1. Date and Reflection

Spent the day at PaTTAN Harrisburg discussing and learning the Talking Together program.  I understand that we are supposed to post an artifact of our experience but I cannot figure out how to attach pictures/documents. Please advise....

Spent the day at PaTTAN Harrisburg discussing and learning the Talking Together program.  I understand that we are supposed to post an artifact of our experience but I cannot figure out how to attach pictures/documents. Please advise....

The 'Talking Together' series is a Community-Building Learning Community instructional program designed for introducing students the concept of learning community to students and for teaching them how to participate respectfully in class discussions.

Great discussion about the nuances of rude, mean, bullying definitions, how we feel data is under inflated due to non-reported cases and poor protocols.  We also shared several resources.

In discussing students being excluded we brought multiple perspectives to the conversation yet all agreed this is a system wide problem.  

This strategy addresses significant skills that challenge most middle school students. It seems the explicitness of the instruction will be helpful in providing a good frame of reference for modeling, practicing and applying the skills in authentic situations.

The Talking Together program seems like a nice tool for helping to build the sense of community in a classroom.  I feel like the programs purpose was somewhat veiled during the training day until about half way through the day.  I think that I would have made quicker connections to my practice and the SPDG in particular had we started with the overview section of the program to get a clear picture of it's purpose.  Aside from that, I like how the program directly and explicitly instructs skills that many times teachers assume that students either already know or will pick up along the way.  I can see this program being applied very nicely with students on the Autism Spectrum and think that teachers will like that the "hidden curriculum" is no longer hidden with this program.  I also appreciated having Sue Vernon here to present!

The talking together book seems to be an easy-to-use resource for busy teachers in need of an effective program.

Talking Together is a social skills program for developing community building skills in a classroom.  

These tools, procedures, learning are not 'soft skills,' they are essential skills. We need these to be taught en mass to all learners. Just because a student is on grade level with their academics, we should  not assume that they are on level with speaking, listening and social skills. 

With regard to our specific ED population, these are even more essential and tie into career readiness standards that are required for all learners.