Is it cold enough?

http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/homepage.htm
Found a free educational clipart site that fit today perfectly. How much colder can it get in Portland?
I saw a request by a teacher who wanted to start a professional development group on the englishcompanion.ning.com. She was lamenting the miserable professional development she has experienced the day she wrote her request.
I've been impressed over the last few years with how teachers have had some say in what they want to learn on professional development days. Often they are the ones included in giving the workshops. It seems a win-win situation. The teachers are recognized as professionals and the administrators are giving their teachers what they want— relevant workshops that teachers can take from and use in their classrooms.
I would hope if any of you reading this post have had the experience of contributing to professional development workshops would go to the englishcompanion.ning.com/professional development group and relate what you have done in your district that includes the teachers giving the workshops or participating in faculty and staff meetings where their expertise is called on to demonstrate to other educational faculty. There are thousands of teachers accessing this website, your experiences would be highly regarded. Keep warm. Carrol

New Quarter, Spring, 2010

How quickly the term went. Now a new one is starting and what's on the national agenda now? Obama's educational plan is being deep-6ed by teacher's unions. It is interesting how the mandates keep coming down from the federal level and so little input comes up from the teaching trenches. Somewhere there must be a compromise!

I'm reading for a teacher study group a book called Content Area Conversations: How to plan discussion-based lessons for diverse language learners by Fisher, D. et. al, Shirley Brice Heath writes in the Foreward, "Students need to imagine, plan, think about, wonder and speculate." No matter who they are is her basic premise.

Although today teachers are called on for "accountability, evaluation and standards," she maintains "instead teachers should be asssessing through communication. . . particularly oral language and performance."

In following up on an English Ning link, a teacher asked how to promote discussion in the classroom. Maybe she was reading the same book. Antoher teacher responded with a wonderful web-link.

http://www.coe.uga.edu/~smago/VirtualLibrary/Activities_that_Promote_Discussion.htm
I think almost any part of the language arts curriculum has an activity on this site.

Looking forward to a great quarter. Carrol