A quick trip to a few classrooms

I’ve written before about something that makes Henley great—the ability to walk into any classroom on any given day and see students who are engaged in work that is meaningful and relevant to them. I was out doing some learning walks last Friday and each classroom I visited, once again, had outstanding work taking place. In Lydia Beeler’s eighth grade language arts class, students were working on an activity in which they revise a paragraph full of sentence fragments into one that is more grammatically correct and much more well-written. Her kids were developing the skill of revising their own writing and combining sentences to produce more richly written text. Next door in Ciara Imbert’s seventh grade life science class students were studying one of my favorite life science lessons—genetics. It’s so cool to see how kids combine traits to determine the likelihood of offspring having those traits. The kids love seeing this and applying it to the way they look and the genes that their parents have passed on to them. Finally in Erin James’ seventh grade language arts class, Erin and collaborative teacher Kathy Verell were teaching students strategies to use when reading non-fiction text. They had a great graphic organizer that kids were working through in groups. The non-fiction they were reading had a direct connection to the fiction text they would soon be starting, making the activity even more relevant to the students as they develop background knowledge about a new novel. All of these lessons had students who were engaged and developing skills that they will use for decades. What makes these few learning walks even better, was knowing that I could have picked any three classrooms in the school and I would have had just as many great things to write about. The work our teachers bring to their classrooms every day inspires me as an educator and makes a difference for all of our kids.