Lindsay

Donahoo
Spring 2016

Professional Development Opportunities

(BARK) Linking Literacy: Vestavia Hills Elementary West
Feb 18, 2016

This was my first time to attend a BARK meeting and I absolutely loved it!

Throughout the meeting, they used strategies and ideas that I would l would
definitely use in my future classroom. Starting from the very beginning when we all
arrived, the speaker began with a fun icebreaker. She chose about 5 different classic
childrens books and asked everyone to identify with one of them that most
described us each individually or that particular time in our life. After that, each
person discussed with their group why they each chose that book. We were able to
meet new people and also learn a great way to start the first day of class with
students! I could use this same idea but even change the topic and instead of books I
could use different characters, foods, movies or a variety of other ideas. Once we
each were able to share, we all settled down and sat back in our seats. Then we
were able to learn about at least 50 new and upcoming books for not only this year
but the month of February! It was very cool how tuned in and up to date all of her
resources and materials were. After she went over each of the books she presented
us with, we then paired off again and discussed different areas of reading. We were
able to choose any area that we felt we had the most questions about. I will keep my
packet forever that they gave us.

AMSTI Training
2-18-16
I had not heard of AMSTI before we discussed having this training, so I searched the
Internet to see what it consisted of. After learning that it stood for Alabama Math
Science and Technology Initiative, I was extremely interested and excited to hear
more about it! Just knowing the few facts I had read didnt do the initiative justice to
their efforts as a whole! AMSTI schools use hands on activity-- based learning, which
I think is extremely important and beneficial in schools. Collaboration and hands--
-on practice is more engaging that just putting notes on a whiteboard for students to
copy. More than anything else in elementary through high school, I remember
copying notes over and over, it seems like thats what we did constantly. I had a
hard time learning that way, because Ive always been a slow note taker and I was so
focused on writing everything down that I missed the learning part of the class. If I
would have experienced more hand on and activity based learning along with the
notes, I think I would have comprehended the material more.
Also I think its very beneficial that AMSTI provides not only training, but the
materials, equipment and resources that have been proven to enhance learning. I
love that AMSTI thinks outside of the box and has the students best interest in
mind. They use strategies such as placing students in groups and not rows in the
class, which has been proven to keep them more engaged.
They use actual facts and statistics to back up their practices which is extremely eye
opening, because they show that it really does improve and enhance learning. With
AMSTI students learn that there is more than one way to solve a problem.

Something else that I thought was interesting that was included in this initiative was
the importance of cooperative groups. Not because I dont think they are important,
but because they stressed the importance of them between not only students, but
also teachers, faculty and parents. Communication is huge and having those
cooperative groups is vital in being on the same page. My favorite part of our
training was definitely when we were able to do our own hands on activity after
learning about engineering. I love that the new science standards now focus on
engineering, because a majority of students are going to get more out of hands on
experience than copying science terms and definitions. For me, I always learned
more for experiments and hands on fun in science than taking notes and copying
things straight from a book. The goal of AMSTI and what the training ended on was a
huge grand finale of a note: Ask, imagine, plan, create, improve, and know that its
not my classroom, its either our classroom or their classroom!

ACT Aspire Meeting: Tarrant Intermediate School
4-11-16

Today we discussed the growth reports of students over the years on the

ACT Aspire. My cooperating teacher, Mrs. Philpot and three other teachers attended
this meeting in regards to their students growth over the years and the PREP Act.
The PREP Act requires that student grow and improve on their test scores. To my
surprise this is actually 25% of teachers evaluations, I had never heard of this before
until now and it blew my mind. When testing day nears, its extremely stressful on
the teachers and that stress is subsequently brought onto the students. This is very

unfortunate that it always has to come down to numbers. In a way I understand, but
at the same time, every school year is different and no class is the same. That fact is
extremely true in this placement at Tarrant Intermediate School. Each grade has
classes that are grouped by reading level, and even though they are groups this way
not every student is on the same level. Even so, my cooperating teacher has the
class with the lowest reading level. As a teacher you never know what levels your
class will include the following year, but that is part of teaching. Our job as teachers
is not only to bring grades up, but to mold students minds, and not only help them
grow in knowledge but in understanding!

4th Grade Meeting: Tarrant Intermediate School

4-18-16

In todays meeting the topic of discussion was our fieldtrip that we are going

on in a couple of days. We will depart for the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center
Wednesday morning and there were several things that we had to square away
before then. The four 4th grade teachers met during lunch for a meeting to do so.
They discussed the schedule for the trip, meeting location, distance to our
destination and what the students could bring on the trip. This meeting definitely
helped when writing my field trip project. All students and teachers are to be at the
school by 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning and are allowed to bring their cell phones.
The teachers shared with each other their thoughts on the students bringing their
cell phones. They said that they could only use them on the bus, but they were
primarily for emergencies and informing their parents of our arrival time back at

the school. I think that this is a good idea so that students can be kept entertained,
as long as they dont access anything inappropriate on their phones at this time.
They also discussed the idea of having parents signing a sheet of paper with their
name and cell number, when they drop their children off in the lunchroom the
morning of the trip. Also they discussed that it would take about an hour and a half
to arrive at our destination. They said they would plan on arriving back at the
school by 4:30 p.m. but it would be great to have the parents numbers just in case if
they needed to get in touch with them if they were running behind or if plans had
changed because of an emergency or unforeseen event.