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. Project Based Learning (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.

Designed for those who regularly deliver staff development to faculty and/or staff.

Standard 1 of the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards reads, “Teachers demonstrate leadership”. More and more, they are being asked to lead outside their classrooms by presenting new ideas or initiatives in their PLCs or at school and district-wide professional development sessions. This can be a daunting prospect. Teachers who wouldn’t flinch in the face of a roomful of hostile teenagers are paralyzed by the idea of that same room filled with their peers. Participants in this program will learn how to structure presentations for maximum engagement at the learning level of an adult audience.

It can be a struggle for career and technical education teachers to find appropriate resources to engage their students when designing their courses to fit the 16 Career Clusters and 79 related pathways that are a part of the CTE essential standards. Join CTE experts as we investigate digital resources, community partnerships, and strategies that provide enhanced instruction across the multiple curriculums in this field. Create lessons that enrich and extend these standards. Explore the policies and best practices of CTE education and how they can help launch students for success in a broad range of occupations and career specialties.

Canvas, North Carolina’s Learning Management System (LMS), is your place for one-stop learning and course management. Teachers will become familiar with the features of Canvas such as the settings, notifications, and tools in building a course. Create modules using a variety of items such as discussions, assignments, quizzes, and content pages. Set up generic or tailored rubrics for use with a variety of content. This program is designed for beginning users and will allow time to experiment, collaborate, and build at your own pace. Teachers will have a module or more ready to implement on returning to the classroom.

Designed for teachers of grades K–5.

Good readers ask questions before, during, and after reading to make sense of text. Questions provide the opportunity to interact with the text and figure out the deeper meaning of what is being read. How do teachers model good questioning strategies? How do teachers pose questions that foster critical thinking? What types of questions help readers understand confusing parts of a book? Learn how to use questioning strategies to enhance reading comprehension for all students.

Meeting the needs of exceptional children can be a challenge for teachers who have these students in regular classroom settings. It can also be a challenge for EC teachers who have experience, but who must teach in multi-grade and multi-categorical self-contained classrooms. NCDPI mandates that public schools identify and serve students with disabilities, and that these students demonstrate progress on regular or extended content standards. Join teachers of EC students and experts in the field of special education as we investigate technology tools and digital resources and other strategies to provide enhanced literacy instruction integrated across the curriculum. Create lessons that differentiate for all learners. Explore the policies and best practices of EC expectations, create ways to challenge EC children, enhance literacy, and encourage continual intellectual and developmental growth.

How many of us have endured the drudgery of the “sit ‘n’ git” workshop and sworn silently that we would never inflict the same fate on our students? This promise represents not only good humor, but also good pedagogy. A wealth of research supports the hypothesis that physical activity can boost comprehension, retention, and self-regulation in students of all achievement levels. Teachers who build movement into their lesson designs will have students who are less disruptive and more engaged. Teachers will learn a variety of strategies for integrating instruction with physical activity, but not at the expense of intellectual rigor. Armed with a collection of techniques you can use immediately, design and create your own physically and mentally active lessons. All teachers from pre-K through 12th-grade are encouraged to attend.

Students are engaged when they are involved in their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in their accomplishments. Solving student engagement issues is complex. What works in one class may be a failure in the next, with every year presenting new challenges for engaging students in various lessons. This program will use a collaborative classroom process to address questions dealing with how to create a classroom culture and how to create classroom instructions that facilitates self-motivation, personal responsibility, and perseverance of students. Participants also will review and evaluate motivational strategies for engaging students that can be used upon their return to the classroom.

What should literacy instruction look like in today’s classrooms? High quality literacy instruction promotes and advances critical thinking. This program will investigate intentional instruction that fosters critical thinking skills. Examine strategies to “dig deeper” into the text and discover the art of dialogue and purposeful questions. Utilize multiple media and technologies to support and enhance a student’s critical eye for thoughtful interpretation of ideas.

Classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse, with each student having his or her own unique instructional needs. In light of these challenges, how do teachers ensure they are appropriately growing their gifted students? Come learn how to adapt and extend classroom-learning experiences to better address the academic development of your gifted students. Focus will be given to incorporating central concepts into the curriculum, implementing the tools of inquiry and creative thinking, achieving depth and complexity within content areas, embracing acceleration in the classroom, and utilizing multiple digital resources and digital strategies.