SMART Learning

On October 21st, we had our first Professional Development day.  I have a friend who has been using SMART Reading for a number of years and loves it.  She and some other teachers from my district decided to run a 4 part workshop to introduce more teachers to SMART.

SMART Learning is what it is called now and it was created and developed by a BC teacher named Susan Close.  She has been working on and revising these ideas for decades, but there is no printed resource to support it.  Yet.   There are workshops and in-services held all over the place that you can attend, and you can find more information here.  I personally have heard of her over the years, but because of the time and cost investments, have not gone to any out of district workshops.  I like to know what I'm getting myself into first.

When Angela told me that her and the English Language Arts LSA were working on bringing something to our district that I could attend on my Pro D days, I decided that I would finally check it out.  I was not disappointed.  Through the course of the day I began to get a little more clearer idea of what SMART is about.  The morning started off with presentation from all four ladies about how they use it and why they think it's great.  They had student testimonials, quotes and stories from their experiences, which was nice to hear, but I was waiting for the "meat" of it.  I appreciated the way they took us through a "sequence"- this is what Susan calls the series of lessons- from beginning to end and had us experience it as a student.  They had to shorten and compress the sequence but it gave me a really good grasp of what to do.  Best thing was they gave us materials to go back and do a sequence with our classes.  It was even leveled appropriately for our different grade levels!  (This makes me more willing to try something when I don't have to put in the extra time to make it grade level appropriate)

Overall, I enjoyed my day.  It was a full 6 hours and by 3pm, my brain was aching, but when I walked away and was able to process the information, I found lots that was relevant.