Seen Around the Building - Kalona Elementary

As Frank and I travel around the buildings at Mid-Prairie we want to share things we see.  So today is the first installment.  These were all wall decorations at Kalona Elementary.  Stay tuned for pics from other buildings.

This is a Twitter door. The teacher posed a twitter challenge question and the students responded in 140 characters or less. Each of the cards are laminated to all them to be wiped clean for the next challenge. This is the first step in preparing students to tweet on the classroom account.

  

This door is filled with words that describe life in the classroom.  They also happen to be words taken from the Keynote given by the Learning Design Coaches on the first day back with additions from the students. 

There are lots of great displays around the building demonstrating how students fit into a class here are two.

Finally the staff is in the process of creating a board in their lounge to share their expertise.

The 1st Day Back

Frank and I had a chance to share with the district what our vision of Learning Design was all about at the back to school in-service day Thursday, August 16.

We have spent quite a bit of time together this summer. The first was a week hosting our district's conference 'Learning for the 21st Century.'

Then in July we spent a week in Boston at the 'Building Learning Communities' conference. It was a week of 'brain-rattling' ideas and conversations - that is the way a past attendee described the week to me during our first session.

Each of our conversations this summer centered on what we heard from these conferences and ways to build communities of learners working together to create the best environment possible for our students.  That sounds like a pretty lofty goal and from there we had to break down what that actually meant and what it could look like.  That brought us to this mission - now there was discussion whether it was a vision or a mission statement or a list of goals. We decided that was all semantics and what we really wanted was to focus on the task.

Our mission is to bring focus to learning by equipping teachers to create an environment where students own their learning.  We will work with teachers to create lessons that promote student collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, research skills and contributions to the global community. We will do "Whatever It Takes" to meet the needs of our teachers and students.

And now it's time to move on to the next step.
We have to put feet on this thing...and that bring it to the classrooms. I am excited and a little nervous. Sounds like the beginning of the year doesn't it!!!
STay tuned!