This session explores the power of math discussions in fostering confident mathematicians and stronger problem-solving skills at all levels. Math discussions create a safe space for students to share ideas, clarify understanding, and learn from each other. By explaining their thought processes and listening to others' approaches, students refine their reasoning skills. Students learn from different perspectives, build communication skills, and develop a sense of shared responsibility for solving problems. Discussions showcase the beauty of mathematics, encouraging students to be creative and adaptable in their problem-solving approaches. Effective communication empowers individuals to tackle complex problems in all areas of life. By fostering a culture of discussion, we can nurture confident mathematicians with strong reasoning and problem-solving abilities. We make math a conversation, not just a set of procedures.
As an instructional coach, it is easy to fall into the “advice trap.” This does little to empower the teachers we work with as coaches. In this session, we will explore questioning techniques that uncover unknown thinking in our teachers and help to elevate instructional practices in order to raise student achievement. We will dive into the purpose of the questions that are the most effective and identify ways to incorporate these into our coaching conversations.
One of the most effective ways to truly see if students are understanding what they are reading is to have them engage with a reader’s notebook. In this session, we are going to discuss different reading response strategies teachers can immediately use in their classrooms with students. These strategies will not only help students cultivate their identity as a reader, but will get them engaged in their reading and will have them engaging with each other.
In this session, we will discuss how to create built-in intervention time that works specifically at the high school level. Participants will unpack the complexities of meeting both the academic & SEL needs of all learners by using data driven interventions and enrichments. Participants will leave with actionable strategies for their school centered around the use of the PLC process to drive data-driven targeted interventions. We will share how we have learned to meet the needs of not only struggling students but also high achieving students through enrichment activities that are meaningful to them and teachers within the building!
True differentiation allows students to move through learning at their own pace. Managing a classroom full of kids that all have different needs can seem overwhelming! In this session you will hear how the general idea of "The Modern Classroom Project" was applied to a middle school science class to achieve true differentiation and self-paced learning. These strategies can be applied to any content, any grade, but the focus of this session will be how it was implemented in middle school.
Knowing vocabulary words is imperative to reading comprehension as a student will only comprehend to their level of vocabulary knowledge, especially for English Language Learners. However, the knowledge of what vocabulary words mean is only part of the process. Learning about parts of words (prefix, suffix, and root words), and how they come together to make up the English language can help readers understand words while reading. Attend this session to learn more about evidence based vocabulary strategies that will help all learners, including multilingual/English learners contextualize, rather than memorize vocabulary. Strategies will cover Pre-Kindergarten through High School.
Reading comprehension skills can be difficult to develop for many students. In this session we will explore a different approach of developing reading comprehension skills by using Cartoons and hands on STEM Activities.
Education is a people business. Our hope as leaders is to create an environment and structure where deep, meaningful conversations happen consistently and teacher growth is the norm and not the anomaly.
This session uses personality archetypes to help leaders better understand themselves and how to communicate to others. Once we understand that we can continually adapt our communication styles to meet the diverse needs of those we serve, we crack the coaching code and can become a better leader for those we serve.
Instructional coaching offers a powerful approach to not only enhance teaching practices but also to profoundly impact student engagement. In this session, participants will explore the foundational principles of instructional coaching and its direct correlation to student engagement. We will unpack strategies for leveraging coaching techniques to create learning environments where every student feels seen, heard, and motivated to excel.
Administrators will learn how to collaborate with teacher teams to address student learning problems. The session includes an overview of a research-based learning cycle that explicitly addresses the root cause of student learning problems while providing structures to administrators and teacher teams for collaboration. Learning cycles is a systemic approach to teacher teams collaborating to improve student learning by using data to identify a specific responsive strategy to improve student learning. This includes analysis of trend and learning gap data. Implementing a learning cycle promotes distributed leadership throughout the teacher team, addresses comprehensive data analysis and review, identifies needed resources, professional learning, and setting SMART goals to measure the effect of the selected responsive strategy.
This session will focus on leveraging professional learning structures within the school day to improve quality instruction, increase rigor and challenge, and raise student achievement. There are two easy to implement systems any school can use, which will help support student learning and improve instruction: learning walks and a cohort PLC model. During this session, I will share how we utilized learning walks, including preparing our staff, partnering staff members, determining a focus, and collecting and sharing data. The other professional learning structure to support teachers and students is a cohort framework. I will share how our teachers successfully utilized an action learning cycle within a cohort focused on a professional learning topic. Staff members met on a regular basis, collaborated, and shared successes and next steps. I will share our successes and do-overs with topic selection, accountability, and how the cohorts moved forward on their professional learning journey, even with some being resistant. These two frameworks, learning walks and cohorts, allowed us to create and maintain consistent, in house professional learning that moved instruction and student learning forward over the course of two years.
Maps can be used in any subject area to provide a unique look at the world - to visualize data, observe patterns and relationships, and seek new insights based on analysis. This session will introduce you to two free, GIS mapping platforms that only require Internet connectivity.
MapMaker, a National Geographic and Esri, Inc. collaboration, allows teachers and students to explore and design maps, using basic GIS tools. Students can add map symbols and layers of curated data to show information. Swipe and filtering tools make it easy to compare and analyze data.
GeoInquiries™ are free, ready-to-use, GIS-based mapping activities, based on inquiry methods. An amazing array of introductory GIS map activities, created by Esri’s Education Team, connect to curriculum for various subjects at multiple grade levels. You can present an activity with one computer or as a hands-on activity for students. They gently introduce the teacher and the students to the interactive world of digital maps and help you see traditional content in new ways.
See how a map can enhance a topic you are teaching and engage your students in GIS mapping and inquiry.
Level Up Your Teaching with a Student-Centered Approach! This session dives into competency-based instruction (CBI) and data-driven decision making, a powerful combination for maximizing student achievement. What You'll Learn: The Core of CBI: Discover how CBI focuses on mastering specific skills and knowledge, ensuring students progress at their own pace. Data as Your Guide: Explore how to leverage student data from assessments and activities to identify learning gaps and tailor instruction accordingly. Actionable Strategies: Leave with practical techniques to implement CBI in your classroom, including effective assessment methods and data analysis tools. Benefits for You and Your Students: Personalized Learning: Meet the needs of all learners by differentiating instruction based on individual strengths and weaknesses. Increased Engagement: Foster a mastery-oriented environment where students take ownership of their learning journey. Data-Driven Decisions: Make informed choices about instruction based on concrete evidence of student progress. Join us and unlock the potential of a dynamic and personalized learning experience!
In this session we will discuss the development and framework of a K-8 STEM program in a the diverse, low income, rural school. Our STEM program explores coding/robotics, 3D design, and basic physics.
Are you eager to ignite a dynamic fusion of learning in your classroom? Dive into our session and discover the art of weaving together diverse content standards through the dynamic framework of the 5Es lesson design. Explore invaluable resources to seamlessly blend various subjects, empowering your students with engaging and interconnected learning experiences. Walk away equipped with the expertise and tools to cultivate impactful educational journeys in your classroom. Join us and unlock the potential of cross-curricular exploration!
What do you do when student(s) are not responding to an intervention? This session will provide evidence-based strategies to improve intervention outcomes for these students. You will learn how to systematically make changes to an intervention’s strength, dosage, alignment and generalizability to improve learning outcomes. Join us to learn more and take helpful new ideas and tools back to your classroom to strengthen intervention for all your students!
Are you looking for strategies that facilitate lively, thoughtful classroom discussions? Are you hoping to spur more balanced dialogue that encourages all students to participate? Are you looking for strategies to help your students navigate challenging conversations in your classroom? Come hear about and try out a variety of different strategies that encourage and model ways to encourage student participation in any classroom discussion. This session will be interactive, focusing on tools and strategies that encourage a balanced, lively classroom discussion whatever the topic or content area. Both small and large group discussion techniques will be discussed and modeled.
This presentation looks at the proven benefits of flipping the traditional model, where students engage with content outside class, enabling richer in-class experiences. We will look at activities that promote active learning, accommodating diverse learning styles and boosting student engagement and achievement. We will discuss a student-centered environment that cultivates success in Geometry and beyond.
In this session, we'll delve into a range of rigorous problem-solving tasks designed to cater to the diverse needs of learners in your classroom. Through interactive discussions, we'll explore the effective use of small group instruction to tailor lessons that are intentional, targeted, and impactful in improving student achievement.
Our primary focus will be on the intricacies of lesson planning using the backward design approach, where we'll emphasize the importance of aligning instructional goals with rigorous problem-solving tasks. Additionally, we'll delve into the significance of integrating performance indicators and data analysis into your teaching practices to ensure student progress is accurately monitored and guided.
Expect to leave this session equipped with a comprehensive toolkit that includes ready-to-use resources and practical strategies, all geared towards immediate implementation in your classroom. Through hands-on activities and collaborative learning opportunities, you'll gain valuable insights into fostering differentiated instruction that caters to the unique learning needs of each student. By the session's end, you'll be empowered with the skills and knowledge to effectively guide your students towards reaching grade-level proficiency through personalized and data-driven instructional approaches.
This session equips educators with an understanding of how to address diverse reading challenges from Dyslexia to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Through the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) framework, participants learn data analysis techniques and evidence-based interventions for word recognition, language comprehension, and reading comprehension difficulties. These strategies cultivate an inclusive culture of literacy success, aligning seamlessly with the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan to raise the literacy achievement of all students.
In this session, discover how to enhance student learning with AI – at any age. Kelli will share specific teaching ideas and workflows that allow even the little students to learn how to learn with AI … even in the landscape of ever evolving tech.
Raising student achievement is about moving students from novice to expert. In mathematics, becoming an expert relies heavily on the ability to problem-solve. What I have discovered is that my typical homework assignments have removed a crucial step in the problem-solving process: identifying the deep structure of the problem. The questions on my assignments often provided only surface-level variations of questions with the same underlying problem structure. To become experts, students need experience identifying the deep structure of problems, selecting appropriate mathematical concepts, and planning strategies to apply those concepts. To provide this necessary experience to students, I began to integrate purposeful instruction in metacognition, utilizing a blend of mathematical tasks and journaling in my Algebra 2 classroom. In this session, we will explore the implementation of metacognitive instruction in the classroom along with its outcomes. Additionally, we'll examine existing assignments and brainstorm strategies to enhance them, fostering students' development as adept problem solvers.
Word problems are always an area of frustration for teachers as well as students. Identifying key words to solve world problems in math is a common practice that often confuses students. Come find out how to shift the focus from identifying keywords to modeling and making sense of problems that you can make work in your classroom tomorrow!
Within the CCSS the term "Fluency" is used within all K - 5 grade level expectations. So just what exactly is "Fact Fluency", and how do we work as teachers of mathematics to develop student's fluency with their basic facts? This session is focused on providing an awareness of the research based progression of developing student's math fact fluency. Additionally, participants will leave with an understanding of supportive structures designed to assess student fact fluency while moving students toward a deep conceptual understanding of the basic facts that ultimately leads to fact automaticity.
Are you tired of feeling like you're herding cats in the classroom? Do you find yourself assessing student engagement by counting the number of yawns per minute? In this session we’ll dive head first into a carefully curated list of instructional strategies that you can take home with you today! I’ll cover assessment, writing, discussion, SEL, grading, and AI strategies just to name a few! All strategies can be adjusted to fit your needs.
Want students to be college and career ready in the 21st century? Start by designing student experiences based on the science of how people actually learn. Thanks to recent research from multiple fields, we now know how to radically increase student learning. In this interactive session, learn about the four major principles that can transform teaching practice, using concrete examples. Then, ground what we explore in the reality of your schools. Throughout the session, generate ideas for curriculum, instruction, and assessment that will lead to significantly greater success for your students.
Adolescent readers struggle with comprehension when they aren't able to lift the words off the page, but what happens when they are fluent, but they still don't understand what they read? Explicit vocabulary instruction is an essential strand in the Reading Rope. This session aims to share ways to support vocabulary acquisition while supporting comprehension. Participants will walk away with ready-to-use strategies to increase vocabulary, and even build some background knowledge in the process!
We’ve all heard about the Science of Reading, but what about the Science of Learning? This session unveils a roadmap empowering educators to optimize student learning. Journey through cutting-edge research illuminating the intricacies of how the brain learns. Dive deep into transformative learning strategies with proven impact and uncover their practical application in the classroom. Assess your current strategies to ensure you're maximizing efficacy and student outcomes. Join us to revolutionize your teaching approach and unlock the full potential of your students.
In this engaging session, we will build basic knowledge of The Illinois Social Emotional Learning Standards. After delving into the standards, we will explore our go-to picture books, both old and brand new, that we can leverage to teach and lean into SEL topics and standards.
Differentiation is a method of approaching teaching and learning that takes into account how students learn and their level of preparedness before the lesson. In this session, participants will learn how to plan for differentiation by making adjustments to the content, process, product, and learning environment based on students' readiness, interests, and learning profile. Additionally, resources for implementing differentiation will be provided.
By offering students creative ways to showcase and share their knowledge, we not only help them understand the content better but also teach them how to use design thinking in navigating their learning path. This thinking and creating approach can be adjusted and applied to different subjects.
Join Camille, a seasoned art teacher with 18 years of experience, as she introduces techniques to enhance your current curriculum by introducing imaginative avenues for students to display their learning. Discover numerous chances to inspire your students to explore their studies more deeply, boosting their confidence and giving them tools for real-world situations. We will explore contemporary artists who serve as examples for demonstrating learning, such as those who have transformed weather data into sculptures and musical compositions.
You will also create your own samples to prepare yourself for offering these opportunities to your students. For instance, you can use Adobe Express AI text-to-image for ELA students to visually represent character descriptions. With certifications in Google Level 1, Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 & 2, and as an Adobe Creative Educator Innovator, Camille will showcase basic techniques using Google and Adobe Express to improve student outcomes. Our primary focus will be on utilizing free computer-based tools, so please bring a device of your choice.
Fluency is one of the 5 crucial pillars of literacy as identified by the national reading panel. It can be a crucial missing piece for a student once they have transitioned from learning to read and are on their way to reading to learn. In this session, participants will participate in fluency activities and leave with many tools for their tool belt to address fluency in their classrooms and schools.
The future is coming and it’s moving full STEAM ahead. As we continue to adapt to the demands of the 21st century, it's imperative that our educational programs reflect the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) in preparing our students for the future. Our K-5 STEAM program aims to provide a dynamic learning environment where students can explore, create, and innovate across various disciplines.
This session will include information about how the STEAM program is set up at Pontiac #429, from how the STEAM program is utilized at each school to what a typical STEAM schedule looks like. Participants will learn what unique materials our STEAM program has and how we use STEAM projects to address the Next Generation Science Standards. Participants will also leave with access to three different STEAM projects, ready to teach in their own classrooms.
As education evolves, so do the frameworks that guide effective teaching practices. The Danielson Framework 2022 brings fresh perspectives and innovative strategies to enhance instructional effectiveness and student engagement. Join us for an insightful session where we delve into the latest updates of this renowned framework and discover how it can transform your teaching.
