GAP Conference

Yesterday we had a teacher inservice day where the entire district attended the Growing As Professionals (GAP) Conference at the Phoenix Convention Center.

My experiences with this annual conference have been hit or miss. The year Ron Clark presented = big hit! Some of the breakout sessions in the past have not been as helpful or relevant as I would have liked but overall the conference is a great chance to get together as educators and remind ourselves why we teach. Yesterday's keynote speaker was Todd Whitaker educator and author of many books including

He was extremely funny and inspirational. The main message was "Raise the Praise, Minimize the Criticize" which I promptly made up a little song and dance for :) He basically talked about how we should treat people (students, parents, teachers) like they are good. Our society tends to treat people like they are bad, asking a student in the hall "what are you doing?" instead of "can I help you?" or asking our trusted spouse who is 20 minutes late coming home from the store "where were you?" instead of not mentioning it at all. He spoke about how treating good people like they are good makes them happy and treating bad people like they are good makes them uncomfortable, you shifted the discomfort to the difficult people instead of feeling uncomfortable yourself.

This probably doesn't make any sense, but it really gave me a great perspective on how I can deal with difficult parents. This was the topic of the 2nd breakout session we attended. Although it disappointingly ended early because he had a plane to catch, I'm going to use what I learned and check out some of his books.

The first breakout session was a math workstation session put on by Lakeshore where we were sure we would be receiving a sales pitch on their expensive wonderful products. Turns out it was really informative and they even gave away products! The presenter talked a lot about the difference between "centers" and "workstations". I got a lot of great ideas on how to differentiate the workstations and create them to leave out and tweak with content or materials instead of changing out centers all of the time. She said workstations are best done in pairs for no longer than 15 minutes (including set up/clean up). The best way to pair your students is to make a list based on level from low to high and divide the list in half, then pair the kids next to each other so the lowest of the low is paired with the lowest of the high.

For example:
Pam(lowest)    
Sam
Dan
Jen
Pat
Todd
Ann
Dot (highest)

split the list in half
Pam    Pat
Sam   Todd
Dan   Ann
Jen    Dot

Another great assessment trick she taught us for workstation performance assessments is to tape 5x7 colored notecards to a clipboard with each students name on one. While you walk around, make notes on what they have missed or are struggling with, when the card is full place it in their file and replace with a new card. I'm totally going to do this! I may have to do it on this clipboard I found at Brown Paper Packages

While I was learning about workstations, my teammate and gal pal Ruthie was teaching, yes teaching! a breakout session! I would have loved to attend and see her in all of her glory but I thought dividing and conquering would be best :) Word on the street is that she did awesome, I'm so proud of her!

I spent the morning putting together some fun games and activities for my new workstations I'm going to assemble this week. First grade teachers (K too), if you haven't been to this website for math teaching resources, you HAVE TO GO! It was shared with me by Meg at The Gilberts Journey, Kindergarten teacher extraordinaire. It is based on Common Core and the activities are ordered in skill and number sense development order.

I created a couple of activities based on activities I saw on this site. I'd love to share but I'm not sure how to upload a document into the blog (needtofigurethisout), leave a comment or email me and I'd be happy to share!

Anyways, being sick in bed hasn't been too bad this morning since I have been productive! I do need to drag myself out for Saturday errands, buy a gift for the wedding we are attending next weekend, find 10 tubs for my new workstations and watch the Sun Devils take on Illinois this afternoon from the comfort of my couch.

How are you spending your College Football Saturday?