Instruction Professional Learning

Daily Differentiation Strategies for the Classroom

Discover how to determine students’ learning needs and help them reach their fullest potential.

• Explore various lesson plans and activities.
• Unite curriculum design, assessment, and instruction through the lens of differentiation.

The New Art and Science of Teaching

Discover a framework for substantive change that comprehensively addresses the most alterable effect on student achievement: instruction.

• Utilize ten design questions and a general framework that will help determine which classroom strategies you should use to foster student learning.
• Analyze the behavioral evidence that proves the chosen instructional strategies are helping learners achieve academic success.

Succeeding as a Beginning Teacher

Designed for teachers in the early stages of their careers, as well as mentors, coaches, and supervisors, this two-day training identifies six phases every beginning teacher goes through, offering crucial advice and strategies for each.

• Explore the six phases of beginning teachers—(1) anticipation, (2) survival, (3) disillusionment, (4) rejuvenation, (5) reflection, and (6) second anticipation.
• Understand the feelings and challenges associated with each phase.
• Discover practical strategies for instruction, classroom management, and relationship-building.
• Learn how to practice self-care to avoid early career burnout that so often leads to teachers changing careers.
• Develop a plan for decreasing stress and increasing student achievement.

Establishing a Learning Culture

Lead your school to success with key strategies and practices that establish a learning culture, such as creating an inclusive environment and inspiring teachers to become leaders.

• Explore the four principles of systems thinking—relationships, communication, responsiveness, and sustainability.
• Study the critical characteristics of unstoppable learning leadership.

Adapting Instruction for Diverse Populations

Provide effective differentiated instruction to students with varying needs, from disabilities to twice-exceptionality.

• Learn how to adjust curriculum in ways that maintain appropriate levels of rigor for all students.
• Consider the importance of collaboration and communication in learning adaptations.
• Explore a plethora of high-tech and low-tech accommodations for student input and output.
• Examine graphical and content assessment changes for maximum accessibility.

Supporting Classroom Growth Mindsets and Increasing Learner Autonomy

Cultivate meaningful student engagement by understanding the theories and teaching strategies of learner autonomy, motivation, self-determination, and participation in the classroom.

• Become familiar with the different student engagement mindsets and gain classroom instructional strategies that help establish a growth mindset for all students.
• Consider differentiated instruction and classroom scenarios that increase participation and boost intrinsic motivation for students.
• Boost students’ competency and independence to help deepen their learning by tapping into student engagement strategies designed to consolidate their thinking.

The New Art and Science of Teaching Art and Music

Ensure your art and music programs thrive with music- and arts-based teaching strategies built upon the research-based framework of Dr. Robert J. Marzano’s New Art and Science of Teaching. Educators will learn how to enhance their daily practices and promote the artistic expression, creative growth, and critical thinking skills of every student.

• Explore a model for strengthening instructional strategies for art and music.
• Understand which elements of instruction are best suited to teaching art and music and prioritize the specific suggestions and techniques for implementing these elements.
• Discover time-tested strategies and ideas to improve teaching and learning in art and music classrooms.

The New Art and Science of Teaching Mathematics

Make the most of The New Art and Science of Teaching model in math classrooms. Discover tools and instructional strategies for math that will aid teachers in articulating learning targets, conducting math lessons, tracking students’ learning outcomes, and more.

• Explore how The New Art and Science of Teaching framework can optimize instruction methods and establish best practices in teaching mathematics.
• Discover a four-step process designed to help math teachers deepen their expertise of math teaching strategies.
• Articulate learning targets and conduct math lessons to engage students, track progress, and celebrate successes.

Brain-Friendly Teaching Strategies

Implement a four-step instructional cycle based on the synthesis of educational neuroscience, formative assessment, and differentiated instruction. As teachers are able to gradually release learning to students, these high-impact strategies, tools, and concepts have the power to double the speed of their learning and transform students into active learners and independent thinkers.

• Examine effective teaching strategies and differentiation practices so you can adjust instruction according to student needs.
• Consider the four-step instructional cycle and understand the components of chunk, chew, check, and change.
• Learn how to plan instruction and preassess efficiently so that daily learning targets and formative assessments enable each student to meet standards.

Differentiation and the Brain

Explore ways in which findings from educational neuroscience inform the big ideas and key practices of differentiation, and how applying those ideas helps teachers create brain-friendly classrooms. You’ll also gain instructional strategies and practices that support teachers in addressing the varied learning needs of their students.

• Learn which practices support the brain in learning—and which ones create roadblocks.
• Discover findings from education neuroscience and psychology that can help you plan more effectively.
• Understand why an invitational learning environment is key to student success, and how to work with your students to create one.

Engineering Creative Critical Thinking in Your Classroom

Bring the real world into your classroom and encourage creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and innovation with activities and projects based on engineering design thinking. Model and develop strategies and approaches to connect your current curriculum to real-world challenges and to engage all learners in designing solutions.

• Explore the engineering design process (EDP) and unpack the key stages of problem definition, background research, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and optimizing.
• Model activities designed to build agility, resilience, and lifelong learning skills in your students as they learn to think like engineers—learning from failure, evaluating multiple options, and exploring the positive and negative aspects of possible solutions.

Strategies for Instructional Coaches

Instructional coaches play a crucial role in helping educators meet the ever-changing demands placed on teaching and learning. In this on-site professional learning engagement, coaches will discover seven drivers they can use to best support teachers in their daily work: (1) collaboration, (2) transparency, (3) inquiry, (4) discourse, (5) reverberation, (6) sincerity, and (7) influence.

• Gain strategies to strengthen relationships and improve outcomes with teachers and teacher teams.
• Access tools to help self-assess and adjust daily coaching practices.
• Understand the sociocultural psychology and education research that support the seven daily drivers.
• Learn approaches you can use to keep pace with the demands on today’s educators, coaches, and instructional leaders.

Personalizing Learning Through Voice and Choice

The term ”personalized learning” carries all kinds of connotations for all kinds of people. When considered from the perspective of the learner, this term becomes more accessible and even exciting for educators. Engage with practical, proven strategies, stories, and resources that empower individual educators, schools, and districts to authentically personalize learning.

• Receive inspiration that will help you change the culture of learning for students.
• Learn the roles of students, teachers, school site administrators, and district administrators in this culture change.
• Explore readiness tiers, indicators, and supports.

Making Learning Flow

Rethink student engagement and bring flow to the classroom to inspire students to love learning and reach optimal achievement. Using the key components of flow, generate a state of flow in the classroom every day to spark optimal student performance.

• Learn the fundamentals of flow.
• Reimagine student engagement to create conditions that foster a state of flow regularly.
• Motivate students to become naturally curious, creative critical thinkers.
• Make learning inherently fun—encouraging students to love learning.
• Gain effective strategies for improving motivation, instruction, pacing, and feedback in the classroom.
• Understand how intrinsic motivations can better inspire students’ learning than extrinsic rewards.
• Grasp how to effectively match students’ perceived skills with an equal level of challenge.
• Issue immediate and effective feedback to help students monitor their own learning progress.

Sustainable Project-Based Learning Foundation

During this three-day workshop, participants will develop a completed individual sustainable project-based learning (SPBL) unit design infused with high-impact strategies, a clear assessment plan, and a way to measure the evidence of student learning through teacher action research.

• Discover a five-step process for planning and implementing a comprehensive SPBL framework.
• Learn how to integrate social-emotional learning, project-based learning, and teacher action research into SPBL.
• Acquire an array of protocols and strategies to enhance both classroom learning and teacher collaboration time.

Embracing Relational Teaching: How Relationship-Focused Instruction Can Promote Student Self-Regulation and Efficacy

Put the student before the score, the process before the product, and relationships before evaluation. The Embracing Relational Teaching professional learning engagement explores and implements relational teaching practices to create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment. Training sessions provide an interactive experience that explores key topics such as building relationships, promoting student voice and agency, integrating social-emotional learning into instruction, and more. Participants will leave with practical tools, resources, and strategies to build strong, authentic relationships with their students that can positively impact their well-being and achievement.

Key takeaways:

• Participants will discuss the components of relational instruction, including student-initiated action stimulating student thinking, helping them make judgments about their learning, and learning how to give feedback.
• Participants will learn how to create lessons in which students can explore their thinking, discover the value of collaboration, and build self-trust.
• Learn about the challenges schools face when implementing relational pedagogy and grading practices.
• Create practices and policies that make relationships a core tenet of their school.
• Reflect on current initiatives and explore how relationships with students can change grading practices.

Multiplication Fact Fluency: A Schoolwide Solution

How can students achieve a deep understanding of multiplication that allows them to develop fluency with their basic facts that goes beyond recall to explain and justify their thinking? Experience the six strategies that make up the Fact Tactics™ Fluency Program, designed to shift from drill-and-kill instruction to an approach that helps students make sense of multiplication while developing automaticity and procedural fluency.

This workshop (offered as a full face-to-face day, as a half face-to-face day, or as 2–3 shorter, spaced-out virtual experiences) will help grades 3–6 teachers, coaches, and administrators:

• Examine structures for developing fact fluency grounded in multiplicative reasoning
• Make sense of the Six Fluency Tactics
• Explore the Fact Tactics Fluency Program as a schoolwide solution

Essential Literacy Skills to Support Achievement in Every Content Area

Without the mastery of essential literary skills, students fall behind and struggle to reach their full potential in the classroom and their chosen career. In this multiday workshop, educators discover the tools they need to embed literacy into all subjects and support developing students as they learn to read, write, and think critically.

• Explore ways to prioritize essential skills in your classroom.
• Gain practical strategies to introduce literacy into daily lesson planning.
• Create a supportive classroom culture to sustain long-term skill-centered instruction.
• Scaffold instruction using literacy strategies to boost subject-area comprehension.
• Equip students with the tools they need to thrive.

Foster Student Learning with Productive Struggle

The ability to overcome learning challenges, struggles, and setbacks is a skill that empowers students throughout their lives. In this multiday workshop, educators explore the why and how of creating resilient learners through the power of “not yet.” Discover how to cultivate a classroom where productive struggle is encouraged, obstacles are valued, and students deeply value themselves as learners.

• Design classrooms and routines that normalize productive struggle as part of the learning process
• Write and apply rigorous learning intentions and scaffolded success criteria that are student friendly
• Gain strategies and protocols that support instruction, reflection, and the not-yet approach
• Empower students to see themselves as capable learners and risk-takers

Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge (DOK)

Learn how Depth of Knowledge clarifies what exactly students must learn and how deeply students must understand and use their learning to demonstrate proficiency, develop competency, or perform successfully.

• Understand how Depth of Knowledge provides a common language for clarifying the complexity and demand of academic standards, curricular activities, assessment items, and AI resources.
• Use the DOK levels as a multitiered system of supports (MTSS) for delivering instruction, responding to intervention (RTI), addressing and assessing learning loss, and extending or enriching student learning.