March 9th in Bellingham, WORD and NSRC will partner to bring Harvey “Smokey” Daniels to share research on Best Practice teaching.

WORD March 9

March 23rd in Everett, Snohomish County Reading Council will partner with American Reading to bring Dick Allington to share research that will help us teach reading to ”Every Child, Every Day.”

Richard Allington flyer

April 27th Lake Washington Literacy Council will sponsor a day with Stephanie Harvey

Stephanie Harvey ad revised

It is a great time to be a teacher!

Present “SPLASH” a professional day of learning about BEST PRACTICES with…

Harvey “Smokey” Daniels

Harvey “Smokey” Daniels serves as a guest teacher in schools around the country; in the past year he has worked with primary, intermediate, middle and high school students in 15 states.  Smokey is the author of:

and more…

Our day with Smokey will be spent digging into Best Practices and universal structures that provide learning opportunities for all students grades K-12!

Information: Saturday, March 9^th 2013

Time: 8:30-3:30

Location: Whatcom Community College, Heiner Center

Clock Hours: 6 for $12.00 payable to WORD

Register online at:  www.zapevent.com                                                                                 
*Membership and Splash registration available on zapevent.com!

Registration Information:

WORD (NSRC) members:$75.00                                                                                             

WORD (NSRC) Associate members:$30.00

(substitutes, retired teachers, pre-service teachers and instructional assistance)                      

Non-WORD (NSRC) members: $110.00 *It’s not too late to become a member!                    

Non-WORD (NSRC) Associate members: $30.00

(substitutes, retired teachers, pre-service teachers and instructional assistance)

Thank you to our conference participants.  It was great to spend the day with 200 educators learning and collaborating about effective instructional strategies for all students…implementing the CCSS.  The conference feedback always gives us ways to improve and ideas to celebrate.  Here are a few things we have learned:

Ways to improve:

1. Increase communication 
2. One building is the preference
3. Kindergarten specific sessions would be appreciated

Learning from the conference we should CELEBRATE- (Quotes from participant feedback forms) 

1. Colleen Cruz should come back. The strong, specific writing strategies she taught will improve student learning acorss Washington!
2. The specificity of the CCSS and the shifts we’ll be making for our students will be challenging, but also align with what I would want for all students in my classroom.
3. Getting a chance to look at the writing expected in the CCSS makes me think that more time should be given to writing across the curriculum- every day!

This year WORD is looking into ways to best support colleagues throughout Washington.  If you were able to attend our Fall Conference, what was your BIG LEARNING?  If you couldn’t join us, what can WORD do to support you in the future?

Excited to continuing learning together-

Dawn

WORD President

Jon Schnur, education advisor to President Obama, and Phil Handy, who serves the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney in the same role, will debate education policy matters at stake in the 2012 election during a special webcast co-hosted by Education Week and Teachers College at Columbia University.

The session, scheduled for October 15, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. EST, will be moderated by Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College. Registration for the live webcast is FREE. For more information about the event or to register, click on the following link:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/election2012/debate_on_education.html

Dawn Christiana, WORD President

As a young learner on the west coast I was doing, “just great,” but in the mid-west I was considered “gifted.” Highly capable me arrived in California to be placed in the remedial class for struggling learners. The vast discrepancies in my “ability” were not because moving made me drastically different as a learner, but because teachers had different expectations. They had different expectations of students, but they also had different approaches entirely. Some effective and others not so much. I’m quite sure the many times I had to paint Styrofoam planets did not lead to deep understandings of the solar system. Did my teachers know the impact they were making on me as a learner?

Over the last couple of years the work of John Hattie has been highlighted in research presentations, professional literature and all over the web. This year John Hattie’s groundbreaking book, Visible Learning, which synthesized more than 15 years of research involving millions of students and the biggest collection of evidence-based research, has been formatted for teachers.

For the first time this year, instead of a one day read-in, Jumpstart’s Read for the Record will take place over a full week—September 27 through to the record setting day on October 4.

Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad, by David Soman and Jacky Davis is the official book of Jumpstart’s Read for the Record campaign in 2012. Jacky Davis and David Soman are a husband and wife creative team. The characters in the New York Times-bestselling Ladybug Girl books are inspired by the authors’ own children, Lucy and Sam. For more information about Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad, visit tinyurl.com/4soxmcz.