This isn’t your father’s PE program! In this session, you will learn how to create a fun-filled and purposeful PE program for students at home or at school. Discover how to change your mindset about PE and help your students become physically literate! Students who are athletic, no-so-much athletic, injured, overweight, nervous, or have special …
There is a fundamental flaw in teaching methods of the past; the teacher does most of the teaching and learning in math. The teacher is modeling, talking, sharing, and communicating mathematically, and is therefore getting stronger as the year progresses. This course is designed to give you the tools and strategies for you to shift your math discourse to the students and empower them to serve up the math talk! Explore & experience the 5 Teacher Productive Talk Moves of mathematical instruction.
Manipulatives can be key in providing effective, active, engaging lessons in the teaching of mathematics. Research from both learning theory and classroom studies show that using manipulatives when teaching math can positively affect student learning. In this session, teachers will learn how to effectively use manipulatives to help all students connect ideas and integrate their knowledge, which leads to a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.
Dig into the big ideas of addition and learn how to teach it to your students effectively and efficiently. This workshop will share the scope and sequence of how to foster enduring understanding as you teach counting & addition: by helping students develop the capacity to model with mathematics, teaching them how to use manipulatives, and pinpointing which tools and recordings students should use when learning and sharing addition. The session is full of meaningful practice and will deepen your knowledge of addition!
Spend some time working out the big ideas of subtraction and learn how to teach it to your students effectively and efficiently. This workshop will share the scope and sequence of how to foster enduring understanding as you teach subtraction: by helping students develop the capacity to model with mathematics, teaching them how to use manipulatives, and pinpointing which tools and recordings students should use when learning and sharing subtraction. The session is full of meaningful practice and will deepen your knowledge of subtraction!
What is multiplicative reasoning, and how can students use it to Master Multiplication & Defeat Division? Come and learn the pedagogy and sequence of how to best teach Multiplication and Division. You will receive concrete, visual, and abstract models, and learn the best ways to teach and model these coordinating operations. Hands-on and lots of fun, take-away activities are of highest priority in this workshop!
This workshop is designed to make fractions fun and fearless for everyone– including you! You will engage in learning activities that strengthen your own conceptual knowledge as we cover these big ideas: models for fractions, equivalence and comparison of fractions, working with all 4 operations with fractions, and real-world applications of fraction problems. Through problem solving and examining student work, you will critique the reasoning of others. The course balances content and pedagogy, encompassing elements and strategies of effective instruction and application of the Standards for Mathematical Practice.
In this workshop we will introduce 5 great routines for building math communication in your classroom. These routines are a sure-fire way of turning the math talk over to your students. This workshop is full of math talk, math vocabulary, and math writing (journaling). Come prepared to talk math!
In this workshop, we will reveal effective daily problem solving routines and structures that help students to think and communicate mathematically about real-world math problems! We will dig into the Problem Types in math, introduce daily routines for working through word problems, and give you structures for error analysis that are all student driven.
Integers, solving algebraic equations, geometry… what’s the point? Help your students understand the why behind the math! In this workshop we will take some of the major topics from our middle school math blocks and model the concrete to pictorial to abstract progression. You will leave knowing how to make math come to life!
Do your students struggle with word problems? If so, this workshop is for you! In this session, we will show you a simple 3-part strategy for “closely reading” a math word problem. Students will be so successful with this routine that they will begin comprehending and solving word problems like never before! The power is in the simplicity of the routine– students begin using it naturally each time they see a word problem, which leads to the outcome we all hope for: better math scores!
In this workshop, we will share a variety of easy-to-use guided math techniques, including how to create, organize, implement, and manage small, guided math groups designed to better meet your students’ needs – from those who excel in math to those who struggle with basic math skills. We will show you how to implement guided math using your current math curriculum, and how to create and manage timesaving, easy-to-implement math centers for the rest of the class while you work with guided math groups.
This is an engaging, hands-on workshop to help you navigate your Empower Math Kit. You will become familiarized with each component of the math kit, learn strategies on how to effectively implement it, and receive guidance in planning for your students with the available activities.
This workshop will help you make the most of Engage NY MATH. Engage NY is a rigorous curriculum that can feel cumbersome to plan and teach. We will break it down so that is feels manageable, effective, and fun for you and your students! We will look at each of Engage NY’s components and your specific schedule to effectively plan for student learning. Together, we will dig in and experience lessons so we can fully understand Engage NY’s intention for you and your students.
Join us as we explore and discuss specific practices and examples of Growth Mindset in math! This interactive workshop is an in-depth examination of how the practices and understandings for growth mindset can be applied to math.
This hands-on workshop explores backward mapping, a necessary and critical step in planning for effective student learning. You will look at the standards, deconstruct and sequence learning targets, build or analyze your assessment, and then plan your lessons. This type of planning ensures that each portion of the standard has been taught prior to the assessment and that you have considered every element prior to starting instruction.
This workshop will uncover the truth about text structures and text features. You’ll gain ideas for how to teach both text structures and features, and learn how they impact comprehension.
The Lexicon Luau will literally be a word party! Come explore vocabulary methods that are fun and effective, discover new practice routines, watch videos on vocabulary instruction in the classroom, and share ideas that you will really use in your classroom journey. This workshop will focus on practical application of vocabulary instruction within the CC Standards for Language.
Need to increase your students’ comprehension? Want to help your students love reading? Need new tips and tricks? Come discover powerful, easy-to-implement strategies that will increase your students’ comprehension and help them develop a love for reading!
In this workshop we will explore effective routines and strategies your students can use to successfully break down nonfiction text. You will leave the workshop with functional, informational, and persuasive text, and the activities that will help your students be successful with expository text.
This workshop will show you how to pick the correct text for each child by blending the Reading A to Z books with Empower Literacy Workstations. Learn how to make your centers more powerful, purposeful, and productive by differentiating, while planning effective instruction for a variety of learners.
In this interactive workshop you will learn the ins and outs of successful Centers/Stations through your own hands-on experience with ready-made centers! You will leave with a handful of ideas, management tips, and strategies to implement or enhance the Centers/Stations you use in your classroom.
The Common Core State Standards has experienced shifts in literacy, namely in the balance of literary and informational text in the upper grades. In this workshop we will look at what the standards say about the shift, how to address the shift while you are planning, and what strategies you could incorporate in your classroom to use more informational text.
We all want our students to dive in and be engaged in quality literature. In this workshop we will examine how the unique approach of having your students analyze literature by writing and responding to letters through journaling will lead to increased involvement with text. We will work through how to set up the journals, which question stems to use, what it will look like in classroom instruction, and provide examples to bring back to your classroom.
In a truly balanced literacy program, how you teach is as important as what you teach. Let us help you create a perfectly-balanced literacy block for you and your students! This workshop will explore the elements of balanced literacy and the research behind it, as well as how to teach basic skills, cover content and standards, assess, group, and plan effectively.
Wondering how to make your reading block more effective? This workshop reviews the big 5 areas of reading instruction, explains how much time to spend in each of the areas, and gives real ideas to take back to your classroom to make that reading block more powerful! We will also explore strategies for identifying and addressing the areas in which your students have gaps or are ready for a challenge.
This is an engaging, hands-on workshop to help you navigate your Empower Literacy Kit. You will become familiarized with each component of the literacy kit, learn strategies on how to effectively implement it, and receive guidance in planning for your students with the available activities.
This hands-on workshop explores backward mapping, a necessary and critical step in planning for effective student learning. You will look at the standards, deconstruct and sequence learning targets, build or analyze your assessment, and then plan your lessons. This type of planning ensures that each portion of the standard has been taught prior to the assessment and that you have considered every element prior to starting instruction.
After you have selected the type(s) of small grouping(s) you will use, you will need to decide what the rest of the class is doing. This workshop will give you models, hands-on examples, and effective tips and tricks for implementing work stations or project-based learning in your classroom. This session teaches the basics and demonstrates explicit modeling of stations for all grades and all content areas.
Today’s student learns best when exposed to multiple modes of media. Helping them get all of the information they need from videos, images, passages, songs, and interactive experiences can be a daunting task. Get ready to explore how you can use tools such as interactive notebooks, graphic organizers, and reflective journals to help your students make the connections necessary to succeed!
This fun-filled workshop is sure to help you turn your classroom into a powerful place of thinking and learning! We will introduce 8 specific graphic organizers, explain when and why to use them, and model how to deconstruct texts (reading) and then construct texts (writing). With these tools, your students will become masterful at organizing their own thinking processes! We will also share practical applications for using graphic organizers in reading, writing, and when sharing in student discussions. This training is a true game changer when implemented in the classroom setting! (This training is focused toward ELA, Science, and Social Studies.)
In this workshop, you will become familiar with and be able to describe, draw, and explain all 8 Thinking Organizers. You will also be able to explain the “thinking process” and “key words” for each Thinking Organizer, and be able to give multiple examples of how they can be used in your own classroom and across multiple content areas. You will also be given a suggested guideline for implementation and will learn how to introduce and use them in the classroom consistently and with purpose.
In this interactive workshop you will learn the ins and outs of successful Centers/Stations through your own hands-on experience with ready-made centers! You will leave with a handful of ideas, management tips, and strategies to implement or enhance the Centers/Stations you use in your classroom.
If you’re just finishing your first or second year of teaching and feel that things could have gone more smoothly, then let’s refresh those classroom management strategies! In this workshop we will look specifically at procedures you can teach before, during, and after a lesson, as well as what rules you may want to implement. Harry Wong will be proud!
Teach the way students learn! So, how do students learn? This session will focus on learning styles and their definitions. We will scientifically identify your learning style and your students’ learning styles, and we will discover how to teach each type of learner. “If students can’t learn the way we teach, then we must teach the way students learn.” (Ignacio Estrada)
An old adage states: “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.” The last part of this statement is the essence of inquiry-based learning. In this workshop, you will learn to shift your traditional education ideas and successfully implement inquiry-based instruction. You will learn to embrace the freedom and let go of control; embrace the process and let go of content (while still teaching standards); and embrace the struggle and let go of discomfort! This workshop will share strategies, routines, and classroom management protocols to make inquiry-based learning a reality in your classroom!
Teaching writing doesn’t have to lead to piles of difficult grading! In this workshop you will learn how assigning your students 2-3 “low stakes” writing tasks each day ultimately leads to better writing from your students on the “regular” writing assignments. You will walk away from this session with lots of ideas for short writing tasks– and do a little practice yourself along the way.
Wondering how to make your reading block more effective? This workshop reviews the big 5 areas of reading instruction, explains how much time to spend in each of the areas, and gives real ideas to take back to your classroom to make that reading block more powerful! We will also explore strategies for identifying and addressing the areas in which your students have gaps or are ready for a challenge.
In this workshop you will learn how to assess and provide instruction in small groups for reading. We will focus on giving you tools, assessments, and teaching strategies for a differentiated reading classroom. You will come away with planning tools, assessment ideas, and a better understanding of how to implement small groups that are effective for student achievement.
In this workshop, we will share a variety of easy-to-use guided math techniques, including how to create, organize, implement, and manage small, guided math groups designed to better meet your students’ needs – from those who excel in math to those who struggle with basic math skills. We will show you how to implement guided math using your current math curriculum, and how to create and manage timesaving, easy-to-implement math centers for the rest of the class while you work with guided math groups.
Planning is one of the most powerful tools for creating strong and effective classrooms; however, often teachers tend to over or under plan, or spend hours planning things that are not highly impactful. In this session we will model and walk you through how to “plan smarter, not harder and longer” using the resources currently in use on campus to create effective, purposefully planned lessons based on standards.
Do your students struggle with vocabulary? Do they forget important information? Do they flounder as they try to use academic language in class? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, come and learn the most powerful, simple-to-implement strategy of them all: anchor charts! In this workshop you will learn the purpose behind anchor charts, how to make one, and how to use them in your classroom. Your students will begin to better understand content, use academic vocabulary, and their comprehension will immediately increase!
In this workshop we will investigate the research showing the strong connection between a student’s vocabulary and their overall academic success, especially in the areas of text comprehension and writing. This is nothing new, but how do you really navigate and implement Graves’ four components of effective vocabulary instruction? What does Isabel Beck say about the TIERS of Vocabulary and how to teach them? This workshop will inspire you to do more with vocabulary in a whole new way!
Do you want to make an impact on student achievement? Then this workshop is for you! We will discuss how curriculum mapping encourages teachers to be curriculum designers via authentic examination, collaborative/collegial conversation, and student-centered decision making. You will learn about the 4 types of curriculum maps and how to implement them, as well as how to design your daily lesson plans to reflect best practices in the classroom and integrate your new maps. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we’re just giving you the tools to adjust the drive to fit the road upon which you travel!
It’s one thing to read a standard and get a general sense of what it’s about, but what does it really say? This workshop will provide you with a simple method to deconstruct (unwrap) the wording of any standard to help you understand its meaning inside and out. “Unwrapping” will help you thoroughly comprehend what each standard explicitly and implicitly indicates. Join us as we explore how you can make “unwrapping” the very first step in planning effective instruction and assessment. (Suitable for teachers in all grades.)
Do you ever wonder how to reach a student? In this fun and interactive session we will identify the reasons students resist investing in class, then pinpoint specific strategies to motivate students to learn. You will leave this workshop with the techniques to show students the value of learning on their own terms.
Learn how to make your small group instruction purposeful and powerful! In this workshop you will learn how to effectively group your students to best meet their needs, and how you can match instruction and resources to their very specific learning goals. We’ll share some tips, tricks, and specific activities for small group activities that are aligned with the Common Core Standards and reinforce instruction.
Did you know that research has demonstrated that high-quality assessment for learning has a significant impact on student learning and motivation, thus representing a positive strategy for closing achievement gaps? In this workshop, you will learn to differentiate between formative assessment, summative assessment, assessment for learning, and assessment of learning. You will also have the opportunity to critique your own assessment practices for quality and identify new classroom assessment practices to use.
This workshop introduces small group routines for all content areas and all grade levels. Getting started with small groups can be tricky, but this course will give you the knowledge you need to effectuate small grouping in your classroom in a way that fits your teaching style. Get a great start to small groups in this session!
There is a “push” for educators to attain higher levels of engagement with students– and a definite need!– but how is a rich environment for dialogue within the classroom fostered? This workshop will give you the strategies you need to effectively develop a more collaborative learning environment. Teachers as facilitators, 50/50 Talk, Talk Moves, collaborative groups, plus highly-effective engagement tools will be discussed in this interactive session.
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