Middle School Professional Development Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous blog post, which used this slide show to lead teachers into thinking about the kinds of reading they were asking their students to do.  You can read it here.

We began by passing out this article , Why Being Good at Language Arts Means That You Can Do Math. The article had two purposes. The first was to show the link between math and reading.  The second was to give the teachers an article to practice close reading with.  We asked the teachers to read the article through one time.  Then we had them get into groups and choose a paragraph to reread and closely look for patterns that they see, maybe evidence, data, or words/phrases.  They were to "make careful observations and then interpret those observations with their colleagues.  Then we had them share out.

Lastly we asked teachers to think about the following close reading chart and how it can be used with the piece of reading they brought along. The reading was to be something they were going to ask their students to read in class during the next two weeks.  We gave them some time to process this and encouraged them to lean on any of us with questions or thoughts they had.

We received positive feedback from teachers on being able to grow professionally instead of discussing student behavior or day-to-day logistics of the school during their staff meeting.  I have had follow-up discussions with teachers about reading in their classrooms and look forward to seeing  the level of reading instruction across our building continue to grow.