S.O.S. Please someone help me!

With our TLC this year, we’ve been working hard on professional development that focuses on the individual needs of our staff. Take what you need, leave what you don’t. Many of us use the workroom lunch table as a way to get ideas from our peers or flush out ideas. But what happens if I’m alone during my prep hour or even working at home and need to know more about a strategy? What can I do? Enter Spotlight on Strategies or SOS. Think of it as “the flipped classroom” for teachers. This online resource is a collection of videos highlighting different teaching strategies. The videos are grouped categories like “Questioning,” “Point of View and Purpose,” “Assessment,” and “Inference and Prediction.” Within each of those categories is a selection of strategies videos. The videos are clear and concise (a few minutes or less) and identify the big idea of the strategy, what materials are needed, approximate time, visual examples, and helpful tips like extension activities or where it would fit into a bigger lesson. For example, I meet with Greta to talk about an observation and she challenges me to work on my questioning techniques. I can open this page, watch a few strategies on video, amend them for my class, and within 20 minutes, I'm able to try out something new in my classes.

Sounds pretty interesting, right?

If you check out a strategy and use it, let us know either in the comments below or send us an email! We'd love to hear from you!

Here are the step-by-step instructions to access the site:

1. Go to http://d214.discoveryeducation.com. Login using your usual D214 credentials.

2. Click on the Professional Development icon.

3. Click on Strategies & Resources.

4. Scroll down until you see SOS.











5. Click on any of the categories or view all to find many different videos on strategies.