Blended Learning with Seesaw

 I just became a Seesaw Pioneer! The first course in a series to ROCK the Blended Learning teaching expectations!

How We Express Ourselves: Understanding and appreciating different cultures promotes international mindedness.

Our unit about exploring cultures and international mindedness came to a close with students creating a poster to share some elements of their culture and we created a definition as a class for what we understand international mindedness or global mindedness to be.

The ESL Program at Suzhou's International School

WIDA WORKSHOP

This November my school was generous to fly a WIDA Consultant out to work with our ESL team and other Elementary Homeroom teachers on a 2 day workshop about Differentiation for English Language Learners.

After the workshop, myself (being the ESL coordinator,) along with the Principal met to discuss the big question: NOW WHAT? For our programming.  I checked in with my team, and here is what we decided together:

We decided that we would change our leveling system to better reflect the WIDA levels (we have phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 at the moment). Next year we will change to Level 1, 2, 3, 4. This simple change, will likely result in a big project for me, but I think it is a valuable change!

Instructional Coaching Certificate

I am looking forward to applying the strategies and learned I have come away with from taking this course!

Key ideas I learned about:

• Defining the Instructional Coach's Role

• The Characteristics of Effective Coaches

• Different ways to support teachers

• Teacher's are at different stages on the 'Continuum of Self Reflection' which effects what kind of coaching and coaching strategies to employ.

• Goal Setting