Gearing up for DENSI 2015

While my adventure is still over a week away, I'm getting super excited for DENSI 2015!

Not only is it in one of my favorite cities in the US (Washington DC), but I'll be rooming with my previous DENSI roommate again!  When we first meet, I was just a few months into dating B and she was moving in with her boyfriend.  Flash forward two years and I'm happily living with B while she married her man and is expecting twin boys!  What fun!  Plus I think our whole suite is fifth grade teachers, so I see lots of pajama-clad collaboration.  We're staying at American University, so there's lots of bonding time.

What I really like about DENSI (besides all the learning) is that I get to take charge of my own learning.  One of the things that is often lacking in professional development, at least in my school district, is differentiation.  Not all teachers need 100% of the same professional development...just like not every student needs exactly the same thing.  Yet...we often all have to sit through the same meetings, despite our different needs as educators.

However, that isn't the case with DENSI!  There are break out sessions and lots of options so teachers can pick what they want to learn.

I looked at my options and am excited to learn about coding, STEM, and digital literacy resources.  There are lots of team meetings and I'm really excited about my week of learning:

Yes, I realize the irony of being "totally" old school but I process things best by writing them down.  I also am really bad at making sure my phone is charged, so this is my back up plan.  I also bought a cute new notebook to take notes (because that's how I learn best).

As an added bonus, my best friend is flying down the weekend after and we have quite the adventure planned! We've got dinner and brunch reservations, are going to a Nationals game, and seeing old friends.  It also so happens to be the ten year anniversary of our senior trip (which was also to DC).  

I'm so excited for my week of learning!

Same concept, simple format

Our school is standards-based, which means we don't give letter grades.

Instead, students are evaluated on rubrics, aligned to the standards, to truly show growth and mastery of a skill.  The standards are continually taught, assessed, retaught and reassessed to allow students multiple opportunities to demonstrate success.

My students and I frequently engage in conversations about growth and that it's okay not to be an expert at everything.

I stumbled upon this on pinterest this morning:

And I absolutely love the way it's phrased.  It perfectly aligns with my classroom philosophy.

How we're learning

Recently, there has been a big push in our district to post the standards and learning objectives.  The idea is transparent learning and that students should be able to tell you what they're working on (duh).

While I think this is great, I think it's missing the component of HOW the class is learning.  This chart fills in the gaps:

Your students shouldn't be in whole group the whole day.  This visual will serve as a reminder to me to switch up how they're learning and make sure they the norms for each grouping style.

Good thing craft time with my coworkers is tomorrow!