My experience at NCCAT was AMAZING! It is really hard to highlight only a few things from my week spent at NCCAT. This was by far the best professional development opportunity I have every had. We were all treated with respect by everyone in the facility and they did everything possible to make us feel like we were all professionals. It was also an opportunity to work with other teachers who have the same passion for education and are wiling to do whatever they can to make education in North Carolina better. We were able to share ideas, lessons, visions, and so much more. It was an experience I will never forget. If all professional developments could be this successful, I feel that more teachers would feel positive and eager to learn to help education in NC.
I attend several sessions which most of them I learned something new that I really want to try and implement in my classroom. One of my favorite sessions was Welcoming English Language Learners to our Classroom and our Content. This sessions was really helpful for me because my school is 65% ELL leaners. I plan on using a Math Constructive Conversation Skills Poster in my classroom we were given in the session. The poster provides the students with sentence starters and response starters to help them build solutions, ideas, and understandings. Another concept I learned and want to use is spending more time building background knowledge before moving into a concept. I want to build the background knowledge by connect it to something they know and understand in their language, find motivational factors, and vocabulary. Another session I found very helpful was Increasing student engagement & developing problem solving skills through the implantation of STEM focused instruction. I participated in several group activities that I plan on doing with my students at the beginning of the year to help them learn how to work with others and to increase engagement. The activities will help to teach the students how to focus, think, reason, apply strategies and collaborate.
The only session I feel was not that useful for me was Over Time and Space: Visualizing Data and Documents for Inquiry Based Learning. I feel that this session was more geared or useful for Social Studies or Science classes. It is hard to incorporate time lines into a math classroom unless I we were doing a study on Mathematicians or when different concepts were discovered. I just feel that it is hard to incorporate timelines into math.