Congratulations!

Congratulations to me on being selected as a participant in the Governor’s Teacher Network (GTN). The network is composed of 450 teachers representing three-fourths of the state's local school districts. We represent 375 schools in all eight regions of our state. As a whole, we will spend the next year collaborating, creating professional development sessions and materials, or instructional resources for students and teachers across the state, and presenting to our colleagues. The initiative is led by the NCDPI staff, along with the Governor's office. We have already started working on our projects and the collaboration has already proved to be motivating and inspiring. My area of focus is a work in progress.... stay tuned!

Special Ed Bloghop

I am linking up with Jamie from Tales of a Carolina Girl to share your best advice for the beginning of the school year. Click on the link to below for lots of great advice!

://talesofacarolinagirl.blogspot.com/

Name: Laural

Job Title: EC (Exceptional Children) Teacher, Resource and Inclusion

Grades: 2- 5

# of years on the job: 3. Prior to that I worked as a substitute teacher and an aide in a multi-handicapped room with 7 students, 1 teacher, and 4 aides.

Best Advice:

Create a schedule for special ed students first. Then, create the general ed schedule around the special ed schedule.

Keep your sense of humor.

Stay positive no matter how strong a storm you face.

Build relationships with students, parents, teachers, the janitor, the secretary, admin, the librarian, the tech teacher, the gym teacher, the art teacher, and anyone else you come across.

Curriculum Review Day 1

School is out, but I am lucky to be working with teachers to prepare and review curriculum for the 2014-2015 school year. Apparently the fruits of our labor is nationally recognized. How cool is that?!!! 

Lots of folks are accomplishing lots if tasks. I am working with a group of EC teachers to match ELA standards to researched strategies  for 4th and 2nd graders. I am amazed at the amount collaboration that this project entails on a yearly basis. Check out Ed.gov Office of Innovation and Improvement to read about how our school district  is "showing off"!

Get ready to learn

Today in the resource room:  Two students are standing in front of the smart board. One is explaining with enthusiasm the game they are going to play. This game will be all about 2D and 3D shapes. His energy is contagious and they are smiling. His words before they push the start button...."Get ready to learn!" 

This makes me happy.

Great afternoon

We had a terrific ERD today! Lots of great ideas for anchor charts, websites for writing lessons, and teacher led PD. Thanks Mrs. Jordan!

Straws and pipe cleaners

Here we are creating geometric shapes with pipe cleaners and straws. Another hands on activity!

We LOVE reading!

Lucky me, I start each school day in a 4th grade classroom with an amazing and inspiring teacher. Together we strive to increase the reading skills of the special ed and general ed population in this class. We LOVE reading. Our students are exposed to multiple modes of practicing fluency. We use whole group and individual fast phrases, www.easycbm.com reading passages for hot and cold reads, and we just started using Whole Brain Teaching's SuperSpeed1000. The kids love it and the teachers get goose bumps watching the kids use it. If you haven't added this your list of resources for fluency practice, you are missing out! Below is a picture of the graph we use to chart team success and a picture of a team practicing their words!