The first Wednesday morning of April was our monthly instructional technology professional development time. Like we did in February, I arranged for a variety of teachers to share a tool or type of integration in short sessions (11 minutes). We had 3 sessions in a row and teachers went to whatever sessions interested them.
Here are the sessions we offered:
I shared SMART Learning Suite Online and some of the SMART Activities teachers can use for review, assessment and/or engagement.
For these quick sessions, I created two activities for my teachers to participate in as students: “Shout it Out” and “Monster Quiz.” Teacher joined my room and tried these two activities.
The teachers who attended commented that they could see many different ways to use these and the other activities. We talked about how using activities like “Shout it Out” give all students a chance to offer feedback.
Today, a teacher who attended one of the sessions stopped me in the hall. She was so excited because she used “Shout it Out” as part of a discussion, and it worked so well. She told me that all students shared ideas in all three of her categories (including the students who do not normally participate). She was so appreciative of having a chance to learn something during a PD session that she could quickly use in her classroom – and something that helped engage her students and get feedback from all of them.
She also shared that she’d thought about not trying SMART Suite because she wasn’t sure how it would work and it was an important lesson. But then she pushed herself to try something new because she knew it had potential to improve her lesson. Kudos to her!
I am thankful this teacher shared her successes with me. I appreciate her enthusiasm and her willingness to try something new! And if it hadn’t worked well this time, that would have been okay too – she would have taken a chance to help improve her classroom. What more can we ask for from our teachers.
PD to Practice – Just how it should be! #PDtoPractice
Reflections of an Instructional Coach 