PD+Fall+2011+-+Courtney,+Jennie,+Luz+Marina,+Sean

Group One Meeting...Or as Courtney calls us, "Group Awesome"

Personal Goals:
 * Sean--to develop activities that will help students to gain an authentic understanding of the immigrant experience
 * Courtney--to better anticipate student questions and to deepen my understanding of Ancient Egyptian civilization
 * Luz Marina--to evaluate the content of my third grade Unit on Colombia in terms of its value to the students
 * Jenny--to better integrate the teaching of the culture of ancient Rome with my teaching of Latin


 * To use our time to utilize each other's expertise to strengthen our Units
 * To leave these sessions with Units that we feel confident about using in our classroom
 * To use our group interactions as a stepping stone to creating cross grade level and interdisciplinary events (e.g. Greek Day, Roman Day)

Sessions 1. Gather specific feedback from each group members about the individual UNIT TO REVISE worksheets and use this feedback to develop targeted mini-goals 2. Work on a rough draft of each individual plan 3. Share and teach a particular aspect...a mini-lesson...in order to work through problems with our drafts 4. Revise and finalize drafts...and go to the Parrot

Evaluation ...We hope to feel excited and confident about the material we've developed

October 19th:
 * Discussed Jennie's unit thoroughly.
 * Briefly discussed Luz Marina's and Courtney's units.
 * Sean was absent.

October 25th:
 * Jennie shared her plan for Culture Mondays centered around the 5 Ws followed by a beefed-up Roman Biography Project
 * Discussed Sean's unit--shared his plan to revise Encounters unit to incorporate a greater and more engaging variety of activities, including using more varied methods to analyze primary documents.
 * Discussed the challenges of deepening the Colombia unit when 3rd grade student have such a limited vocabulary. Luz Marina is still searching for a language-skills-appropriate essential question, and may need to coordinate with Jennifer so that some bigger ideas can be discussed in English.
 * Discussed potential essential questions and cross-unit connections for Courtney's Egypt and Greece units. Courtney is still percolating.

November 2nd:
 * Jennie and Courtney discussed further potential questions for Egypt based on insights from Jennie's Ancient Historian Spouse
 * Group members worked independently to complete a draft of the Revised Unit Plan. Drafts will be shared and revised at the November 9th meeting.