CULLOWHEE (May 10, 2016)—A team from Elizabeth Duncan Koontz Elementary School in Salisbury made the most of a Solution and Planning team program at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, a national leader in professional development.
The Rowan-Salisbury School’s group topic was “Closing the Achievement Gap through Rigor and Differentiation in ELA and Math.” This team of second grade teachers worked on lesson plans and solutions for implementing differentiated instruction in the core subject areas of ELA and math. They will also worked on better incorporating technology by comparing and using data to help guide best practices to ensure student success.
“We accomplished even more than we had planned for and I had written in the proposal,” said Juli Alfieri, a second grade teacher at the school. “We developed the sequence of skills and words our students will be learning each week next year for our Orton Gillingham focus. This will help us be on the “same page” so to speak as a grade level and help expedite our lesson plans. We also mapped out our Math Rotations for next year, including the scope and sequence along with activities and games to help meet the needs of our students through differentiation. We did this in order to focus on spiraling math skills throughout the year in order to help students better grasp key concepts.”
The group also completed class lists for the rising third graders and submitted it to their administrative team.
“Our second grade team was able to make a list of necessary supplies for incoming students next year to submit to our school secretary, make a team plan for homework and expectations, plan our Math Journals, Homework Folders, Orton Gillingham Notebooks, and more,” Alfieri said. “These are just a few of the extra things we did. NCCAT made this all possible by giving us uninterrupted time in an environment where we had all the tools necessary to plan for implementation of our core teaching models.
Other team members included: Dellarene Myers, Brian Pesci, Melissa Root, Joshua Sherrill, and Joretta Sterner.
The NCCAT Solution and Planning Teams program offers educators an opportunity to meet in a residential setting devoid of distraction to create and advance departmental, school, or district-wide projects. These projects might consist of new programming, research, planning, or curricula.
Gather a team together to create or refine your own innovative approaches to early grades literacy or digital learning. Early grades literacy or digital learning projects will be given preference. All projects will be considered.