Teaching and Learning Institute
A week of learning for teachers in all content areas!
August 5 - 9 each day from 8:00-1:00 at Niskayuna High School
Organized by the Schenectady City School District!
Relationships, Routines, and Rigor for Special Area Teachers K-8 (Presented by Kathleen Wylie)
Audience: Special Area teachers (Art, Music, Physical Education, World Language, Technology, FACS, Library):
Special Area teachers often face unique challenges such as working with a large number of students, meeting in unique settings on a unique schedule, and possibly moving themselves and their materials around buildings. This course is specifically designed to address managing the classroom with these needs in mind through the utilization of Responsive Classroom Techniques. The workshop will focus on how the teachers who face these distinctive hurdles can build positive relationships and develop a classroom community that is respectful and predictable with clear expectations and a rigorous academic program.
Supporting Social Emotional Competence with Pre Kindergarten Scholars for Early Childhood Educators Using the Pyramid Model (presented by Capital District Child Care Council)
The Pyramid Model is a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's healthy social and emotional development. During this week, participants will work closely wth a certified coach and trainer from the Child Care Council on best practices and supports for educators who work with our youngest scholars. Participants will create tools that can be used to suit our program's unique circumstance, goals and requirements as well as participants' prior knowledge and skills.
Literacy for English Language Learners in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Classrooms (presented by Sandy Stock of R-BERN)
Audience: PreK-6 Common Branch Teachers, 7/8 Classroom Teachers: Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL, Reading Specialists:
This five day course will address multiple aspects of Next Generation Literacy for English Learners and all diverse scholars in your classes. Essential questions such as, “How can I engage and empower all my students?”; “What tools really work, and when should I use them?”; and “How can I select and create a culturally responsive sustaining classroom where diverse learners thrive?” will be addressed in a series of interactive, differentiated sessions. Participants should bring 2-3 short texts, new ideas, and/or tried ideas that need some love. This course offers 10 CTLE hrs for ENL credit.
Reconsidering Reading Instruction: Disciplinary Literacy in English, History, Science, and Math (presented by Matt Hall)
Audience: Grades 4-6 Teachers: Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL, and Reading Specialists:
In this workshop, participants will reconsider how reading can be taught using two different perspectives: a content area literacy perspective (strategies to support learners in any discipline) and a disciplinary literacy perspective (the specialized ways of thinking and reading in a specific discipline). The workshop will be structured as a week-long study group where participants will work in small groups to examine professional texts, analyze culturally relevant texts for students to use, and evaluate resources for classroom based lessons. Participants will walk away with strategies for supporting disciplinary reading with a special emphasis on the disciplines of English and history.
Lifting Up Your Teaching and Understandings of Reading and Writing Inside the Content Areas (Presented by Sarah Buxton and Shelly Klein)
Audience: Grade 7/8 Teachers: ELA, Social Studies, Science, Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL, Reading Specialists:
Content area teachers have a tall order: teach content to a variety of readers and writers, who all come with varying capacities in reading comprehension and writing skills. During this workshop, content area teachers will develop understandings about key literacies critical to teaching content. We will explore text specific to content disciplines and connect specialized reading and writing practices required for comprehension and analysis of those texts. During our time together, we will examine Disciplinary Literacies. Science and History represent knowledge differently in texts than ELA and as a result the approach to teaching reading and writing must be different too. Teachers will leave with new teaching moves to incorporate into their units and lessons which will support their readers and writers, leading those students to greater content knowledge acquisition and ELA competencies.
Writing Across Disciplines: Teaching the Argument and Information Genres Unique to Science and History (Presented by Stacy Kazmarek)
Audience: Grades 4-6 Teachers: Common Branch, Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL:
In this workshop, teachers will explore the similarities and differences between teaching students to write in a writer’s workshop and teaching students to write in the disciplines of science and history. We will explore the genres in which historians and scientists write and how to utilize mentor texts to help students understand the characteristics of these genres and the craft moves that make this writing unique. Participants will also explore the use of a notebook in science and social studies that mirrors the way a writer’s notebook is used to gather, grow, and synthesize ideas. Throughout the week, participants will take part in experiential learning, study professional literature and trade books, and plan lessons that teach the moves it takes to write like a historian or scientist.
Letters and Sounds and Syllables...OH my! (Presented by Erika MacFarlane, Michele Ferraro, Kate Pieronek, and Brenda Morrow)
In this session teachers will be engaging in learning, creating tasks and developing activities that they can take back to schools and classrooms to utilize and imbed into daily literacy instruction. The content will focus on supporting students in developing phonemic awareness and how to use phonics and the six syllable types to support student literacy through explicit, systematic instruction at a variety of levels. The content of this session will focus on how this instruction looks at Tier I, II, and III.
Schenectady Teachers need to bring a Fundations manual.
Balanced Literacy: How to Plan for Effective Literacy Instruction Tier I (Presented by Kristen Widmer)
In this full-day course, teachers will spend the week learning the ins and outs of literacy instruction using the balanced literacy framework. From interactive read alouds, to mentor texts, conferring and record keeping to assessment tools and small group instruction, this course will give you the basics for using your time for literacy instruction to it’s fullest. We’ll consider everything from engaging reluctant readers and writers to dealing with classrooms with diverse needs. This practical workshop will get you ready, and excited, to start the year off right!
Using Data to Learn and Guide Your Young Readers (presented by Erik Lepis)
Audience: PreK-3 Teachers: Common Branch, Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, Reading Specialists (K-5), ENL teachers, and Reading Specialists:
Readers and reading are too complex to be diagnosed in a single sitting, with a single task, or with a series of tasks; assessing a reader takes thoughtful diagnostic measures. In order to move a reader forward, we must uncover how a reader approaches reading and shift our mindsets to assessing the reader as opposed to assigning reading tasks. This requires teachers to look through a variety of lenses. Once teachers become familiar with using these lenses assessing, selecting instructional moves, and coaching the reader becomes far easier, whether one teaches kindergarten or fifth grade.
In this workshop, educators will:
-Define the variety of skills that can be assessed within each step of the process
-Develop a clear, systematic approach to conferring with students using a step-by-step method
-Deepen their understanding that reading instruction must be authentic, holistic, and natural in its approach rather than restricted to skills taught in isolation and assessed by worksheets and tasks.
-Use data from running records and other diagnostic tools to inform instructional goals.
Engaging Primary Writers (presented by Erik Lepis)
Engaging writers involves fostering agency and independence in a writing workshop. When students learn through a process and genre approach, they are able to engage in any writing task with skill and confidence. The essential conditions for this kind of learning involves studying mentor texts to emulate the craft moves, teaching with a scaffold and release approach, and allowing students to engage and manage their own writing projects while teachers support student decision-making in the qualities of good writing.
In this workshop, educators will:
-Review writing process and how it applies to primary writers
-Define and understand the qualities of writing
-Study mentors across text types
-Engage in the writing process and create model texts to support a variety of genres
Fraction Action
Audience: Grades 3-5 Teachers: Common Branch, Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL:
In this session teachers will be engaging in tasks and activities that they can take back to their schools and classrooms. The content will focus on students comparing fractions, fraction representations (including converting between mixed and improper fractions), operations on fractions, and embedding all these tasks into word problems that embed fractions in measurement and data problems.
The tasks are aligned with the Next Generation Standards in math and focus on the practices of student discourse (including constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others), high level questioning, modeling with math and reasoning in math.
Teachers will leave the training with lesson plan ideas and instructional strategies pertaining to questioning and student discourse.
6th Sense - Number Sense
Audience: PreK-2 Teachers: Common Branch, Gen Ed Continuum, Special Education, ENL:
This session will have teachers engaging in tasks and activities that they can take back to their schools and classrooms. The content will focus on students estimating, organizing, and graphing data to make meaning out of it, developing and strengthening number sense, comparing numbers, and performing mental math.
The tasks are aligned with the Next Generation Standards in math and focus on the practices of student discourse (including constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others), high level questioning, modeling with math, and reasoning in math.
Teachers will leave the training with lesson plan ideas and instructional strategies pertaining to questioning and student discourse.
THE FOLLOWING SESSIONS ARE FOR MATH TEACHERS IN SCHENECTADY CITY SCHOOLS ONLY!
Fun with Linear...Non (presented by The Institute for Learning, University of Pittsburgh)
In this session teachers will be engaging in tasks and activities that they can take back to their schools and classrooms. The content will focus on connecting graphing, tables and equations, interpreting roots in real-life contexts, linear and non-linear models, and including all these concepts in word problems.
The tasks are aligned with the Next Generation Standards in Math and focus on the practices of student discourse (including constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others), high level questioning, modeling with math, and reasoning in math.
Teachers will leave the training with lesson plan ideas and instructional strategies pertaining to questioning and student discourse.
Express Yourself! (presented by The Institute for Learning, University of Pittsburgh)
In this session teachers will be engaging in tasks and activities that they can take back to their schools and classrooms. The content will focus on direct and inverse relationships, interpreting slope in real life contexts, connecting graphing, tables and equations, and including all these concepts in word problems.
The tasks are aligned with the Next Generation Standards in Math and focus on the practices of student discourse (including constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others), high level questioning, modeling with math and reasoning in math.
Teachers will leave the training with lesson plan ideas and instructional strategies pertaining to questioning and student discourse.