Another Conference and Learning More Every Day

Last Friday my BTB (bestest teacher buddy) and I went to the last day of our state conference in OKC. This is a new week- long conference that was free to educators, administration, and parents. Since this was the first year, Miss Delighted and I decided to try it out for a day before we committed to a week out of our summer.

I thought Friday would be the best day because there would be speakers there from Indiana talking about how they are implementing the common core, how they have a 90 minute literacy block required in ALL K-3^rd grade classrooms, and about their new iread initiative which is much like the new law here in Oklahoma about retention in 3^rd grade.

We were not disappointed. The convention center was filled with venders selling products AND giving away FREEBIES! The breakout sessions for Friday were geared more toward administrators, but were informative for teachers as well (like the new Marzano teacher/administrator evaluations we will implementing next year). And the lunch wellllllllllll it was ok, not great but, ok.

If you have never been to the Indiana state department of education you should visit it. It has a plethora of information about their schools, and common core. Above all that we were told they had a panel of teachers review textbooks and grade them according to how they fit with the standards. They have a rubric for all the textbooks they reviewed and whether or not they approve them for adoption. They also have a section of comments from the publishers.

I was happy to see our Scott Foresman series for reading had passed. You can check here to see if the Indiana teachers approved the textbooks you use in your classroom.