Help with the Tour Guides

Greetings, All!

Over the next few weeks, I will be creating the Tour Guide to accompany the IB school visits that you all agreed to do.

I would very much appreciate your help and feedback before I begin this project.

Please consider: what should the Tour Guide include that would make your visit most beneficial to you in learning about IB? What background information should be included? What kinds of things do you think you should look for? What questions should you be asking? Would a guided reflection help you synthesize your thought after you visit?

Just jot down your ideas in the comments. Thank you very much for taking time to help make the Tour beneficial for you and your classrooms.

Essential Agreement #2

All early childhood programs will use the ECIP form provided by the Coordinators as parent conference forms.

We revised this to read that all early childhood programs will
use the ECIP form provided by the Coordinators as an
assessment tool. Teachers are encouraged to share the
ECIP form with parents at conferences but do not need to use
the ECIP as a parent conference form.

Parents will understand what is being assessed through the ECIP and how they can support this work at home.

Please see the blog about the ECIP and parents.
This should be ongoing.
How have you already shared this information with parents?
What are you seeing that demonstrates parents are supporting their
children's work at home?

"The walls talk..." All Early Childhood Programs will document and display the documentation of the children's work at least once a week.

We revised this to indicate display of documentation changing
at least monthly rather than weekly.
And boy oh boy, are these walls talking!!!
Parents, staff, custodians--everyone is noticing what the children are doing.
I'm wondering how that work can be spread and shared
throughout the Central community.
Fabulous work everyone. Keep it up!!!
I'm wondering what you're learning from
each other's documentation in the halls.
I hope you're taking an opportunity to visit upstairs
if you live downstairs and vice versa.
Perhaps this wall talking and wall walking would be
a good topic for a lunch bunch or study circle.
Also, in the Innovations publication that is circulating among
teachers, there is an excellent article on documentation.
Finally, at Central, we have a brand spanking new
IMAC computer which is hooked up to a brand
spanking new laser printer. You can hook up your
not so brand spanking new cameras to the IMAC and
print out pictures on the laser printer--easy as pie!
What you need to do this is to have your SLP user name
and password. If you don't have one, check with Mary O'.

"How do you know what you know?" is a question that will be answered in the documentation.

Again, I'm seeing lots of this on the talking walls.
I'm wondering if the parents know what you know...

Powerschool!

As I write, Marilyn is entering all early childhood classes
into Powerschool. Your ECIP data will go in there
and you can enter it yourself, if you would like.
Marilyn is also pleased to train anyone interested.
If you have been trained on Powerschool, there is a
possibility I can obtain a laptop for you to use
in your classroom while you are entering ECIP data.

I want to read your comments on how you are honoring this essential agreement!

A reminder of Essential Agreement #1

This year, we will all adopt an Inquiry Stance.

Open

--Welcome ideas, even conflicting ones

--Prepare to change our positions and opinions

Wondering

--Be playful with ideas and words

Committed

--Actively involved with ideas, both verbally and nonverbally

Engaging of others

--Building on each other’s utterances

--Agreeing/disagreeing with others and our own ideas

Supportive of own and others’ ideas

--Offering evidence and opinions

--Encouraging risk taking

Please post a comment to tell us all how you are honoring this essential agreement in your work so far this year.

Travel Guide on Central Field Trips/Staff Exchanges/Visiting IB

The final piece from the early childhood workshop!

With all good intentions, I hope to have these ready to rock and roll no later than January 1, 2008. Just wanted to let you know that this hasn't fallen off the radar screen and next steps will be taken.

Thank you!

Study circles/lunch bunch on inquiry

Yet another topic that came up at the early childhood workshop was the idea of organizing a study circle and/or lunch bunch for staff to get together and talk about the use of inquiry in your classrooms.

Such conversations and discussions around the documentation of children's work is a critically important component of inquiry.

At this point I can offer you continuing education hours for any work you do together on this--no $$ (sorry :( )

To move this forward: please post a comment to this blog within the next week if you are interested in being part of a study circle and/or lunch bunch inquiry group. Once we see who is interested, we can move forward to make it happen!

Curriculum Night on Inquiry and the ECIP

Another topic that came up at the early childhood workshop was how to talk with parents about inquiry and the ECIP.

If I remember correctly, we sort of volunteered the ECFE parent educators to provide other program staff with a 'cheat sheet' on relevant points and conversation starters.

Are you still interested in having this resource? Please post your reply so I know how to move forward on this.

Second, if I remember correctly, you were discussing offering some sort of parent night where inquiry and the ECIP could be explained.

Lisa, Peggy and I chatted about the possibility of doing this as an all early childhood programs/classrooms event. We looked at the nature of the different programs, interactions with parents, parent involvement and decided that doing an all programs event really wouldn't meet the needs of parents in various programs.

So, your beloved program coordinator will be talking with you about ways to make sure that there is conversation with parents about inquiry and the ECIP. If you have some ideas or suggestions you want to share, please post a comment to this blog!

Moving Forward from the Workshop

Did you think Provocation Station had fallen off my radar screen? Au contraire! However, my radar screen has been jammed by multiple meetings!

But thanks to Lisa and Peggy, Provocation Station is back on line with information we promised you at the Early Childhood Workshop.

First, we agreed that we would organize a study circle on developing a rubric for filling out the ECIP. Here's what we're suggesting to get this accomplished.

-- two (and only two) study circle meetings on Thursday, Nov. 1 and Thursday, Nov. 15, 1-3 p.m. in the Central Office Lounge
-- one staff member from each program should volunteer (or risk being appointed!) to be part of the study circle
--Lisa, Peggy and/or Mary O' will facilitate the study circle
--all staff members will be responsible for providing your program representative with developmental checklists, Work Sampling rubrics, Creative Curriculum rubrics that they can use during the study circle to develop the rubric

I realize that many of you have already started or even finished filling out the fall ECIP so this rubric will be coming after the fact. But I also saw that you were very supportive of developing this rubric so I think we should go ahead with it and I wonder what it will end up looking like!

Please let us all know in your comments to this blog who from Creative Play; ECFE/PALS; First Steps; Kids' Place; PALS+ will join the study circle! (Programs will pay for substitutes if necessary for a representative to attend but I can't speak for ECSE :( )

Lisa, Peggy and I have it on our calendars and we're looking forward to this work.

Lisa, Peggy and I are also going to combine your wonderful ideas for the Early Childhood Plan curriculum template to build one template. We anticipate it will be used for a "broad brush" view of your curriculum work in the major topic areas of the ECIP: SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT; APPROACHES TO LEARNING; LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT; CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS; COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT; SCIENTIFIC THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING; SOCIAL SYSTEMS UNDERSTANDING; PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT.
This is work to come and we will keep you informed as to timelines when they are developed.