Lower School Curriculum

Suggested Reflection Questions

1. Your role at Burke's

2. When did this opportunity take place?

3. Summary of workshop/ opportunity

4. Goals & Collaborations:

   - What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project?

Olivia, Julie, and I attended the Morpheme Magic PD. It was quite informative. We are piloting this word study program this year, and this PD was essential to help us implement it in the classroom. We learned strategies for introducing the morphemes weekly, and now have a better idea about the flow of the curriculum.

If anyone is interested in this program, I highly recommend attending this Professional Development. This learning experience was quite essential for understanding how to use the guide and also provided us with extra resources.

By David Hay, LSPE,

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Dennis Stand, "Fun PE Guy", presented an informational program on a variety of activities to use in your physical education program, or some that could even be used in your classroom. It is presented via an online format, which includes videos and discussions. It is offered a few times each school year. A handbook is also provided with a variety of activities and games. An activity that I will be using soon is line switch and rotation. This is an activity where switch means change the direction you are facing, and rotate means, front person goes to the back.

I could see this being an excellent activity to end class with, so that lining up is not as big a deal. It could be a great activity as well for classes when they line up to go to PE. Another activity I…

We attended a one day workshop to better understand how to use Morpheme Magic (a supplemental program the 4th grade is pilotting). The workshop gave a great overview of brain based research in learning to read and the importance of studying morphology in the upper grades. Most importantly, it helped me to understand the sequence of lessons we were supposed to do in a week and how to try to make these lessons efficient and straightforward.

It was great that three of us were able to attend (Simone, Olivia and I) so that we can collaborate on this new program together.