Professional Development
We can customize the following workshops for teachers of gifted students. They can be delivered to a variety of audiences and for a variety of lengths of time. Most range from one-half day to two days. In addition, each workshop can be catered to teachers' needs in homogeneous or heterogeneous student settings. Please call or email us for more information about contracts and prices.
Understanding Gifted Learners in the Regular Classroom
This workshop increases teachers' understanding of gifted learners in
a variety of school settings, including heterogeneous classrooms. Teachers
clarify their definitions of giftedness and recognize classroom behaviors
associated with giftedness, so they might serve exceptional emotional and
cognitive needs of gifted learners in their classrooms. Teachers' understanding
of giftedness and their rapport with gifted learners increases achievement
and social-emotional adjustment in school. Manual included.
This workshop is available as an online, graduate-level course
that focuses on gifted learners in regular classrooms.
Download
more information about the Adams State College Course.
Register online (course
description, "UNDERSTANDING GIFTED STUDENTS IN THE REGULAR CLASSROOM",
is near the end of the list of courses). Class begins June 4.
Accommodating Gifted Learners in the Regular Classroom
This workshop expands teachers' repertoire of instructional strategies for gifted learners who require additional depth and complexity in the learning process. Teachers implement strategies for pre-assessment, acceleration, grouping, and differentiation in their curriculum for gifted students. Management of these accommodations ensures appropriate levels of challenge and meaning for gifted learners. Manual included. This workshop is available as an online, graduate-level course that focuses on gifted learners in regular classrooms.
Ensuring Growth for Gifted Learners in the Regular Classroom
This workshop extends teachers' use of test data to target and monitor academic growth. Teachers document development in talent areas and growth in emotional and social well-being in the classroom. Written educational plans ensure growth in critical areas that contribute to learning and success in school. Manual included. This workshop is available as an online, graduate-level course that focuses on gifted learners in regular classrooms.
Ratcheting the Rigor in Secondary Classrooms
This workshop builds on secondary teachers' desire to promote meaning, challenge, and the benefits of academic rigor in their classrooms. Teachers apply instructional strategies and models of learning designed for advanced learners. Teachers focus on academic rigor in a climate that values hard work, self regulation, goal setting, risk taking, and original production.
School-Parent Partnerships
This workshop provides teachers with an array of strategies to develop strong partnerships with parents to advance learning and emotional well-being at school.
Raising the Standards for Advanced Writers
This workshop responds to teachers' dilemma of challenging and supporting the continued growth of advanced and gifted writers. Teachers apply a framework of six "strands" of writing with in-depth and complex writing activities in each strand. The student-friendly manual guides advanced writers to develop group and leadership skills and build group autonomy, responsibility, and community. Advanced writers map their progress, set goals, and evaluate their growth within a framework that complements and extends district writing programs, state standards and grade-level expectations. The workshop's overall impact is to significantly raise the standard of teaching instruction for gifted writers. Manual included - see sample pages.
Advanced Thinking Skills
This workshop assists teachers and students in identifying the thinking most useful for students to practice as beneficial in mastering school subjects as well as civic tasks required of citizens of our complex world. Once identified, teachers learn how to apply specific thinking skills or processes to student assignments and products. Teachers define how much time students should be engaged in higher level thinking to really be able to say that, "In my classes, students learn how to think." Thinking skills and processes included in the following lists are demonstrated during the workshop:
- Thinking skills - Observing, recalling, memorizing, noticing similarities, grouping and labeling, identifying cause and effect, etc.
- Thinking processes - Solving a problem, making a decision, conceptualizing, generalizing, etc.
TESA Training (Teacher Expectation & Student Achievement)
TESA is a behavioral change staff development program for all educators,
grade
levels, and subject areas. In the TESA training, participants learn 15
interactions designed to encourage equitable interaction with all students.
The
program is based on expectation theory and the early research of Thomas
Good and
Jere Brophy.
TESA is designed to modify the way teachers interact with students through
heightened awareness of how perceptions affect their expectations. Results
of
classroom research shows that use of TESA interactions improves student
academic
performance, gender and diversity awareness, attendance, classroom climate,
and
reduces student discipline problems.