Professional Development Topics and Learning

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TCM offers a wide range of popular, relevant topics to jump start and sustain your professional learning goals. In addition to the offered topics, we offer fully customizable professional development (PD), coaching, and long-term professional learning plans.

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Using Decodable Books to Support Phonics Instruction

Ensuring that students have adequate access to authentic practice with phonics skills is an integral component of high-quality phonics instruction.

This workshop provides educators with:

  • High quality phonics instruction strategies.
  • Strategies to support instruction using decodable books.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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The Science of Reading in Your Classroom: Pedagogy to Practice

Discover engaging ways to take the science of reading into the classroom. TCM’s professional development team is ready to support schools using transformational professional development that highlights the enormous body of research and how this research can truly impact instruction and achievement.

From understanding what the brain does during the process of reading to developing a breadth of knowledge about supporting students with challenging texts, choose from a range of professional development offerings rooted in several seminal theoretical models including the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

Each professional development is supported by a Professional Development resource that highlights the practices. Develop a series of professional development from the suggested ‘courses’ below. Each course will highlight research and pedagogy and provide relevant and timely instructional practices and strategies that enhance instruction.

What the Science Says About...

  • Phonological awareness
  • Phonics Instruction
  • Advanced Phonics Instruction
  • Word Analysis Skills
  • Building Knowledge and Vocabulary
  • Comprehension Strategies
  • Complexities of Text
  • Writing in Response to Text
  • The Writing Process
  • Language Skills in Writing
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Multilingual Learner Strategies: Connecting Content & Language

Explore the foundations of language development and dive deep into Comprehensible Input. Teachers will walk away with strategies for comprehensible input that easily integrate listening, speaking, reading and writing.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover engaging research-based strategies to support English Learners
  • Examine components of Comprehensible Output and the importance of productive language
  • Explore strategies for comprehensible input and output that utilizing all four language domains
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Supporting Newcomers in the Classroom and Beyond

Discover essential strategies to effectively support multilingual learners and address the specific needs of newcomers in this professional development workshop. Explore step-by-step instructional strategies, practical tips, and insightful lessons that can be seamlessly implemented in any classroom setting.

In this session, learners will:

  • Develop instructional strategies to integrate ELD instruction, cater to diverse learner needs, and foster inclusivity.
  • Support newcomers by understanding their demographics, stories, and social-emotional needs, creating a safe and welcoming classroom environment.
  • Implement practical advice, ideas, and lessons for multilingual learners, enhancing instructional practices and promoting positive outcomes for newcomers.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Empowering Multilingual Learners: Research-Based Strategies for Reading Success

Gain fresh insights into supporting multilingual learners based on the latest research on reading instruction.

In this session, learners will:

  • Develop an understanding of the significance of creating explicit connections to primary language and culture, addressing cross-linguistic relationships, and utilizing culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments to enhance reading success.
  • Enhance your ability to recognize and navigate syntactical and pragmatical differences between native languages and English, empowering multilingual learners in their reading and language acquisition journey.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Intervention Strategies to Maximize Instruction

The fact remains, that intervention takes place in other areas outside of the regular education classroom. When students have the opportunity to experience high-yield intervention strategies across multiple content areas, their growth accelerates exponentially. Explore, with our experts, how to maximize instruction throughout your schools by implementing intervention strategies that ALL teachers can use daily.

In this session, learners will:

  • Learn the nine high-yield instructional strategies
  • Interact with examples of using the high-yield instructional strategies in any content area
  • Understand how to plan lessons using high-yield instructional strategies for intervention
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Transform and Engage Your Classroom Using Arts Integration!

Use the power of the arts to make learning accessible, engaging, and meaningful for EVERY student! This professional development workshop will provide teachers with arts-based activities to use in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies instruction. Teachers will gain a better understanding of how integrating the arts will spark curiosity, increase cultural relevance, improve classroom culture, and strengthen academic achievement.

In this session, learners will:

  • Investigate how to engage students in their own creativity and learning using arts-based activities
  • Explore strategies to help students develop the skills needed for the 21st century, including creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication
  • Engage in lessons that will provide students with multiple ways to make sense of what they learn (construct understanding) and make their learning visible (demonstrate understanding)
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Everyday Strategies for Building Vocabulary through Greek & Latin Roots

Teach students independent word learning strategies so that they understand what words mean and ultimately read more effectively.

In this session, learners will:

  • Empower students with a powerful step-by-step strategy to effectively uncover the meaning of words using Greek and Latin prefixes, bases and suffixes
  • Discover key steps to engage students in meaningful conversations that promote oral language
  • Reinforce the importance of word learning and word play in the classroom through fun activities and games
  • Compile practical instructional tools to make academic vocabulary strategies a priority to ensure college and career readiness
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Phonics: Systematic and Explicit Instruction

Ensuring that all students have foundational literacy skills that support decoding and fluent reading includes a deep understanding of phonics instruction.

In this session, learners will:

  • Identify the research that showcases the Science of Reading and Writing to support systematic and explicit phonics instruction.
  • Develop understanding to plan phonics lessons that are systematic and explicit.
  • Practice strategies, including the use of decodable text, to support phonics instruction.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Phonological Awareness: Supporting Foundational Literacy

Research has indicated the critical need for explicit instruction to ensure all students have foundational literacy skills.

In this session, learners will:

  • Identify the research that indicates the importance of phonological awareness.
  • Develop understanding to plan effective phonological awareness instruction.
  • Practice engaging strategies to develop phonological awareness.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Authentically Building Fluency

Moving beyond the understanding of fluency as a speed-reading concept, a clear definition of fluency includes accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.

In this session, learners will:

  • Identify the research that demonstrates that fluency is critical to reading comprehension.
  • Develop understanding of effective assessment and instructional methods to develop fluency.
  • Practice strategies and discover tools to support fluency development.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Untold Stories: Using Powerful Texts to Build Literacy Skills

Inspire students to read and analyze short texts that focus on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

In this session, learners will:

  • Explore how to use short texts to provide powerful teaching opportunities that support a variety of instructional needs, content areas, and reading levels.
  • Discover ways to add relevancy and purpose to any literacy curriculum with fascinating stories about real people and real events throughout history.
  • Learn how to support collaboration and focus on active listening and strong speaking skills as they read, write about, and discuss the untold stories.
  • Discover strategies that empower students to explore and share their own untold stories.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Promoting Inclusive Education: Effective Strategies for Diverse Learners in the General Education Classroom

Explore effective strategies for promoting inclusive education in the general education classroom. This workshop provides practical guidance and research-based approaches to create a supportive learning environment that embraces the diverse strengths and needs of all students.

In this session, learners will:

  • Understand and value inclusive education for diverse learners in the general education classroom.
  • Learn effective strategies for equitable support and access to academic, social, and behavioral opportunities.
  • Foster an inclusive classroom culture, promoting peer interactions, social-emotional well-being, and self-advocacy skills for all students.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Teaching Gifted Kids in Today’s Classroom

Meet the learning needs of gifted students in a mixed abilities classroom—seamlessly and effectively with minimal preparation time.

In this session, learners will:

  • Learn how to compact and differentiate skill work and new content
  • Support self-directed independent study
  • Support curriculum standards and increase curriculum rigor
  • Use assessments to help students demonstrate what they already know
  • Learn how to use technology for accelerated learning and to benefit twice-exceptional (2e) students
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Building Knowledge and Vocabulary through Rich Informational Text

College and career-ready standards emphasize the importance of student reading grade-level complex text. Informational text provides unique challenges and a plethora of advantages in building knowledge and vocabulary to support grade-level reading.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover tools to identify rich text (text sets) for the purpose of building knowledge and vocabulary
  • Explore the range of learning goals that can be addressed through instruction using rich, informational text
  • Reflect on how scaffolds and supports can make challenging text accessible to all students
Training Options

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Building an Inquiry-Based Learning Environment

Teaching and learning using the inquiry-based instructional framework is beneficial for students in multiple content areas and increases student engagement.

In this session, learners will:

  • Be instructed on how to construct an environment to promote inquiry-based teaching and learning across multiple content areas.
  • Learn strategies that allow students to deeply analyze instructional sources as well as using documents that support inquiry practices.
  • Practice strategies that develop students’ thinking processes to analyze and inquire about information in and out of the classroom.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Building Knowledge & Vocabulary: Reading Complex Text Across the Content Areas

Students need to access rich, challenging text to develop knowledge, build vocabulary, and improve comprehension across the content areas.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover nuances within text that make it difficult and uncover student-centered ways to support knowledge and vocabulary development.
  • Encounter and practice strategies to empower students to conquer complex text
  • Learn new ways to engage students with rich, powerful vocabulary and proven strategies to help students learn those words as well as how those new words work.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Write Now! Effective Strategies for Writing Instruction

Writing is an essential and vital part of every classroom. However, teaching writing can be challenging and overwhelming for students.

In this session, learners will:

  • Review best practices in writing instruction.
  • Explore ideas for creating writing activities within any content area.
  • Discover innovative ways to help students master the four main categories of writing including Informative/Explanation, Opinion/Argument, Narrative Fiction, and Narrative Nonfiction.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Literacy, Language, and Learning: Effective Strategies for Early Childhood Instruction

Learn to meet the unique needs of early childhood students, including their ability levels and interests, with engaging activities and strategies for utilizing thematic curricula.

In this session, learners will:

  • Learn developmentally-appropriate instructional strategies to move students forward in their academic and social growth.
  • Create daily lesson plans and thematic units using tools and structures to make this task easier.
  • Discover the impact that a rich oral language experience can have on English language learners.
  • Help students detect and manipulate language through songs, role-playing, and other engaging activities that support the development of early literacy skills
  • Learn the important components needed to develop structure and a positive environment and explore the best practices to create a sense of order, continuity, and routine
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Smoothing the Road to Reading with Vocabulary Activities for Early Learners

One of the key elements to reading comprehension is vocabulary. If you think of all the layers of comprehension like building a road, you need to think of vocabulary building like filling the potholes in the road. If the vocabulary knowledge is incomplete, the road to comprehension will be bumpy.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover vocabulary ideas for engaging students in developing meaningful vocabulary
  • Reinforce the importance of vocabulary to all learners
  • Compile practical instructional ideas for vocabulary development
  • Reflect on ways to support early readers with vocabulary
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Social-Emotional Learning for Parents

Foster authentic partnerships between schools and families by recognizing the crucial role of parents and guardians as children's first teachers. Gain practical strategies to support social-emotional development and strengthen connections between home and school, resulting in positive outcomes for students.

In this session, learners will:

  • Recognize and value the expertise of families and caregivers in understanding children's development, experiences, culture, and learning needs.
  • Develop practical strategies to form authentic school-family partnerships that reinforce students' social-emotional development.
  • Gain knowledge and resources to support parents and guardians in fostering social-emotional skills at home, promoting a harmonious and supportive learning environment for children.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Being Your Child's Most Important Teacher

Explore strategies to support children's mental, emotional, and social growth, preparing them for school while fostering a sense of wonder and joy in learning.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover a variety of engaging and cost-effective learning activities that families can incorporate into their daily routines to support children's literacy, math, science, social studies, and vocabulary skills.
  • Gain practical techniques for preparing children for school, including tips to prevent summer learning loss.
  • Understand the significance of early childhood experiences in laying the foundation for future academic and life success, and learn how to enrich children's lives with meaningful strategies that foster curiosity and a love of learning.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Get the Picture: Visual Literacy in Content-Area Instruction

Literacy learning is no longer limited to reading, writing, listening, and speaking; we must include visual communication and expand our definition of what it means to be literate.

In this session, learners will:

  • Examine ways to incorporate visual texts into instruction, including what visual literacy lessons look like in the primary grades
  • Practice instructional strategies and develop sample lessons for teaching students to read visual texts for understanding
  • Practice and discover instructional strategies for guiding students to visually illustrate understanding, specifically targeting support for improving reading and writing
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Inspire Student Curiosity & Engagement: Using Inquiry-Based Learning in Social Studies

Inquiry is the shift from “studying” to “doing” social studies. Engage students in inquiry practices, triggering their curiosity and boosting creative thinking skills.

In this session, learners will:

  • Understand the concept of inquiry-based learning in social studies and its significance in shifting from passive studying to active student-driven exploration.
  • Learn effective strategies to foster students' knowledge and curiosity, enabling them to ask their own questions and make inferences about the past in social studies.
  • Acquire practical techniques for facilitating inquiry-based learning experiences that empower students to design solutions for building a better world, fostering creativity and critical thinking skills.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Bringing History to Life: Using Primary Sources in the Classroom

Studying primary sources breathes life into the pages of history and engages students in the inquiry process. With primary sources, history changes from a textbook study of events to a more intimate focus on the humans who participated in that history. Primary sources add a real-life element to history as history becomes a series of stories about real people who had families, jobs, and dreams.

In this session, learners will:

  • Explore how to use primary sources in a way that gives students a fuller understanding of individual lives and events throughout history while allowing them the opportunity to understand their own ties to the past
  • Discover strategies for helping students research both primary and secondary sources to answer questions and form educated conclusions
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Why Civics? Why Now? Re-Imagining Civic Education for the Next Generation

Engage students in critical thinking, thoughtful discussions, and engaging activities that will guide them to becoming active, civic-minded members of society while also building key literacy skills.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover how literacy and civics education integrate seamlessly to help students gain civic knowledge, practice civic skills, and develop civic dispositions.
  • Learn strategies to prepare students for both civic engagement and citizenship responsibilities.
  • Explore ways to help students make sense of social issues, understand our political systems, make logic-based arguments, and consider ideas different from their own.
  • Discover ways to build content area literacy and support students in making concrete connections to key topics through paired fiction and non-fiction texts.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Math Boot Camp: Creating an Environment of Numeracy in the K-12 Classroom

Environments rich in mathematical opportunities are essential if we want our students to develop a thorough understanding of mathematics. When students begin to recognize how numbers and problem solving affect their everyday lives, mathematics becomes more meaningful to them. The creation of a classroom environment supporting numeracy then enables students to build on their previously acquired knowledge of numbers.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover how to create an organized mathematical support system for students by encouraging children to use manipulatives, compute, compare, categorize, question, estimate, solve problems, converse, and write about their thinking processes.
  • Experience model lessons using engaging activities that will help students become increasingly aware of mathematical and problem-solving opportunities throughout their everyday lives.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

Best Practices Webinar

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Guided Math: A Proven Framework to Reach All Math Learners

In this workshop you will learn how to provide an innovative approach to mathematics instruction that fosters mathematical thinking and conceptual understanding.

Explore the benefits of a variety of research-based instructional models, including mathematical discourse, whole-group and small-group lessons, math warm-ups, workshops, and student conferencing. Discover how to use assessment throughout this model so that true data-driven instruction can take place.

In this session, learners will:

  • Learn the importance of student choice in selecting tasks that are purposefully planned to accelerate student achievement and meet the mathematical needs of students
  • Learn how to accurately deliver a whole group lesson that is immediately followed up by intensive small group instructional activities using a menu of instruction and assessment options
  • Discover practical classroom management techniques that set up any Guided Math classroom for success
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Let’s Talk Math: Engaging Students as Mathematical Thinkers

In this session, learners will examine high-cognitive demand tasks and deepen their understanding of how to develop mathematical thinkers and to choose rigorous tasks that promote problem-solving skills. Learners will also explore how being linguistically responsive can help students to be more successful when using tiered vocabulary and problem-solving structures in the classroom.

In this session, learners will:

  • Discover high cognitive-demand tasks and how these tasks provide opportunities for learners to become mathematical thinkers
  • Understand how to identify tiered vocabulary in a way that makes problem contexts more comprehensible for students
  • Apply classroom structured mathematical discourse that supports the problem-solving process by enabling students to articulate their own thinking and become active listeners.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Engaging Students in Science with Phenomenon-Based Learning and the 5E Model

Unlock student engagement and deepen scientific understanding through phenomenon-based learning and the 5E model.

In this session, learners will:

  • Understand and apply the key components of the 5E model to structure phenomenon-based science lessons effectively.
  • Choose captivating phenomena that align with curriculum and standards to actively engage students in scientific inquiry.
  • Employ strategies such as effective questioning, evidence utilization, and student collaboration to guide inquiry and investigation in the classroom.
  • Create phenomenon-based science lessons that integrate the 5E model, align with curriculum and standards, and foster student engagement in scientific inquiry.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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STEAM Challenges for Inquiring Minds

Leverage the 5E inquiry instructional model to extend hands-on learning in science and foster students' success in STEAM fields by designing thinking practices that actively engage students in meaningful science instruction.

In this session, learners will:

  • Identify instructional strategies and methods for each part of the 5E science inquiry model to promote 21st century skills development of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
  • Explore how to implement methods and lessons around: science inquiry, problem-based/project-based learning, use of reading and writing strategies in science, and academic vocabulary.
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Empowering Educators: Integrating AI for Enhanced Teaching and Learning

Become an empowered educator by embracing AI as a powerful tool in creating transformative learning environments. Through engaging discussions, interactive activities, and practical demonstrations, explore the vast potential of AI in education and discover real-world examples that enhance teaching and learning experiences for both educators and students.

In this session, learners will:

  • Develop a comprehensive understanding of AI's significance in education and its potential to revolutionize teaching and learning experiences.
  • Learn effective integration strategies to foster creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students through the use of AI in teaching practices.
  • Acquire practical knowledge, strategies, and resources for confidently implementing AI tools and technologies in the classroom, while maintaining a balanced approach that upholds ethical considerations and core educational values.
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Classroom Strategies

  • Defines concretely what is cultural responsiveness and why it is necessary in our schools today.
  • Builds knowledge and creates the context for addressing the needs of underserved students in terms of their sociopolitical and sociolinguistic relativity in the American educational system
  • Promotes the focus on effective instructional strategies utilization in a way that validates and affirms underserved students across content areas and grade levels
  • Keynote presentations and webinars are facilitated in partnership with Dr. Sharroky Hollie
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Five Steps to Equity

In this motivating keynote, Dr. Almitra Berry, author of Effecting Change for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners, prepares educators for traveling down the metaphorical Road to CARTI. It’s a journey through the five steps of her culturally appropriate response to instruction (CARTI) framework.

In this session, learners will:

  • Listen to Dr. Berry share her motivation for writing Effecting Change
  • Outline the journey, describing why the framework must be taken as a sequential whole
  • Explain the key role of mindset and cultural connectedness in creating a culture of equity
  • Discuss the need to drive in both the lanes of school structure and culture in order to create a school built on equity for learners of cultural and linguistic diversity
Training Options

Keynote Presentations and Webinars

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Applying Differentiation Strategies

Participate in professional development that focuses on the “how” of differentiation, supported by current theory and pedagogy.

  • Learn strategies for differentiating by content, process, and product and understand the role each plays in differentiated instruction
  • Develop new and effective ways of teaching English language learners, gifted students, special education students, general education students, and at-risk students
  • Experience model lessons using the strategies and apply the strategies in structured planning tasks
Training Options

Workshop

On-Site Coaching

Best Practices Webinar

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Related Information

Professional Development Topics for Teachers

Teacher Created Materials proudly provides educators everywhere with the tools they need to support student learning and achievement. With fully customizable professional development and learning plans, we help take your teaching to the next level.

To help you discover where to focus your professional learning efforts, common teacher professional development ideas and topics can include but are not limited to:

  • Exploring new teaching strategies to motivate students and improve learning
  • Implementing high-yield intervention strategies
  • Embedding Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)into the classroom
  • Building language skills for multilingual learners
  • Boosting communication skills with collaboration, vocabulary acquisition, reading, and writing opportunities
  • Ensuring successful implementation of classroom materials through effective instruction
  • Designing and analyzing assessment data to impact instruction
  • Utilizing differentiated lessons to incorporate and develop higher-order thinking skills

We encourage you to speak with one of our representatives to determine how our professional learning and development resources can best fit your needs.

More professional development topics and ideas for teacherss

Discover more professional learning resources for teachers like you by viewing our flexible Training Options (including professional development workshop ideas, on-site and virtual coaching, keynote presentations, and more), or registering for our fun Live Webinars with virtual Coffee Chat sessions or our free On-Demand Webinars to learn at your own pace and share with colleagues.

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