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?

1. Associate teacher in 2A

2. July 16-17

3. The UFLI conference was a workshop that worked through the best practices for growing orthographic mapping and teaching articulatory gestures The first day was a large review of the Science of Reading that tied to the work that Ana did with us in the '25-'26 school year, and the second day was focused on the routines/steps that go into a week of UFLI. The explicit teaching of each step of a UFLI lesson was really helpful to know why and how each step works for student learning.

4. - Takeaways: Choral reading allows for multiple opportunities for students to practice teaching. Partner is only 50% and echo doesn't allow students to work through reading at all. The automaticity of the drills and routines create stronger learners/readers for this type of work and sticks with them longer. Another takeaway is that explicit instruction for all students…

1. Quise/2nd grade teacher

2. July 16-17, 2026

3. Learn from the UFLI team directly on how to prepare and implement the curriculum

4. What were your big takeaways from your workshop or project?

   The science of reading - the conference gave a comprehensive explanation of the two strands of reading (language comprehension and word recognition). They explained how the UFLI curriculum was developed with both evidence and research. Reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension. Practice (a huge element of the curriculum) makes permanent (the goal). Instruction is both explicit and systematic. Teaching grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) explicitly is key. Decoding (reading and encoding (spelling) - every lesson!

5. Yes, I would recommend this PD for a teacher who is using this program for the first time

Lower School PE teacher

The White Privilege Conference in Seattle April 22-25, 2026 

On Wednesday there were four all-day sessions. On Thursday and Friday, there were 27 possible 1.5 hour sessions throughout the day. One in the morning, and then two after lunch (3 per day). Some sessions were duplicated, so if you missed something you really wanted to attend, some workshops were offered on another day. Saturday had 21 possible 1.5 hour sessions as the conference wrapped up.

I learned something from each of the workshops I attended. Some were emotionally heavy, and they all had so much information which for me was challenging to retain. I had some takeaways to incorporate into my curriculum and into my life. 

One takeaway for me is to bring back activities that support students emotionally. Some of the things I’ve done in the past have fallen out of rotation. For example, doing…