Table PD

I spent Saturday learning with some of my good friends at The Literacy Connection.  Listening to Jennifer Serravallo gave me so much to think about and I'll be sharing that thinking in future posts.

One of the best things about The Literacy Connection is the community.  I always learn so much, and yesterday was no exception.  Not only did I learn a lot about gathering and analyzing data to make smart decisions about readers, I gleaned much information from my table mates.  I ended up adding new apps to my iPad, blogs to my Feedly account, and podcasts to my account.  Believe it or not, I only ordered one book, Jennifer's new Reading Strategies Book, which I can't wait to get.  There are some Sneak Peeks on Heinemann's website.  Betsy Hubbard wrote a wonderful review of the book on Two Writing Teachers yesterday.

New Apps

As Jennifer shared the importance of gathering data around the conversations students are having about their reading and writing, Mandy told us about LessonNote.  With this app, you can record the conversations students are having.  I can see myself using this app in several ways:

• Recording students' language and actions during a conversation
• Looking for patterns in who is contributing to the conversation
• Thinking about how students contribute to the conversation:  what kinds of statements do they make, do they ask questions, do they invite others to join into a conversation, can they disagree respectfully, do they move the conversation forward
• Sharing classroom conversations with teachers when I'm coaching
• Reflecting with a teacher about the conversation that occurred around her lesson

Marie then showed us an app called Record of Reading.  One of the things I liked about this app is the ability to audio record a child's reading.  You can then sync the running record with the child's oral reading.  I also like that I can save it to a file and/or email it.  While the app calculates accuracy and self-correction rate, teachers still need to analyze the running records. 

New Blogs

Jennifer Serravallo's blog

Indent a blog by Kate Roberts and Maggie Roberts  Kate and Maggie are staff developers with Teacher's College.  I can already tell that I am going to learn a lot from these thoughtful ladies.

Inside the Dog by Steve Peterson  I saw Steve present with Mary Lee Hahn at NCTE this year.  I was glad that Mary Lee shared his blog with me today.  He's currently teaching fifth grade.

New Podcast

We were chatting about the podcast, Serial, (which if you haven't listened to it, you MUST) when Deb asked what other people listened to in the car when traveling.  Mary Lee shared NPR TED Radio Hour.    Just scrolling through the available titles tells me that my brain will definitely be stretched.  The first one I'll be listening to is Press Play since I'm fascinated with play and the important role it can play in education.

Head over to Margaret Simon's Reflections on the Teche to read how other educators are using technology.  #digilitSunday  You can read more about yesterday's session at #litconn15