Happy New Year!

Welcome Back & Welcome 2014!

A few things of note as we return:

1. Professional Development Opportunities (click title for more info):

• The Flipped Classroom: Practical Strategies to Successfully “Flip” Your Classroom, BER, Cherry Hill, February 18, 2014
• Meet the Rigorous Common Core State Standards for WRITING: Helping Students to Produce Well-Written Arguments, Informative/Explanatory Pieces and Narratives, BER, Cherry Hill, February 11, 2014
• Other Winter/Spring BER Workshops

2. NCTE 2014 Convention Proposals, Story as the Landscape of Knowing:

• Proposals to lead or co-lead a session at the National Council for Teachers of English are due by January 15th.  After attending the convention this year, I can assure you that our district has a lot of great things to offer, and I would encourage you to submit a proposal and start sharing all we’re doing well with our nationwide colleagues!  Here’s the link to the 2014 theme and how to submit your proposal.
• This year’s convention is in November in Washington DC!
• If you want help generating an idea or writing your proposal, simply send me an email.
• I will be proposing a panel presentation for the district on Writing Workshop. 🙂  If it is accepted, we will need a panel of two-four teachers! 🙂

3. Materials and other Teacher-Made Awesome

• Just a reminder that I’m always looking for teachers to share copies of performance assessments, writing workshop units, activities, lesson plans, and the like to share here and on the shared directory.  Shared awesome = doubly awesome!

4. Check back once a week, as I’ll be updating the course-specific blogs as often  as I can!

Let me know if you submit a proposal and don’t forget those green forms if you’re interested in the professional development opportunities listed above. 🙂

Happy New Year!