STAFF DEVELOPMENT
On Wednesday, September 23rd, staff members participated in a variety of professional development activities during the early release time period. The activities were as follows for each building:
Primary and Intermediate
The focus was on two opportunities for learning. The first was a web-based program called Brian Pop. Brian Pop is an educational website with hundreds of short movies for students in grades K-12 about mathematics, technology, health, science, social studies, arts and music, and English. The second opportunity for elementary teachers was to learn about STAR Reading which can be used with an online Accelerated Reading Program. With STAR Reading, teachers can:
· Assess students’ reading levels in less than 10 minutes.
· Receive accurate, reliable, norm-referenced reading scores including grade equivalents,
percentile ranks, and normal curve equivalents.
· Determine the appropriate level of challenge for each student to personalize practice and
individualize instruction.
Junior High
The staff had two opportunities, which included a session on Smart Board updates and the use of “podcasting” as a classroom tool.
High School
The staff had a choice of three different sessions: 1) applications found on a MAC computer along with the basic steps to use the MAC operating system, 2) steps to using the application moviemaker on MAC computers and 3) learning to use the smart board in the classroom.