AUGUST-SEPTEMBER, 2009 SUMMARY

CMS follows the NLC (National Literacy Coalition-you can google it) protocols for reading and writing in Language Arts and Social Studies classes.

Students get a demonstration lesson from the teacher, go to stations to practice, and then report in small groups to the teacher for more specific instruction in the skill.  These small groups are set using data on each child's performance so that skills can be remediated or enriched as needed.  These homogenous groups allow the teacher to plan lessons at a variety of skill levels and deliver these lessons to small groups of students at a time.

The station groups are built using data also, but these teams are of mixed ability.  They are also a social group where students can meet new people and learn to work with them.

Assessments are given before, during, and after each set of stations.  The pre assessment is the same as the post assessment so that we can measure a student's growth from start to finish.  If the score shows a need for  more work, the teacher will cycle back to those skills at her table teaching group.  If the group is proficient, the teacher moves on to the next skill set. Assessments during the unit show the teacher and students how they are progressing:  is something too easy?  too hard?  too confusing?  All of these issues can be dealt with by examining how students are doing on a day-to-day basis.

This month we have our first set of writing stations set to the following targets:  editing, parts of speech, responding to a text by changing a scene, and writing descriptive metaphor paragraphs.  Our first set of reading stations is designed to hit these targets:  inference, main idea and supporting details, author's purpose, enriching vocabulary, and how to respond to text with a summary.  

The teacher station will show the students how to use the CSAP rubric to score higher.  Each student brings his/her writing to the station and learns how to score it and then change the work to get a higher score.