SDE New England PreK - 3 Conference

Happy Tuesday to ya!
I'm writing from 30,000 ft. in the air!  I just left Baltimore and I am headed home. I was so excited about the conference I wanted to share my takeaways and a few things that I shared with the folks who came to see me.
Training for SDE while still being a classroom teacher is a dream come true.  It really is.  I can't thank them enough for the unwavering support of my practice and the enthusiasm they have to coach and mentor newer presenters.
I presented four new sessions today! Eek! :)
My first session was on small group instruction.  Getting a chance to dig in and work on my small group craft in preparation for this training was great!  I've loved doing small group even more this year, and I really hope that what I shared with teachers was both an encouragement and a help! :)
We talked about what kinds of things I do in my group, and I shared this template of what I do for my learners.

I emphasized the importance of building margin into the flow of the small group plan so that you have time to meet with kids for additional RTI time or meet with students about behavior or get students logged into computer programs for their online assessments.  Any number of things that we have NO time for...you have to build it into the day. :)

Then we talked about students that make it tough to get through small group time with fidelity.  They ruin the FLOW of the lessons.

I think teachers connected these examples to students that they have.  It was good to have a little giggle too! :) We went into what I do in my small group time at the table, and I also talked about what should be present in a 2-3 small group session too! :)

See these on TPT by clicking HERE.

I had teachers practicing how to give phonemic awareness drills to their students.  That was super fun! :)  I have a set of phonemic awareness and phonics tests on TPT, but I'm going to release a separate set of just phonemic awareness drills that are even more explicit than the ones that are in my test pack.  As I went through the year, I realized that there were other elements that I'd not explored and I needed more practice sheets.  So, I'm going to put this in my store this summer! :)

I talked about how importance of sight words and daily practice.  I put together several sight word lists in this pack and some student progress monitoring tools as well.  If your school is really into students collecting their own data, this resource will be for you.  THIS post has more information on what's in the resource, but if you just want to go to the resource itself, click HERE.

I also talked a bit about how I use the sight words on my word wall.  I have a little pack that I've been working on with some templates for activities that can be done on the word wall.  I have placed a few of them here for free for you.  Please use them if you think they would be helpful!

I think these would work best in a 1/2 grade setting.

Click HERE to download it.

I have some other reflections from other sessions and as time permits I will share some more out takes and thoughts with you.

Hope you have a great week!