Responsive Classroom

I attended Responsive Classroom training (level 1) this summer as one of my professional learning goals. I'm now reflecting on the entire summer as I wait for the upcoming week of going back to school! Many more teachers will start the year with a focus on their language. Many more days will have a morning message awaiting the bright eyed students as they bound through the door. I'm excited to visit classrooms this year and be able to recognize and understand when a teacher is using the thoughtful strategies and practices. I was always able to tell, but now the level of understanding is so much more! Understanding the 3 R's of language... reinforcing, reminding and redirecting and when we use them and why. A teacher's language is a powerful teaching tool as our language and tone can build children up or tear them down. It can model respectful and caring social interactions or just the opposite. I'm sitting here thinking about the power of our words and how the morning meetings set the stage for the day. I wish I had my book today so I could revisit and review what I learned... my brain cannot remember the details which is so frustrating. (I've loaned my notebook/resource book from this summer to a teacher who was not able to make the week-long professional development). So... as we often do, I've turned to the Responsive Classroom web resources and found the newsletters. I think these newsletters can help me remember some ideas as I ponder... so I'm just using my blog to document some on-going learning and resources. I also have some photos of our morning messages that I will review as a reminder of my learning. Thank goodness I capture images... I think I need to change my blog title to What I'm Trying to Remember Today. Ha! Images