Humanities Campus Visits - Snapshots from OC Taylor Elementary

Last week, I had the opportunity to spend a day alongside OC Taylor teachers and students. It was a great day filled with new ideas, interacting with students, and a memorable spelling bee! As this is the first year Ms. Young has been principal at OCT, I enjoyed seeing the way her leadership is already having an impact on classrooms. It is clear that teachers are making strides in their reading/writing workshop implementation and digging into the newly redesigned scope and sequences to adjust pacing and teaching practices to meet the new expectations.

My visit to OC Taylor started with the spelling bee. These students did an amazing job and had clearly studied lots about word patterns in order to be able to navigate their way through some words that most of us had never used! Speaking of spelling, I got to see some great examples of how teachers are studying words with their students. In 1st grade, I saw a very highly organized example of the Words Their Way program and the way it is meeting students' individual needs. I also loved seeing the energetic Watch Dog Dad working with readers in all of the 1st grade classrooms. Such a great program! As I moved throughout all grades, I got to see students meaningfully engaged during Tiger Time, beginning literature circles, writing in readers' notebooks, and some very well organized classroom libraries. I enjoyed having a 4th grade student explain to me all she had learned (and the research skills used to learn these things) in her passion project. She knew more about pandas than many zookeepers working in San Diego! :) One of my favorite ideas was the display of text-to-text, text-to-self connections, etc... in a 3rd grade room. What a great way to help students to be more mindful when they are noticing these things and to visually display this in a room (see picture in the OCT gallery). I saw many effective uses of technology, including the use of the Timeline app in 4th grade as students researched and built a timeline about Texas history.

As I wrap up my formal visits to all of GCISD's Humanities K-5 classrooms, I'm struck by the many common themes which I saw across all campuses. I'm so proud of our teachers for embracing the newly designed curriculum, adopting new instructional models, and staying committed to the work of developing empathetic students who are global citizens and effective communicators.

For a glimpse into the great teaching and learning I saw at OCT, please click here.