A Board Walk

At Chets Creek we put up "standard-based" bulletin boards each month. No more "fluff" - instead its work based on a standard. Each board consists of a title, the standards, the task, four pieces of student work and commentary. These boards have become a cornerstone of our work. The boards are meant to be a window into the instruction in the classroom. They are used as artifacts of the learning for our students, parents, community and other teachers. Today as part of our professional development in Science, we took a "board walk." We looked at three bulletin boards that were done around our Science topic of what animals need for survival. This is collaboration at its best. Not only did teachers have a chance to see lesson plans in writing that included lots of video links, but they had a chance to see the boards that connected the standards, described the lesson, showed artifacts such as posters and Science journal entries and lab sheets of the student work and also had commentary on each child's work explaining how the child understood the lesson. Each of these boards also had lots of photographs documenting the process. Not only is this an interesting and fun way to learn, but it provides lively conversation!