Workshops
Professional Development- Powerful Results
More than fifty percent of all public school children in America come from poverty. The result is many of our children at a tender age suffer not only from lack, but also from having complex trauma and chronic stress. Teacher prep colleges have not provided pre-service teachers with an understanding of this development in pupil demographics so it is not a surprise that teachers struggle with traditional methods of helping and connecting with their students.
Susan addresses the complex trauma and how to conquer obstacles that interfere with engagement. Learn how to foster positive classroom relationships that encourage learning. Workshop participants experience practical, easy-to-implement instructional strategies that not only engage struggling and low-income students but help students break through barriers and experience amazing academic gains.
Workshops listed below are full-day trainings at your site. All workshops include a pre-workshop planning session with the building administrator(s) to target student performance concerns and instructional needs. Each participant receives a high-quality, bound workbook of the presentation and all handouts with instructional strategies.
High-Gain Classroom Strategies
Classroom strategies that target low-performing students and result in higher academic growth are explained and modeled throughout. Participants learn how and why these specific techniques improve learning, how to implement them into their instruction. Drawing on the latest research findings from John Hattie, Eric Jensen, Dr. Jane Bluestein, Vanessa Rodriguez, and other educational researchers and writers, Susan targets the strategies that have the highest impact on student achievement and step-by-step how2's to benefit immediately from each strategy implemented. Teachers who attend this workshop learn the tools that give them the biggest "bang" for their workshop "buck".
Techniques That Elevate Student Engagement
When kids are owners of their own learning, they excel. This is a well-known truth about learning, yet how do we get kids to invest in their own learning? Susan shares 10 different strategies that help students adopt an actively engaged mindset in your classroom every day. Learn the 5 common teacher practices that don't work, especially for struggling students and what easy to implement instructional techniques get kids hooked on learning.
Susan also shows how formative assessment and flipped classroom instruction improve student engagement and can also be easily implemented with her step-by-step action plan. Learn how key activities that occur at the right time during a lesson will not only keep kids focused, but help them with working memory.
Gathering the Right Data for Student Success
How will you know if your struggling students are making gains? The problem with much of the data gathered on student's performance is that these are snapshots in time long after the instruction. Often, this type of data is too little, too late to make changes in instruction.
In this workshop, Susan shows teachers how to gather the right information on a daily, student-level that helps you give your students just-in-time instruction. Susan's tips for low-end data gathering and formative assessment that is easily incorporated into classroom routines. Susan provides spreadsheets, templates and examples of how to gather data that is easily accessible and in a useable format for progress monitoring. Susan also shows teachers how to use data gathered this way to help students see their own progress and take ownership of their learning.
