Research-Based Best Practice
Workshops can be modified for time and audience.
Custom workshops can be developed to target your goals.
Active Engagement Strategies
It’s time to put on your thinking shoes and experience active engagement. This workshop is the epitome of learning by doing with an entire toolbox of strategies that will be used, applied, and analyzed. Practical tips, learned in the field, will be shared to anticipate potential problems and avoid them by design. Common problems like engaging shy students, managing group timing, the teacher’s role during student collaboration, and off-task or shallow student talk will all be directly addressed with real solutions that work. If you’re in an elementary or secondary school, new to the profession or a veteran, classroom teacher, coach, or leader, you will leave inspired and empowered to increase your students’ engagement.
Asset-Based Feedback
What is asset-based thinking and why does it matter? Uncover why it's crucial to shift our brains’ natural focus from deficit thinking, where attention is drawn to weaknesses and shortcomings, to focusing on strengths, positivity, and success. Explore techniques to reshape feedback, moving away from what students 'can't' do towards recognizing and leveraging what they 'can' do. Adopt this enhanced approach to cultivate a more empowering and constructive learning environment, where students feel seen, valued, and safe to confidently take academic risks.
Building a Rigorous ELA Program
What is taught in the lower grades impacts future learning. Therefore, a vertical alignment of ELA standards is a key factor in creating a rigorous ELA learning experience for your students. Text structure, citing textual evidence, and summarizing are a few of the standards that offer distinct differences at each grade level. This session will study a progression of standards so teachers know what they should expect students to know and how their grade level builds on it. Your district's achievement data can be used to select the starting point for standard alignment. In less than one hour, teachers can get a meta-view of how what they teach at their grade level supports student success at graduation.
Gradual Release of Responsibility
Discover a new way to think about "I Do, We Do, You Do" in teaching. Teachers naturally move through different phases of the gradual release of responsibility (GRR), sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. Learn to be intentional in your teaching and understand these instructional phases. See the GRR structure in action and clear up misconceptions about how to use it effectively. Challenge the idea of always starting with "I do" and explore different ways to teach effectively to move toward a more student-centered learning environment where students own their learning.
It’s All About the Base - Tier 1 Interventions
Addressing over 15% of students needing strategic interventions? Prioritize tier one strategies. This session focuses on proven tier one interventions within the MTSS framework. Explore effective support for students requiring extra attention in the regular classroom. Schools simply don’t have the capacity to provide widespread tier 2 interventions, therefore, optimizing tier one strategies is the way to go for enhanced overall student success. Customize this session to emphasize engagement, questioning, rigor, differentiation, lesson planning, or other specific Tier 1 interventions needed in your school.
Learning Targets Are Not Wallpaper
Unlock the power of learning targets in this workshop. Quality learning targets not only articulate a lesson's purpose but also guide instructional decisions. Explore how to effectively use learning targets to shape insightful questions, conduct formative assessments, provide constructive feedback, and identify interventions. This session emphasizes the effect size of 0.80, highlighting the profound influence of teacher clarity. By ensuring the purpose of a lesson is clear, teachers can maintain focus, amplifying the overall effectiveness of their teaching and expediting student success.
Mastering Minutes: Strategies for Time-Effective Teaching
Optimize your teaching minutes in this session focused on efficient time utilization. Explore strategies for impactful lesson launches, seamless transitions, and flexible lesson closures. With the challenge of covering numerous standards in limited time, this eye-opening workshop prompts a reconsideration of intention and purpose in every aspect, from the moment the bell rings to its final toll. Gain insights that redefine your approach to maximizing instructional time and ensuring every minute contributes meaningfully to student learning.
The PB&J of Lessons: Pairing Learning Targets and Success Criteria
Delve into the key elements that define effective educators. Let's clarify the often-confusing distinction between learning targets and success criteria. Gain clarity on how learning targets differ from learning tasks and how success criteria seamlessly connect to learning targets. Through specific examples, we'll explore multiple applications of success criteria, sparking insightful discussions on their diverse uses. When we demystify these critical aspects of teaching, ensuring you leave with a newfound clarity that enhances your impact in the classroom.
Pedagogy Party: Unlocking the Power of Best Practices
Let’s have a learning party rooted in research-backed educational best practices! Uncover simple yet powerful tweaks to everyday strategies such as note-taking, higher-order thinking, and student discussions. Be an active participant, engaging in your own learning journey, mirroring the expectations we have for students. Brace yourself for a fresh perspective on familiar practices, tailored to meet the dynamic needs of today's learners. Get ready to revitalize your teaching approach in this interactive and enlightening session!