Literacy   Learning lab

Program Vision: 

Have you ever noticed that when you search for images of "teachers", it's always a single adult in a sea of children?  Learning is a social experience, so how can teachers have rich learning experiences when they usually practice alone? This week-long professional development experience for PVUSD teachers seeks to leverage the power of collaborative planning, teaching, and reflection in a Learning Lab Classroom. 

Learning Labs is a PD structure for supporting groups of educators to grow their craft through shared learning, collaborative enactment of practice, and deep reflection. We will focus on strategies for eliciting and responding to students' thinking about complex texts as well as differentiating independent practice. Instead of learning skills in isolation, then returning to your classroom alone, we study, plan, teach, and reflect as a community, in real time with real students. 

Program Structure:

A cohort of 8-12 teachers will spend their mornings in lesson study collaboratively planning 2 reading mini-lesson, a writing mini-lesson, and a designated ELD mini-lesson. We will use the 3rd grade Benchmark Advance curriculum, unit 9. After planning, teachers head over to our Learning Lab classroom to immediately co-teach these lessons. By using a "teacher time out", we are able to pause instruction in real time to highlight student thinking, share decision-making, and reflect on choices. It's a model that positions every adult as a contributing member of a learning community and allows students to witness the highest levels of academic discourse.

After the literacy block, students finish the day with their separate S.T.E.A.M. teacher. The teacher cohort has time to debrief choice, analyze student work, and plan for the next day without students.

Teachers will be paid the supplemental rate per the PVFT contract.