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Another Awesome Adventure

After weeks of anticipation and planning, the TLLP team visited the Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre (OCTC), in Ottawa! It was a bit of a whirlwind, flying in on Thursday evening and home by Friday night, but it was definitely worth it. After reaching out and connecting with Mari, the school's principal, we made arrangements to visit OCTC. Deb, Allison and I spent the better part of a day touring, observing and collaborating with both the principal and school liaison teachers. As was the case for our previous school visits, a lot of interesting and important dialogue came to light during our time at OCTC. Two of the most salient pieces were, 1) differences in delivery model, 2) the need for PD specific to section 68 schools, and 3) feelings of isolation and desire for collaboration between the six section 68 schools. Service Delivery Model Niagara Children’s Centre School Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre 60 students in six classrooms 30 stude...
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March Madness

Today, our TLLP team  met to discuss progress of our project. Given that we are already well into March, we used this as an opportunity to review our budget, to look at what we've been able to accomplish so far, and to discuss our next steps. We spent a good part of the day reviewing and continuing to build our resource bank through Choose It Maker and identified the need to collect video documentation of the benefits we are seeing in our students’ literacy development. We also looked at devoting more time to exploring all the features of Grid 3; while Deb has been able to develop a familiarity and proficiency with this software, Allison and I have focused more on Choose It Maker. We are hoping over the spring, to extend our tech comfort level with the Grid 3 program. In discussing our budget, we were quite pleasantly surprised to learn that there is still quite a bit of funding remaining for PD and release time. This realization led us to the next part of our TLLP journey:...
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Last Stop, Cambridge!! Wait.... Waterloo!!

Well, we did it! We wrapped up our Section 68 visits yesterday with a trip to Waterloo. (After initially going to the wrong Kidsability in Cambridge! ) We spent the morning with Kellie Bell, who works half time supporting students with augmentative communication needs (ACS) and half time teaching a kindergarten class. Once again, our team really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with colleagues outside of our building and to see what tools, approaches and questions we have in common, as well as to learn more about the ways in which our schools are distinct. We had the opportunity to learn a bit about some of the low tech writing tools being used at Kidsability, including a velcro based writing/reading resource, that could be adapted for a number of literacy levels and focuses. And, as we have found in our previous school visits, teachers at Kidsability expressed the same interest in the development of an online sharing platform, as has been expressed in Windsor, Ottawa, Oshawa and To...
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