Our facilitators continually develop their own understandings of teaching and learning throughout the year with the support of the professional staff of The Learning Network, a national organization that nurtures the professional growth of teachers and administrators. The materials that we provide are produced by this group and are evidence of this intense reflection and their own classroom practice. By working with a group from across the U.S., your area s teachers are exposed to a richer picture than if they are limited to those already in their schools or to a single visiting expert. The three days of the Literacy Learning in the Classroom institute are presented as a mixture of general sessions, in which guiding principles of teaching and learning are introduced, and dialogue groups, where participants explore these concepts and understandings in depth. The ratio of facilitators to participants in dialogue groups is one to 35 to encourage lively, engaged conversation from everyone in attendance.
Participants stay in the same dialogue group for all three days.
Depending on the needs of participants, there may be special sessions for grade level grouping, for administrators, and for specialists, such as Reading Recovery and special education teachers. I have learned that through consistent assessment my teaching will be right on the mark with documentation to substantiate my next steps. We call this the teaching and learning cycle . Assessment Assessment is data collected about an individual child. It includes running records of reading, writing samples, a teacher s monitoring notes, and sometimes test scores.