Escalon Teachers
The educators who created the Great Valley Writing Camp in Ripon are dedicated professionals who are committed to each students' individual writing progress. They participated as part of a 60-hour college course sponsored by Great Valley Writing Project at CSU Stanislaus. All of the teachers share a common goal: to become better teachers of writing.
From March through May, each team held after-school meetings to discuss assigned texts, choose instructional strategies, practice new techniques, and design lesson plans. Between meetings, teachers field-tested promising ideas in their classrooms: they purposefully experimented with lesson delivery, and they carefully observed student outcomes. Together, the teammates shared their findings and refined their plans. They succeeded in creating a wonderful curriculum that stimulates student thinking and motivates the expression of ideas through writing.
Next year, these teachers will incorporate many new instructional strategies and procedures to improve the writing programs at their own schools.
K-3 Teachers
During this implementation lab, our fabulous K-3 team was a mixture of experienced and new teachers.who guided the K-3 students through studying the lives of snails. The students came away with knowledge of how they grow, eat and reproduce, and completed various projects that show their learning. Our teachers focused on growing the confidence of young writers. This was also a great opportunity for teachers to enhance their practices and collaborate with other teachers.
4-7 Teachers
Our phenomenal 4-7 team was also a mixture of experinced and new teachers. These grade levels worked on a project on patriotism. Diagramming an image, writing a poem, editing a recipe to include patriotic adjectives and even storyboarding a comic. By researching some fun, food and Fourth of July symbols, students become experts on a topic and publish different writing samples.
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