CULLOWHEE—Erin Walle believes things would have turned out very different if she hadn’t attended the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, a recognized national leader in professional development programming for teachers.
CULLOWHEE—North Carolina educators have several opportunities from July through September to attend the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), a recognized national leader in professional development programming for teachers.
We provide professional development designed for the needs of North Carolina teachers. Topics include Digital Learning, Early Grades Literacy, Differentiated Instruction, Gifted Teaching Strategies, Beginning Teacher Support, Teacher Leadership, Writing Strategies and STEM.
Designed for teachers in grades 9–12.
Do you want to transition your CTE course to an honors level? Are you interested in making a rigorous course even more rigorous? Attend this program to learn how to develop an honors portfolio that focuses on increasing the rigor in your curriculum content, instructional methods, and assessments. Guided time will be embedded for portfolio development after each session is presented.
Writing to read is a widely accepted educational method designed to encourage reading engagement and comprehension. Through the writing to learn process, students learn to understand how writing, thinking, and reading are interrelated. This program will provide participants with experiences for improving students’ ability to write about what they are reading and about writing processes involved with creating text. Participants will also research and review strategies for increasing how much students write and for using writing to increase how much students read.
Differentiated instruction is one of those terms, like “rigor” or “fidelity,” that many people use but few understand. Grounded in the work of Carol Ann Tomlinson, who insists that all learning tasks should “respect the learner,” this program will provide guidance in how to adjust instruction so that all students are appropriately challenged and highly engaged. Participants are asked to bring a growth mindset and a steadfast belief that all students can learn. Teachers will refine current practices to differentiate lesson plans that reach every student. We will explore flexible grouping and lesson and unit plan goals to maximize student learning.
Designed for elementary grades teachers.
Literacy instruction is as difficult as it is essential. This program will provide early grades teachers with a complement of research-based tools and strategies to help answer some of their more burning questions: How do I teach close reading to students who don’t yet know the alphabet? What level of writing can I attain from children who are still learning to spell? How do I simultaneously provide enrichment for advanced readers and remediation for delayed readers? How can I integrate reading and writing instruction into all other subject areas? Finally, what does this instruction look like in the classroom and how are student engagement and learning measured in this process?
Open to teachers in their first, second, or third year of teaching, this program supports motivated beginning teachers by strengthening their knowledge base and classroom expertise. Through experiential learning, teachers will explore pedagogical concerns including differentiated instruction, brain-compatible teaching, assessment, the effect of poverty on achievement and behavior, and classroom management. Come prepared to build professional competence and confidence, improve student achievement, and reinforce your commitment to this critically important profession.
Designed for teachers in grades 4–12.
The statistics are consistent: young male readers lag behind their female counterparts in literacy skills. In many instances, the reading scores of boys bring down the reading scores for the entire school. Explore the social, psychological, and developmental reasons why boys lag behind girls. Identify reading materials you can use in your classroom to capture and keep the attention of your struggling readers. Experience a variety of instructional methods such as text selection designed for boys, contests and competitions, focus reading groups, and the latest websites and blogs to boost literacy achievement. Discover solutions to capture the attention of reluctant male readers.
The Maker Movement empowers regular people to become inventors, engineers, and designers. A current trend in education uses the Maker mindset to encourage students of all ages to build, design, program, solve problems, collaborate, and innovate. Learn to plan lessons that teach the Maker mindset and pull in content as diverse as engineering, reading, and math. In this hands-on session you’ll explore how you might use Maker activities in your classroom to promote learning, to foster engagement, and to build innovation and creativity in your students. Topics include: design, 3D printing, building, invention, robotics, programming, electronics, app smashing, and more!
This programs was funded in part by Duke Energy Foundation.
In the past, people preserved their cultures and traditions through oral retelling of stories. Today, these stories are preserved in print and digital formats and come to life when they are read by students as legends, myths, folklore, and folktales. While these genres preserve the past, what are the stories we would share today and how would we share them? Students have a story to tell and with today’s technology a plethora of platforms are available to communicate these stories. Teachers will investigate how to use texts from the past as mentor texts for students to write their own story. Participants also will explore various digital tools to provide a 21st century method of preserving, communicating, and sharing these stories today.