District elementary teachers were in the classroom a little early last month to attend workshops on writing and mathematics, according to reports received by trustees at last night’s Rainy River District School Board meeting.
The annual “Summer Institute,” this year entitled “Traits in Action,” took place Aug. 20-21 at Fort Frances High School.
The theme was writing—as suggested by area teachers—and the workshops were led by renowned author and researcher of 6+1 Traits, Ruth Culham.
Culham has written two texts on the 6+1 Traits and many teachers with the local public board have been reading her books and “implementing the ideas in their writing program,” Linda Hill, assistant to the education director, noted in her report to the board.
Culham highlighted many of the ideas in her books and expanded on some of the techniques for teaching the traits of ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation, Hill wrote.
“The feedback indicates that teachers feel much more confident in their understanding of the traits, more prepared to teach them to their students, and more knowledgeable to assess student writing using the traits,” Hill reported.
“All teachers were encouraged and motivated by having the author of the book they have been studying speak to them in person,” she added.
A total of 60 teachers from Grades 3-8 attended the first day session, with 55 teachers from Grades K-2 attending the second day. There also were many other teachers in attendance from other boards across the region.
In other news, the local public board also offered the Ministry of Education-sponsored training for junior numeracy.
Held at FFHS on Aug. 21 and then Robert Moore on Aug. 22, these free workshops were co-ordinated with the “Summer Institute” to allow teachers to attend both if they so chose.
Five teachers from Grades 4-6 learned about best practices based on the latest research in mathematics.
The workshops focused on teaching through problem-solving, mental math strategies, and strategies for teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to students in the junior grades.
These were in support of the mot recent Ministry of Education document “A Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics: Number Sense and Numeration.”
Each participant also received a manipulative kit to support their teaching in the classroom.
Fort Frances Times
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