Wednesday Thank You...

I want to start with a big

to all the wonderful readers who wished me well today. For those of you that don't know I presented in front of all the ELL teachers in my district. I purposely didn't think about it too much because I didn't want to stress it.

A few of you were a bit curious as to what it was about. This year my districts ELL departments decided to take 3 PLC mornings and meet ALL together to do some professional development and work as ELL teams.

One of our focuses this year was using Descriptive feedback. My group created a kid friendly writing rubric to aid us in giving our kids productive and constructive descriptive feedback.

If you don't know, which I didn't, descriptive feedback is feedback given to students that prompts them to self-reflect in a way that improves their work. It is specific and gives them the steps to take in order to move forward in the writing process.
What it isn't: "You did great in class today." While this kind of feedback is motivational it does not tell the learner what they did properly or what they can do to make their work better.
What it is: "Wow I like the way you added a capital letter to your sentence. Now don't forget the punctuation at the end of the sentence."

I was asked by one of our ELL coaches to present to all the teachers how it went. What we created, how we did it, what worked and what didn't work. Below is an image of the rubric. It was created with Kinder Kids in mind but can be used for any beginning writer. PLUS, the though process behind it was that you could change the objectives out for any grade level.

Click on the image or this link to get your copy.

A freebie from me. ;)

I created a power point, which you can download and/or watch here.

Power Point version

PDF version

BTW, if you download the power point version the font will probably change, but you will get to see a video of me conferencing with a student.

Here is a little peek.

So you know, I think I spoke a little too quickly and my videos didn't play (don't you love technology?) but everyone said it was a great presentation.

I'll leave you with a video that made my day a little bit brighter.

Enjoy and have a great day.