Evaluating Possible Titles for 7th grade book list

Today in our half-day PD we discussed a few book titles:

*Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez (7th grade)

*Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang (7th grade)

*Open the Door to Liberty by Anne Rockwell (7th grade)

*The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick (8th grade)

Thoughts

Return to Sender

• -Great content and well-written
• -About a boy in New Hampshire and a migrant family
• -Focuses on conflict over migrant workers in America and the different feelings
• (feeling of Americans vs. feeling of migrant workers)
• -Doesn't hit on any major 7th grade objectives

Open the Door to Liberty

• Content is fine, but is too low

Other book ideas

-Breadwinner (Afghanistan)

-Chain of Fire (South Africa)

Socratic Seminars - PD

Notes from a PD provided in house on Socratic Seminars: 2/ 22

Background to Socratic Seminars

*activities in class are usually teacher centered

*teacher knows the answer, students are guessing at the "mystery"

*question is usually "what will we be doing today?", but should be, "what will students learn today?"

-two design models: teacher performance centered OR student learning centered

-teachers are more & more evaluated on student learning

*student-learning centered model focuses on: thinking they do, skills they develop, and what they'll learn

- facilitated by calling for factual recall -> interpretation and analysis -> requiring

synthesis and evaluation

- easy way to start out by asking, "why do you think...?"

*Replace "what is?" with "what if?"

Socratic Seminar- Basics

*three ways: 1) whole group, 2) small group 3) inner group, outer group (outer group observes)

*establish basics of seminar: a. respect, b. listening, c. direct eye contact w/ names

*prior to seminar: given them a piece of reading. then offer open-ended questions (how would... what would happen if...),

Courageous Conversations: 6 Conditions Presentation

Today a colleague and I presented to the faculty the "six conditions" of Courageous Conversations. Our presentation started with a "cue set" to get them thinking about why we're here. Then we explained the remaining three conditions to the faculty. We finished up with a video from Pacific Educational with Glenn Singleton explaining the conditions and the process in depth (I figure it's best coming from the source!).

This presentation was a followup to an earlier presentation, in which we had the faculty rotate between four stations. At each station, they a) read the condition and b) answered discussion questions related to race in their lives.

Overall I think this went well. It was good to give them a chance to circulate and discuss, and then after they've had some time to process, review the information and use videos to get them thinking "multi-modally" about how we can address race issues to help our students.