"The Staff at Dr. A. R. Lord have been working hard on our school goal of improving literacy for our students. Over the past three years we have committed to becoming an Early Intervention school with the Reading Recovery program as part of that commitment. With a supportive administrator to facilitate times for us to meet, the EI team has been having regular "power hour" meetings for the past two years. At these meetings we:- watched each other teach in the classroom and discussed what we saw
- we talked about the progress of individual students and how we could best support them
- we participated in a professional book club lead by the Peer-to-Peer mentor, Mary, (Catching Readers Before They Fall)
- we looked at school-wide Early Intervention data and its implications for our teaching
- we looked at the Observation Survey and learned about the types of information that it can give us about our students
This year we applied for and got collaborative funds to further our inquiry. The intermediate teachers joined our literacy team and our staff is closer and more dedicated than ever. Our collaborative inquiry was able to:
- release teachers to visit and observe teachers in other schools
- send two teachers to the Literacy Summit in Seattle to hear world renowned educators
- meet as a school staff to share our learning with each other
- spend time exploring the new LLI and BAS kits our school has purchased/received
- discuss best practice strategies for classroom teaching as well as how best to support our struggling students
We have seen our staff developing a shared vision and growing in our expertise by having the opportunities to participate in this kind of professional development. We feel it has been extremely valuable and look forward to further opportunities to learn from both experts and each other to keep improving our professional practice."
