Accountable Talk even in Early Childhood Classrooms

It's been so fun giving PDs for the last two weeks!! We've had so much fun laughing, thinking together, and working on mapping for next year. I'm missing more and more the idea of not setting up a classroom of my own this year. Have y'all seen all the cute ideas on Pinterest?  I mean that can get seriously addictive! In our early childhood pd this week we spent some time talking about accountable talk in the classroom. We looked at how we could add it in even in PreK3, PreK4, and kinder classrooms.  It's so fun to be a part of interactive learning and thinking.  Do you use a specific model or schedule to introduce different prompts to scaffold accountable talk in your classroom? In our early childhood classrooms we thought it would be neat if each classroom PreK2- Kinder were working on the same phrase all month long.  This allows kids to get comfortable with using that phrase, hear it modeled over and over again, and any outsider can walk in and be an active participant in discussions using the accountable talk for that month. We built a schedule for a phrase a month.  The teachers will hang that phrase on their board and refer often to it during lessons and discussions. Each month, the phrase will change and they'll add a new phrase to their accountable talk bank of vocabulary.  Here are some pics of the phrase cards to hang in their rooms.

You can click here to download the file of all the phrase cards for the month.

Accountable Talk Phrase Cards and Schedule

PD day one- mapping science and social studies

Hey y'all! We're off to a fun week of PD! This week I kicked our PD week of with curriculum mapping for each content area.  Today the amazing science and social studies teams came in for a day full of fun and getting A.......L....O....T done! We looked up and it was already 2:00! Anyway, here's the big idea of what we did.... first, we looked at what goes into writing a curriculum map. Then, we took the standards and mapped out the entire year.  After that, we worked to build lessons for each unit including: anchor charts, poems, songs, anchor texts, interactive notebooks, and so much more. The teachers made mock anchor charts and put everything in one binder. They were so excited that the stress of planning will be lessened in the fall.  We also carved out some time for laughing, joking, and catching up of course!

 These were the binder covers we used for each new unit.

These charts were guiding the teachers while they built their curriculum maps.  We looked at what the trends of every purposeful science lesson were and the trends in social studies. Then we compiled a list of where to pull when building a unit. They had a blast finding so many things. 

This was our weekly plan page for the lower grade levels.  They were able to take their unit and write plans for a week. They also included any sample anchor charts, content vocabulary, anchor texts, and materials needed.  Click on the pic to get a copy