Adventures in EC Land: Annual Review Meetings, Service Hours, ..............

As the school year begins for EC teachers we also begin to collect data on the children we serve.  The collection process involves many different types of educators throughout the building.  

This data is very important for annual review meetings and catering service to meet students’ needs.  This packet lightens the load with easy to complete collection forms that are attractive and easy to use.  The teams you work with will be happy to get information to you when you use these forms.

The new school year is in full swing and I am starting to schedule EC meetings for the children on my caseload.  Teaching EC this year is new and exciting for me.  I absolutely love every minute of it.  

I am at a really nice school this year.  I feel school culture starts with administration and trickles down to the teachers then ultimately the children.  I can say that I work for a group of highly talented administrators that really care about their staff.  This is quite different from my old school and I am just so thankful!

R.A.C.E.R.S. Writing Strategy

I was introduced to the the R.A.C.E.R.S. strategy for writing this year by my new team.  I have found that if kids use this with fidelity it can help them respond to essay questions and various writing prompts with ease and organization.

I always try to relate new teaching strategies to my own learning journey.  I really wish this had been shown to me when I was a young writer coming up in the world.  As a child I looooooved to write but my writing was slightly scattered and "mildly" unorganized.  My mom struggled to find a way to help me organize my thoughts so that they were more clear and adequately supported with reasons and examples.  Boy oh boy if only she had of known about this!!!!

Flash forward as a new EC teacher I am using this strategy all the time with my kiddos to help them navigate the wild world of written response.  I created a template to help them use R.A.C.E.R.S. in our ELA Resource class.  Please feel free to use it and let me know what you think and what I could add/change to make it better.

For a limited time you can download this at my TPT store using the link below:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Racer-Graphic-Organizer-1418264

You can also download it from my google docs folder:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5WnOovSnuEtTm1WQzhQNk1lWnM/edit?usp=sharing