On Monday of this week, during the first of our 23/24 Teacher inservice days, the PYP team had the privilege of working with two external experts: Anne van Dam and Dan Feigelson.
Anne van Dam worked with our Early Years Team to deepen our documentation practice. Our EYU teachers constantly document student learning to understand how students are progressing and to plan future learning experiences. They worked with Anne to develop a protocol for analyzing learning that will be integrated in the future to enhance the wonderful experience our students have each day at school.
Listening, observing and intervening with further research through play experiences support our youngest students to become self-motivated, reflective learners.
Dan Feigelson worked with our Elementary Team to deepen our Reading and Writing conferencing practice. By regularly conferring with students about the strategies they use when reading ensures they become motivated, critical readers who not only understand what they read, but use their reading to become independent thinkers. Individual writing conferences provide targeted support to our young writers as they communicate their thinking and creativity through the written word. Dan spent Tuesday and Wednesday in our school to continue to work with teachers as they watched him in action conferring about reading and writing with several of our students.
Dan spent Tuesday afternoon with some of our parents discussing the importance of daily shared and independent reading. He confirmed what we have communicated over and over again, daily reading, outside the school day, is the most important factor in student success in school.
