December 2023 Staff Showcase

As part of the read aloud routine, Ms. Santos has identified rich vocabulary in the books in her class library. She purposefully selects these texts for highlighting more advanced vocabulary. When the class comes across a word that they don’t know the definition of, they stop and discuss it. Ms. Santos encourages students to think of synonyms for the word based on context clues. Ms. Santos then adds the new vocabulary to the “Big Words and Fancy Vocabulary” class list. From time to time, Ms. Santos will review these words, use them in her classroom and encourage students to use them as well. In addition, students are encouraged to find other words they encounter in their own reading and share them with the class.

During a recent visit, Ms. Santos read Nanette’s Baguette. She began asking students if they knew the meaning of a baguette and several students connected it to bread, a bakery or an experience they had while traveling with their families. From the beginning, students noticed a lot of rhyming words in the book. They also made many inferences and predictions about what would happen next. New vocabulary words were highlighted and explored: baguette, quartet, fret, Tibet, beset and regret. Students used clues in the pictures and context clues to discover the meaning of each. They turned and talked to a classmate to share their definitions. Ms. Santos also showed students where Tibet is on a globe in comparison to New Jersey. In addition, social-emotional lessons from the book were explored and discussed including responsibility, remorse and disappointment. This practice serves as an inspiration for students to read more books while actively looking for new vocabulary.

Ms. Shea is a Special Education teacher who supports students in a variety of ways. During a recent visit to an 8th grade math class, Ms. Shea and Ms. Smith co-taught a lesson that involved the application of scientific notation and exponent rules. They used real-world problems that involved statistics of social media use and music sales, world population and interdisciplinary connections. Students had to move between scientific notation and expanded form. Throughout the lesson, Ms. Shea supported individual students and whole group. For example, when working with very large numbers, she suggested simplifying the problem by using smaller numbers. This way, students could identify the operation (+, -, x, ➗) they needed to solve the problem and then apply it to the larger numbers.

During a visit to another 8th grade math class, Ms. Shea used PearDeck to review exponent rules with her students to support the mastery of their skills. Questions involved finding equivalent expressions, applying multiple exponent rules within one problem and moving from numerical powers to algebraic expressions. By using PearDeck, students were able to work out the problems at their own pace. Once they completed a set, Ms. Shea projected all the students' answers anonymously and reviewed them. If an answer was wrong, students had the opportunity to see another student’s solution to find their mistake. Because she could see everyone’s work, Ms. Shea also addressed common mistakes and misunderstandings. This practice encourages student perseverance, error analysis and multiple approaches to problem solving.