the time to implement our school initiatives. Yesterday was a great day of learning and collaboration! When we know better, we do better.
