Elizabeth Collier

Professional Development
AMSTI
Ashley Tilly and Kimberley Davis came today to discuss AMSTI and what
exactly AMSTI is and what they provide students and teachers. AMSTI stands for
Alabama Math and Science Technology Initiative. Often times, math and science
can have a bad notation. AMSTI desires to engage students in math and science
and give opportunities to grow and ask the right questions so students today can
fall in love with these two subjects. AMSTI gives students a hands-on activity
based learning, environment. Conceptual understanding is being brought to the
classroom. This conceptual understanding helps to deepen content teacher
knowledge. Students are given time to think about problems and must formulate
explanations, learn how to argue and respectfully back up their opinion, justify
conjectures, use multiple strategies, and cooperatively work with others. AMSTI
creates a classroom community that is engaged in the common process of
inquiry. For teachers there is summer training for new teachers or teachers who
have already been trained but because of the new standards need new training.
This training also includes training for teachers who have switched grades. This
training provides them with the pedagogy behind AMSTI. AMSTI also provides
all of the equipment and resources that these teachers need. During the
presentation Ashley and Kimberley showed us a video of Regis and Patricia on
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This video shows the anxiety I often feel
towards math. Patricia saw that her question involved number and automatically
shut down. Personally, I think I often react similarly or have the mindset that it will
take me awhile to solve the problem but maybe eventually I can find the solution.
Regis is a great guide and shows my role as a teacher (supporter, encourager,
made her thinking visible). Something that I think I need to realize and believe is
that questions are more important than answers! When the right person finds the
right question, amazing things can happen. I hope to gradually fall in love with
problem solving and create that love in my students as well, in both math and
science. It was interesting to see how the science standards have changed
throughout the years. Old standards use words such as identifying listing and
describing, while new standards focus on engineering and problem solving.
When I was in elementary and middle school I remember learning science
through facts, even if we did a couple experiments we were never constructing
our own plan. Students are now given opportunities to face a problem and all on
their own find out how to solve it; this is both an engaging and growing

experience. Then Kimberley and Ashley gave us our own problem to solve! We
were given index cards to build a case for an eagle at a museum. We started with
a situation, then a problem, then configured a plan and solution. The teacher is
to give specific criteria and constraints for students, so for us 100 index cards,
certain amount of tape, and restricted time to build. These problems should
come from a specific human need or desire to help make connections and relate
content to the real world. Overall, I enjoyed this presentation and it taught me
what AMSTI is and what it stands for. It also reminded me of my calling to be a
teacher and to always be intentional and be the students hero.

Barc Meeting April 28 th

Today I attended the BARC meeting at Shades Cahaba Elementary. The
focus of the session was writing. This was my first Birmingham Area Reading
Council meeting and I had heard great things about these sessions. It was such a
treat to hear both the UAB Maryann Manning Family Literacy Center as well as
Javacia Harriss Bowser discuss the importance of literacy. The Maryann Manning
Literacy Center began at UAB and has a goal of spreading the importance of
reading throughout our city. Through lots of research they have found that what
affects students and children the most is the well being of families. Family
reading is one of the most important activities to be involved in. One point they
made that I found interesting was that most children, regardless of
socioeconomic status are on the same level at the end of the school year but
what makes the largest gap is the summer. I volunteer at an inner city program in
New York and their reasoning behind having such a strong summer program is
because without that, most of the children would just be roaming the streets. So
after hearing that point and reflecting on itit definitely makes sense. Not every
family can provide their child with extra reading/writing/math practice at home
so these students forget almost half of what was learned the previous year. They
had multiple ideas to help solve this issue and create a literacy loving community
but one that stood out to me in particular was little libraries in urban settings. If
those urban neighborhoods had a library that children could walk to, maybe they
would spend time in the library rather than walking around or watching TV. The
next speaker was Mrs. Bowser. Mrs. Bowser is a teacher as well as a writer and
the founder of See Jane Right. She spends her days teaching while at night
focuses on her blogging and other forms of writing. I love her whole message
and what she is about. Writing has never been something that I have been
passionate about or felt like I was very good at but maybe if I take her advice and
just write everyday I would learn to love it. I believe it is necessary as a future
teacher to show your students you care about both writing and reading and help

instill a love for them as well. Mrs. Bowser gave us three tips to becoming a
dedicated writer:
1. Find your tribe and love them hard (not just take from a group of people
but pour back into them).
2. Write everyday doesnt have to be part of a book or a blog, perhaps just
a journal or a quick note to yourself
3. Learn to love deadlines writing goals and your tribe will help keep you
accountable
Overall, I loved hearing both of these speakers and learning new perspectives
about the importance of literacy.

PD at Hollis Academy

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Ferriss, highly recommended a book to me

last Thanksgiving called, High Impact Instruction: A Framework for Great
Teaching by Jim Knight. I unfortunately was not able to read the whole book
before January but when I was observing her classroom during Jan-term she
informed me she was leading a professional development session on this book
and how to more effectively instruct. I attended a few of these meetings and the
majority of these were about the first couple of chapters which discuss planning
and how to form effective questions and formative assessments. Many of the
strategies the book discusses are thing that I am familiar with such as planning
out questions and planning to formatively assess students everyday. One part of
planning was learning maps, which I had not heard much about before attending
Mrs. Ferriss meeting. There were 8 things that Knight wrote in his book to help
teachers know why learning maps are effective and important:
1. Seeing supports learning
2. Maps show the big picture
3. They keep students and teachers on track
4. Maps can structure the beginning and ending of lessons
5. They serve as a mechanism for repeated review
6. Maps make connections explicit
7. They can help struggling note-takers
8. Maps serve as a living study guide
Part 2 of the book focuses on instruction. Within the instruction section there are
chapters discussing thinking prompts, effective questions, stories, cooperative
learning, and authentic learning. After going to Mrs. Ferriss sessions on the first
part of this book, I am excited to read the rest and continue this professional
development on my own.

Professional Meeting
Midpoint SLO meeting at Hollis
During Jan-term, I attended several meetings with my teacher and her
kindergarten team. One meeting I was thrilled about attending was a SLO meeting. SLO
(student learning objective) is a new process that Greenville County Schools has
implemented over the past year. It serves as a way to measure student progress and
ensure that both teachers and students are being intentional to meet learning
objectives. The meeting I attended was not only with my teacher but also with the
principal of the school. Below is some of the paperwork that was completed before the
meeting. Hollis Academy is a title one school and used to be one of the lowest schools
in the county. After Mr. Golden took charge about 7 years ago, the school has totally
transformed but he is still leading the school as if they were in the same position they
were a couple years ago. Some teachers may argue that the school does not need such
strict policies and procedures but I believe his leadership is what makes this school so
wonderful. Therefore, I have seen endless amounts of paper work and every single
lesson and activity Mrs. Ferriss and I planned had to be intentional and backed up with a
standard and learning objective. The requirements on the SLO sheet are similar to what
our education blocks is to think about when planning lessons and personal growth and
goals for the student and teacher. First, the teacher will recognize an area that her
students need work in. For Mrs. Ferriss, it was number sense. She recorded beginning
data and set goals from there. She then planned how she was going to use highly
effective instructional strategies to meet these goals. She also planned for assessments
and progress monitoring as well as how she was going to professionally grow to even
more meet the needs of her students. This experience really opened my eyes to the
behind the scenes work that teachers do but also how many schools differ depending
on the leadership. Overall, I believe this new SLO program will be very beneficial to
Greenville County schools.