course / workshop descriptions
Best Practices in Science Teaching
This course focuses on the development of confidence with inquiry-based
teaching and assessment skills and strategies to help K-8 students
understand and use the concepts of science and the skills of inquiry
appropriate for their grade level. Popular features of the course are
the development of science unit frameworks including desired outcomes,
performance tasks and formative assessment strategies, and learning
opportunities for students that feature inquiry. This is an active,
hands-on offering with strong connections to literacy goals for students.
Note: This course can stand alone or be taken as
a part of the VSI Tier II program. For further details, visit the VSI
website: www.vtscience.org
The dates and times shown here relate to Springfield's professional
development schedule, but the course is open to anyone who can participate
on these dates .
Dates and Times: August 23 and 24, September 29, October 22, November 11, 8:30am – 3:30pm
Location: Halifax School, West Halifax, VT
Fees: $680; optional two graduate
credits, additional $250
Instructors: Maura O'Brien
Register: Online with the Learning Collaborative
Classroom Communication, Technology and Reading In
Process
Educators across all
curricular areas and grade levels are finding that students are having
increased difficulty with reading comprehension and fluency. The mysteries
of reading can be revealed to struggling readers through classroom
communication, with a little help from technology. This course will
emphasize three things:
1.) The reading strategies used by skilled readers.
2.) Proven classroom
conversation techniques that make these hidden strategies explicit.
3.)
How social networking applications (blogs, wikis, chat, podcasts
and vodcasts) can be used
to support
classroom conversation and the explication and learning of reading
strategies.
Communication is key to reading comprehension and literacy in the
classroom. Technology can help educators facilitate that communication,
but it is not the complete answer. Literacy initiatives that promote
explicit classroom teaching of reading strategies K through 12 are
now nationwide. The emphasis of these strategies is communication.
We live in the age of technology and our students will increasingly
be required to not only show a deep understanding of content, but
also communicate that understanding to others using a variety of communication
technologies. We need to prepare our students for these expectations
with explicit teaching of both reading strategies and communication
technologies.
This class will focus on integrating the technologies we commonly
use for social and work related communication with communication based
reading strategies, AKA Transactional Strategies Instruction (TSI).
TSI focuses on the explicit teaching of reading strategies to promote
the transaction between reader knowledge and text content.
We will explore lots of fun and instructive technologies that we
as educators can utilize to enhance communication between students,
and between ourselves and our students, with the goal of improving
literacy skills and reading fluency, and communication skills.
This class will:
— Give you a basic understanding of the recent
developments in reading, fluency, content fluency,
and literacy research.
— Help you
effectively integrate a variety of technologies into your literacy
instruction to help
facilitate the classroom communication
that is so important to the success of these strategies
and the success
of our students in a technological age There is a paradigm shift in
classrooms
in terms of how we look at learning,
literacy and the role technology plays in our classrooms.
This course will
explore these changes and their implications for our teaching.
Dates and Times: July 6-8 and two additional fall
sessions; 8:00am-4:30pm
Location: Learning Collaborative, Dummerston
Fees: $850; optional three graduate credits, additional
$350
Instructor: Kate Hudson with special guest Jane
Wilde
Register: online with the Learning Collaborative
Co-Teaching: Regular and Special Educators Partnering in Vermont
Schools
Co-teaching is two or more people -- a general education teacher
and a special education teacher -- sharing responsibility for teaching
some or all of the students assigned to a classroom. It involves the
equal distribution of responsibility among teachers for planning,
instruction, and evaluation for a classroom of students.
Recognizing
that good relationships are at the heart of successful co-teaching
teams, this course will examine and explore strategies for working
cohesively and effectively as a team. While learning about different
elements of and approaches to co-teaching, we will observe our individual
teaching and planning styles, and learn how to integrate styles
and skills with those of other teachers. In particular, we will develop
communication and collaborative skills through a variety of activities
and exercises that can be used in the classroom.
The goals of this course are to prepare the participants to:
Know, understand, evaluate, and practice
co-teaching models and approaches
Analyze communication and teaching
styles of self and others
Analyze and challenge assumptions
and beliefs about the philosophy of inclusion
Practice
collaboration, communication, and interactive skills
Learn
and practice group leadership skills for an inclusion classroom
Learn
and practice effective strategies for dealing with conflict
Apply
concepts and effective collaboration strategies to classroom practice
Create
a method for reflective practice and continuing self-evaluation
Please read our Frequently Asked
Questions
sheet
about these courses.
Dates and Times: July 20-22, 8:30am-4:00pm, follow-ups:
Sept. 22 & Oct.13,
3:30-6:30pm
Location: Learning Collaborative, Route 5, Dummerston
Fees: $550; optional two grad credits, additional
$230
Instructor: Teri Young
Register: Online with the Learning
Collaborative
Co-Teaching: Regular and Special Educators
Partnering in Vermont Schools
Co-teaching is two or more people -- a general education teacher and a special
education teacher -- sharing responsibility for teaching some or all of the students
assigned to a classroom. It involves the equal distribution of responsibility
among teachers for planning, instruction, and evaluation for a classroom of students.
Recognizing that good relationships are at the heart of successful
co-teaching teams, this course will examine and explore strategies
for working cohesively and effectively as a team. While learning about
different elements of and approaches to co-teaching, we will observe
our individual teaching and planning styles, and learn how to integrate
styles and skills with those of other teachers. In particular, we
will develop communication and collaborative skills through a variety
of activities and exercises that can be used in the classroom.
The goals of this course are to prepare the participants
to:
Know, understand, evaluate, and practice
co-teaching models and approaches
Analyze communication and teaching styles of
self and others
Analyze and challenge assumptions and beliefs
about the philosophy of inclusion
Practice collaboration, communication, and interactive
skills
Learn and practice group leadership skills for
an inclusion classroom
Learn and practice effective strategies for dealing
with conflict
Apply concepts and effective collaboration strategies
to classroom practice
Create a method for reflective practice and continuing
self-evaluation
Please read our Frequently
Asked Questions
sheet
about these courses.
Dates and Times: Aug. 3-5, 8:30am-4:00pm and follow-ups:
Sept. 23 & Oct.14,
3:30-6:30pm
Location: Hartford School District, White River Junction
Fees: $550; optional two grad credits, additional $230
Instructor: Teri Young
Register: Online with the Learning
Collaborative
Current Topics and Research in Adolescent Literacy with Practical
Applications to the Classroom Setting
This course is designed for professionals
who are involved in teaching literacy to students in grades 4–8.
The main goal of the course will be to develop the knowledge needed
for effective classroom instruction with struggling readers.
Using research and materials from the Center on Instruction, The
National Reading Panel, The RAND Reading Study Group, Institute of
Education Science, various related research articles, and multimedia
sources, the participants will develop a robust command of current
educational research in word study, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension,
spelling and assessment. Teachers will gain the philosophical and
research background of these big ideas in adolescent literacy, and
begin to link research with their own practice.
Teachers can expect a moderately paced course that will cover:
The
current state of literacy in the nation, state and in the local supervisory
union.
The 4-processor model
and the role it plays in understanding how children learn to read.
Why
teachers of adolescent readers need to have some background in early
literacy.
Big ideas in adolescent literacy: What is it?
Why is it important? How do you teach it?
This includes:
Advanced
word study
Comprehension
Vocabulary
Fluency
Spelling
Motivation
and engagement
Assessment Tools
Practice
interpreting reading and spelling data and developing appropriate
interventions based
on assessment
Dates and Times: August 10-12, 2010 and two additional
fall sessions; 8:00am-4:30pm
Location: Learning Collaborative, Dummerston
Fees: $850; optional three graduate credits, additional
$350
Instructor: Brian Buettner
Register: Online with the Learning Collaborative
Making Meaning of Operations
Participants will examine the actions and
situations modeled by the four basic operations. The seminar begins
with a view of young children's counting strategies as they encounter word
problems, moves to an examination of the four basic operations on whole numbers,
and revisits the operations in the context of rational numbers.
About DMI: Developing Mathematical Ideas is
a professional development curriculum, designed to help teachers think through
the major ideas of K-7 mathematics and examine how children develop those
ideas.
DMI seminars are designed to bring together
teachers from kindergarten through middle grades to:
learn mathematics content
learn to recognize key mathematical ideas with which
their students are grappling
learn to support the power and complexity of student
thinking
learn to appreciate the power and complexity of student
thinking
learn how core mathematical ideas develop across the
grades
learn how to
continue learning about children
and mathematics
At the heart of the materials are sets of classroom episodes (cases)
illustrating student thinking as described by their teachers. Participants
have the opportunity to explore mathematics; to share and discuss
the work of their own students; to view and discuss videotapes of
mathematics classrooms; to write their own classroom cases; and to
read overviews of related research.
School systems that have adopted innovative mathematics curricula have found
DMI to be an important support.
Dates and Times: Aug.
18-19 and two additional sessions in the fall, 8:00am-4:30pm
Location: Learning Collaborative, Dummerston
Fees: $850; optional three grad credits, additional $350
Instructor: Elizabeth Van Cleef
Register: online with the Learning Collaborative
Reading the Landscape Just
announced: $150 stipend at completion!
This course will focus on the tools and skills needed
to read, interpret, and tell the stories of landscapes. Over the course
of one short week we will explore a variety of frameworks (including
vertical structure analysis, natural community concept, dynamic timeline,
and phenology) for practicing field science, interpreting natural history,
and sharing landscape ecology with students in an engaging way. During
the week we will visit 5 unique Vermont landscapes to explore the pieces,
patterns and processes that characterize each site. By the
end of the week, participants will feel more comfortable reading landscapes
and giving voice to their rich stories.
The goals of this science course include:
Understand
and use four landscape analysis frameworks including 1) phenology,
2) dynamic
timeline, 3) vertical structure analysis, and 4) pieces, patterns,
processes
Understand
the concept of natural communities and develop skills in classifying and
characterizing them
Understand basic geological processes as
recorded in Vermont's bedrock
Understand Vermont's glacial
history and how these events have shaped surficial geology
Analyze
sediments to interpret glacial history
Gain proficiency in
map interpretation (including geology, topographic, soils, etc.)
Gain
appreciation for the complex interactions between abiotic and biotic components
of ecosystems
Explore teaching strategies and principles that
will make landscape analysis applicable and translatable to students of
all ages, including: journaling and observation, inquiry-based learning,
quantitative and qualitative field research methods, map interpretation,
and engagement strategies
Feel confident in their ability
to use the landscape as an integrated context for teaching science
The course is one component of the Vermont Science Initiative
(VSI). For a participant it can be a stand-alone course or it can
be combined with other VSI courses.
For further details on these
options, visit the VSI website:
www.vtscience.org
Dates and Times: August
2-August 6, 2010; 9:00am-5:00pm
Location: Learning Collaborative,
Dummerston
Fees: $810; optional two graduate credits, additional $250
Instructor: Matt Kolan, with
assistance of Teage O'Connor and guest presenter
Tom Wessels
Register: Online
with the
Learning Collaborative
Summer Science Assessment Institute
Students in this course, in conjunction
with colleagues and with feedback from the instructors, will develop a science
performance assessment task for classroom use and local assessment. This task
will be aligned to the Science GEs and have a completed scoring guide before
being piloted in the classroom. At the final follow-up session, student work
from the assessment task, will be shared, and the task will be modified appropriately
according to the student work. This task will be reviewed and used by the Southwest
Vermont Science Partnership and become part of a data bank from which other
teachers can choose assessment tasks.
Course Objectives: Students who successfully complete this course will be
able to:
- Identify the components of an effective science performance assessment
task.
- Understand the use of cognitive complexity (DOK) in building a science
performance task.
- Be able to develop a local science assessment task which includes a scoring
guide.
- Evaluate a science assessment task using student work, GE analysis, DOK
analysis, and peer review.
- Conduct a curriculum topic study.
Dates and Times: July 19-23 with a Saturday follow-up to
be determined by the class participants; 8:00am-3:00pm
Location: Hartford High School
Fees: $745, includes 3 grad. credits (non-credit option not
available)
Instructor: Lynne Blair, Jean Ward
Register: Contact Myriem Moody at 802.295-8600 or email her
at moodym@hartfordschools.net by
May 1, 2010. Enrollment is limited to 20 participants.
Writing in Science: Using Science Notebooks in the
K-6 Classroom In Process
Scientific
writing is a distinctive genre. This course investigates the criteria of scientific
writing and best practices for teaching scientific writing in K-6 classrooms.
Participants will engage in inquiry science investigation and maintain their
own science notebook, practicing the skills of scientific writing such as:
stating and revisiting a hypothesis, data representation, scientific drawing,
analysis of data/formulating a conclusion based upon qualitative and quantitative
data, and comparing and contrasting science concepts. Participants will have
the opportunity to view samples of quality student work and make plans for
the use of science notebooks in their classrooms.
Participants will demonstrate understanding of how to write effectively in
science and the best practices involved in science writing instruction.
Course Objectives:
- Participants will participate in science writing as part of the process
of science inquiry.
- Participants will learn how to scaffold and model scientific thinking skills
and expository writing in their science instruction.
- Participants will learn how to use science notebooks to deepen conceptual
understanding and develop scientific skills.
- Participants will develop a plan to incorporate inquiry science and writing
into their science programs.
Dates and Times: June 24-25, 8:00am-2:00pm; Nov. 20, 8:30am-12:30pm
Location: Hartford School District
Fees: $315, includes 1 grad. credit (non-credit option not
available)
Instructor: Jean Ward
Register: Contact Myriem Moody at 802.295-8600 or email her
at moodym@hartfordschools.net by
May 1, 2010.