Professional Develpment With Voices in the Park

The Redford Girls from Haley

On Tuesday I was able to do one last Professional Development at Haley Elementary. This is where I did my very first P.D. for FWCS. The staff was wonderful back then and still is great. They were welcoming and friendly. I felt at home immediately. The building coach and I had been planning this event for a few weeks. We wanted to do something fun and yet educational.

For several  years I had been wanting to do an activity that I had seen Frank Serafini do in a workshop. This activity involved the book by Anthony Browne---Voices in the Park. With the new Common Core Standards focusing on complex text, I needed something that would stretch the teachers and still let them see what is meant by that term. This activity did that! I read the book while the building coach showed the pictures on the document camera. The staff then discussed, with a partner, what they were thinking. We then had four teachers who had been previously chosen, come up and do a reader's theater with that book. They did a great job with inflection and personality. Next, the staff was invited to interview any of the characters. What a great job they did! You would have been sure they were the actual characters up there. The staff then shared how they would use this activity in their classrooms. The most important part was the discussion of what made this a complex text.

I did get a picture taken of the building coach and interventionist with me. We had shared a room for several years in that building. The unique thing that made us special was...we each had ties to Detroit. Jamie had lived on 5 mile, my aunt lived on 6 mile and I used to visit her, Jan lived on 7 mile. These were all in Redford Township, so we called ourselves The Redford Girls!

My first retirement gift!