Today, I had the pleasure of spending the day with the Timberline Tigers. This special group of teachers and students made quite an impression on us as we were greeted professionally by 1-2 students in each and every classroom with a handshake and an explanation of what we'd be seeing them working on during our stay. There was an earnestness to their work and clear purpose to classroom activities that was great to experience.
As I toured TES, I saw teachers implementing our new curriculum and working to transition to the instructional framework it expects. Perhaps the most prevalent thing we noticed was the amount of writing students were doing. We saw writing workshop examples from kindergarten through the upper grades (along with a great guided writing lesson taking place with a kindergarten small group) and writing in every subject area. The amount of writing and the focus on the "skills to secure" expectations were consistent with our curriculum along with the multiple examples of Thinking Maps which hung on many walls. It seemed clear that teachers were using the Maps in all subject areas as ways to help train students to organize their thinking. I also loved seeing the parallels between English and Spanish instruction - it kept me on my toes trying to translate between the two types of anchor charts! :)
We overheard some sophisticated discussions of social studies (branches of government, types of elected officials) and saw many examples of recently completed Cornerstone Tasks. There were some word walls that were clearly getting lots of use as evidenced by words that we could tell were being added weekly along with different units and items being discussed. I also loved seeing the reflective frames that were common across many classrooms such as "Today I learned_____. ______ was fun or interesting because______. _______was difficult because_______. I used to think_____, but now I think_______.
As with some of our other campuses with a particular focus or theme, Timberline has demonstrated how their Leader in Me work can weave together many of the aspects of LEAD 2021 that GCISD has been implementing. They share a common language around the 7 Habits and their students are clearly coming to understand much about leadership.
Click here to see a few examples of some of the great things we saw at Timberline today!
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