Our Second Meeting

On December 16, 2009, Newark Valley's English department was involved in a professional development session led by Tom Beatty of Owego Free Academy. Tom worked with the English department, sharing his expertise on the use of Socratic Seminars to improve comprehension, student writing and speaking, and, most importantly, to improve the climate and culture of our building. It is his belief, and ours, too, that a building where students believe that their ideas are important and their voices are given a chance to be heard is one in which students will take more pride.
Tom worked with us for four hours, involving us in practice seminars to inform our practice as well as to refine our skills. We found the hands-on portion of his presentation to be extremely powerful, and many of us were up and running with our own seminars within a few days of his visit.
As a department, we will continue to focus on our questioning techniques as well as other approaches that involve students in higher order thinking skills (HOTS), also our building's literacy initiative.