Cave Spring Elementary School Professional Development School
Committee Members
Kaye Dyer, Nancy Williams, Dawn Shaw, Sara Giannakakis, Jill McLean, Christa Lambert,
Kathy Bond, Dr. Chris Muire, Berry Liasion
Goals
- Establish a program for resource exchange between Berry College and Cave Spring Elementary. Initial Ideas for collaboration include: field trips, collaborative enrichment opportunities in the fine arts, and use of the Berry College physical activities facilities for both faculty and students at Cave Spring (e.g., ropes course).
- Establish professional development component for Cave Spring faculty to strengthen teachers' knowledge about literacy development. Berry College faculty will provide training opportunities and resources for enhancing students' overall literacy development. and provide information about childrens' literature and strategies for infusing literature into the curriculum.
What We're Up to....
- The Cave Spring Elementary School Steering Committee worked towards providing professional development opportunities for teachers to accomplish goal two.
- A needs assessment for professional learning on literacy development was given to all Cave Spring teachers who supplied topics of interest for workshops. According to the most popular suggestions, four workshops were planned: guided reading, the writing process, emergent literacy, and comprehension.
- To kick off the professional development workshops, two Berry undergraduate ECE students provided a program on children's literature at a faculty meeting.
- Dr. Amber Prince, Berry professor, conducted a session on information and strategies for implementing guided reading.
- Dr. Katrina Hunter held a workshop on the writing process.
- Dr. Elizabeth Lilly, Berry professor and PDS liaison to Cave Spring, shared childeren's literature and teaching ideas for supporting emergent literacy at the final workshop in April 2004.
Cave Spring Elementary PDS committee visits Berry College Elementary School