Speaker: Erika W., 4th Grade Teacher
What would you tell another educator considering attending the Learning Lab?
Erika W.: I would tell another educator to definitely attend a Learning Lab just because I think one of the big things for me was to go in to make sure that what I was doing was correct, what I was doing was right, but also to kind of gauge, other people's ideas— kind of where were they coming from and how they were applying their Studies Weekly to their lessons. What were they getting out of it? What were they doing great on? So it just allows you as a teacher to be like, "Okay, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing correctly," because sometimes you don't get that.
What new ideas from the Learning Lab are you most excited to implement?
Erika W.: I'm excited to implement these interactive notebooks. We talked a lot about it in our Learning Lab, and I like how this notebook kind of lives with them throughout the year. And it's not just me handing them worksheets, you know, sometimes there are sheets, but it's a lot of them filling in their own information, filling in their thoughts coming from our discussions about a topic into them, writing it into their own words. So when they are able to go to the test, they are able to look back on the information that they personally gathered from their interactive notebooks and apply that to assessments.
What do you and your students love about Studies Weekly?
Erika W.: I think the thing that my students and I love about Studies Weekly is how engaging it is through conversation. I think our unit before, well, the curriculum we used before, was a lot of bookwork, and with Studies Weekly it allows my students to not only have conversation with partners or their tables. It allows us to bring ideas together and to talk about it more. And so they're able to be engaged longer, and it allows that information to kind of sink in a little bit more.
