It’s time to start thinking outside the box! Teachers often think projects take too much time to plan or don’t know how to align them with curriculum. PBLs are an effective and enjoyable way to learn that allow students to work as a team, reflect, ask questions, build confidence, work with a purpose, problem solve, and learn time management. Investigate what essential questions, unit questions, and content questions will enable you to develop your own PBL unit. Return to your classroom with a PBL unit you create that will excite and engage your students as they claim ownership of their learning.

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There is new research and a renewed focus across the nation on the value that the arts have in education. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes the arts as a part of a well-balanced education for every student. But what can this mean for elementary math instruction? While most teachers are aware that children exposed to dance, drama, music and visual arts do a better job at mastering content in the non-art subject areas, many feel ill-equipped at designing arts-integrated math experiences. Investigate strategies for engaging your students in deep and meaningful processes as they creatively explore connections between the arts and the non-arts content. Construct lesson plans and gather ideas and resources for enhancing your math instruction. Come build your toolbox of instructional strategies that support arts integration. This program is presented by A+ Schools of North Carolina.

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In order for students to become globally competitive, it is imperative students receive a good foundation in literacy instruction. With new challenges facing teachers each day, this task can be daunting. Examine key aspects of the Read to Achieve legislation to insure alignment in your classroom and school with research-based strategies and best practices. See how to “fit it all in” by integrating literacy across the curriculum. Learn how to effectively maintain a progress monitoring assessment schedule. Use data to develop engaging lessons that foster a love for reading while still teaching foundational skills. Develop a reading and writing environment that is welcoming and inviting to students of all developmental levels.

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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.

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“Schoolwork at home and homework at school” is one of the many definitions of a flipped classroom. Explore the history, styles, and benefits of flipping your classroom, including practical, hands-on ways to create, curate, and differentiate video content. With help from experienced teachers and educational technologists, each participant will identify what elements of their curriculum could be flipped and will have the opportunity to create a ready-to-roll video lesson with ideas for assessment and follow-up activities. We’ll look at the possibilities created by flipping, including time for project-based and mastery learning. Come gain the confidence, tools and skills to flip your curriculum and create a more responsive, active, social, and creative classroom.

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The revised English Language Arts NCSCoS for juniors and seniors focuses on fine-tuning students’ recognition and use of language’s persuasive and aesthetic powers. In this program, we will examine several highly complex texts—dramatic, oratorical, fiction and non-fiction. We will consider not only how to teach these texts but also what the texts teach us about how words can be used to persuade, entertain, soothe, and otherwise manipulate. Teachers also will receive dedicated time and assistance to create or revise units and lesson plans for their texts and students.

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As our students develop as mathematicians, we often wonder if we are best supporting them along that pathway. Learn how to facilitate activities that promote deeper understanding of the mathematical practices that are the foundation of the 21st century classroom. Discover engaging tasks that involve collaboration and problem solving. Explore creative classroom-friendly activities that build mathematical fluency. This program will offer multiple opportunities to collaborate and to understand more clearly the correlation of math standards across grade levels.

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Whether or not your school or district has adopted a Google Chromebook environment, if your LEA infrastructure allows for the use of Google Tools and/or Apps, the “Googlesphere” can be an immense help. It can aid in engaging students, keeping in touch with parents, automating feedback and assessment, sharing documents, and more. Hone your skills with the Google Chrome Browser, with Google Apps, with Android Apps, and with Chrome OS so that you can engage your students using freely available tools on almost any platform.

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Join the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and NCCAT as we look at ways to enhance students’ environmental literacy through participation in citizen science projects. Get outdoors and explore North Carolina’s coastal ecology as we use the unique and beautiful ecosystems of the Outer Banks as a field laboratory to collect data. Become familiar with some of the many online citizen science databases and learn ways to use the data you and other citizens collect in your classroom. Participate in simple activities that incorporate technology, math, graphing, data analysis, and writing while introducing tools that will help you develop your own lessons and programs using citizen science data.

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Educators have a responsibility to effectively integrate new technologies into the curriculum, preparing students for a literacy future we have yet to imagine. Discover how to create learning experiences that take your students from being consumers to creators of digital content. Help your students evaluate and analyze appropriate resources most beneficial to their success as creators. In this hands-on, make-and-take program, you will use free/inexpensive digital tools to create project examples that can be incorporated into your classroom. You will use multiple apps in conjunction (app-smashing) to create a final product. Seamlessly integrate applications to make standards-based learning fun and interactive. Come with tasks, projects, and ideas for your classroom that involve creation rather than consumption.

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