Roxi Thompson

Once a month, our district has what is referred to as "Green Day" PD. This is the one early release day where we have the opportunity to offer PD sessions for all of the teachers in the district. Typically, teachers have all been told which session they are supposed to attend, and it is based on content and/or grade level. This month we decided to try something new. We created "Choice Sessions" so that teachers could choose to learn about something meaningful and helpful for improving learning in their classrooms. We recruited Instructional Coaches and teachers so that we could offer a wide variety of sessions. We also decided to offer a Teacher "Genius Hour" session. I designed a website to walk teachers through the process, and I will be their point of contact if they have any questions or need support.  The webpage starts with a quick overview of the session steps: 🎯 Goal: The goal of this session is to provide teachers with the time to   ...

This week I had the opportunity to do my first round of social studies classroom walk-throughs! It was really great getting to see the teachers in their classrooms interacting with their students. I went in with three main goals: Gain an understanding of how our teachers are forming relationships with their students Collect information about the types of instructional strategies being used in classrooms Provide a follow-up email with a resource based on the learning objectives and instructional strategies I observed I visited seven classrooms, and I emailed each teacher the next day with some positive feedback and a resource tailored to the learning that was happening in their classroom. Here are a few resources/strategies I shared: Chat Stations In one classroom, students were learning about the effects of the railroad during Industrialism. They had read an article and were discussing and answering them on their papers in small groups. Their teacher would then have s...

Monday was our first day back after Winter Break, and I was lucky enough to get to spend the afternoon helping some kindergarten friends log onto Chromebooks for the first time! It was exhausting, but it was also super fun! Before Winter Break, our EdTech team made arrangements to lead "Kinder Chromebook Login" sessions at one of the schools in our district. We originally planned to lead sessions in four different classrooms, but we ended up only getting to two classrooms.  For both sessions, I took the lead while two other EdTech team members and the classroom teacher provided support. Here are some of my takeaways from this experience: Challenges Hidden Passwords When our students type in their usernames, they can see it. That means that they can self-asses for errors, and we can easily help them identify how to make corrections.  Unfortunately, students cannot see their passwords as they type them. This makes it really difficult to identify any error...