Making Every Minute Count in the Classroom

English Language Arts teachers need to make every classroom moment count with the demands of the new Common Core Curriculum. That’s why Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES is offering  workshops to help teachers reach all students with the information that will be most valuable to them.

Some 40 teachers from a variety of school districts, including Mahopac, White Plains, Peekskill and Mt. Vernon, attended a workshop at BOCES Tuesday that helped them deconstruct lessons prepared by the state so that they can make best use of them in their own classrooms.

In its Engage New York program, the state has prepared lesson plans to help teachers quickly adopt the Common Core curriculum. “Teachers can decide whether they are going to adopt or adapt these lessons,” explained  Lucretia Pannozzo, workshop facilitator.

Ms. Pannozzo is one of five BOCES ELA consultants who are members of the Network Team Institute, a statewide group that receives training from the State Education Department, offering a turnkey service for teachers all over New York.

During this workshop educators examined how to best teach the vocabulary included in one lesson in one module: Focus on the words that the students will find most useful in all their classes, rather than an unusual word that doesn’t have widespread application. They also looked at how best to use the lesson’s recommended text and how to support diverse learners in the classroom.

White Plains eighth grade teacher Dennis Scullion said he found the program “extremely valuable.” With more and more pressure to fit more information into lessons, “We’re examining what we really spend time teaching,” he said.