The Green Cup

Well, despite my best intentions I simply haven’t gotten around to finishing my Reading Research Symposium (RSS) blog posts.Tomorrow I have a meeting after school, and then an LSIC meeting after the first meeting. I expect to be at school until almost 7pm. I also have three IEP meetings and some notes to work on in preparation for a upcoming visit from OEPA.

So evetually I’ll look through my notes on the RSS and say more…

The Symposium this year is a little different than the one last year. Instead of more presenters in the afternoon, this year the Symposium is using application sessions to discuss how to use workshop material in the classroom.

My application session was facilitated by an instructional coach from Raleigh County, Cheryl Osborne.

(You can find some notes for the session here.)

Ms. Osborne showed us a number of useful tools. One was Wordle – a way of turning text into art. We also looked at iQuiz Maker for iPod.

The most useful aspect of the afternoon session was probably the number of hands-on games and applications aimed at developing vocabulary. I expect to take several of those ideas back to my classrooms…

I left my hotel room about 5pm and went over to register for the WV Reading Research Symposium (RRS) at the Charleston Civic Center.

The WV Department of Education served dinner to a thousand or so people. A nice salad of mostly baby romaine, chicken parmesean, streamed veggies, penne pasta, crusty bread, butter (shaped into little flowers), coffee, tea, and a choice of either chocolate cake or strawberry short cake.

State Superintendent Dr. Steven L. Paine had planned to greet us over Skype. Dr. Paine is in DC at the moment. Unfortunately, he could not get out of a meeting there and a recorded message from the state superintendent had to do.

Our keynote speaker was Dr. Elfrieda “Freddy” Paine from UC Berkeley. She spoke about vocabulary development. But her message seemed mostly designed to inspire, not instruct. She was enjoyable. I look forward to her session tomorrow.

Well, gotta iron tomorrow’s short…