While the summer always provides a much needed change of pace, the work of a PPS teacher never really ends. Here are just a few of the exciting projects our PPS colleagues have been up to this summer:
Common Core Best Practices Institute
Teams of teachers and administrators from every PPS school participated in a two-day professional learning event this August, hosted by the Office of Teaching & Learning. A train-the-trainers model of professional development, the participants will return to their schools this fall ready to roll out four to five modules focused on the shifts related to the Common Core and new practices.
C4: Culturally-Responsive Curriculum Creation/Curation
About 40 PPS teachers participated in a two-day camp in July, hosted by the PPS Department of Teaching Innovation. The event helped 13 teacher teams launch action research projects on technologically integrated, culturally responsive curricula and classroom practices this fall. Their projects will be completed in December.
ESL Summer Camp
ESL piloted its very first blended-learning ESL Summer Camp at Lee, Lent and César Chávez schools. Sixty students grades 3 through 5 engaged in a curriculum specially designed to teach science concepts while reinforcing language skills in all language domains. Students applied their math and engineering skills to build boats!
iTunes University Resource Project
Two PPS teachers participated in a COSA-sponsored project to develop curriculum resources to be made available on iTunes. Franklin HS English teacher Pamela Garrett wrote:
"My team consists of four of us from all over the state. We are using BaseCamp to communicate, Numbers in iCloud to collaborate and curate information for the course, and iTunes Course Manager to create the course. We are using a variety of media -- pdf and other documents, video, Keynote presentations, iBooks, apps, and more."
Thank you all for your dedication and drive to continuously improve teaching and learning, and best wishes for the 2014/15 school year!
