Professional+Development+2013-14

** Literacy Strategy Conversations **
 * March 14, 2014 **

Below are PDFs of each building's literacy strategy / plan. If you have materials to share, please choose the correct Literacy Strategy page (ACE, Paragraph Writing or Summarization) listed in the sidebar to the right and upload your documents to that page.

Below is a list of the benefits, drawbacks and lingering questions generated during PD today.Thanks to everyone for engaging in truly meaningful, thoughtful conversations.

__ **Benefits for our ESL Students** __


 * Improved student writing
 * Helps students organize writing
 * Teaches students to chunk article
 * Teaching importance of info
 * Everyone participates
 * Graphic organizers
 * Consistency / routine
 * Continuity
 * Sense of responsibility
 * Promotes deep reading and analysis of text
 * Provides structure (for writing) x2
 * Provides practice (for writing and thinking about text) x2
 * Develops thinking process and prepares students for HS rigor of writing
 * Writing improving rapidly / strong writing being displayed

**__ Drawbacks for our ESL Students __** **__ Lingering Questions / Concerns __**
 * Need adjustments according to subject matter / language level
 * Some inflexibility
 * Takes more time for ESL x3
 * Difficulty of articles assigned
 * Not always consistent (need for a rubric)
 * Difficult for newcomers / limited language skills / vocabulary limitations re E (expanding thoughts)
 * Off pacing guide
 * Not beneficial to writing (summarizing)
 * Promotes copying / plagiarism (summarizing)
 * Lack of teacher resources
 * Scripted presentation or too open
 * None if students are able to use the supports across the curriculum
 * Students move schools often so they may need to learn many plans
 * How can we (ESL) support each other - use this Wiki!
 * issues of copying / plagiarism (summarizing strategy)
 * Finding good articles
 * Is this going to last?
 * How do we address fiction?
 * How do we take students to next step (i.e., from summarizing to critically analyzing, from one paragraph to multiple paragraphs / to longer essays / to answering multi-step questions for in-depth writing, etc.?)
 * How can we improve / build on our existing process?
 * Will there be a district literacy / writing plan to extend consistency across the district?