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WorkshopsWorkshops are designed for two consecutive days. The workshop may be extended for additional days during the school year to provide more information on instructional strategies (e.g., cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, and cultural proficiency), strategies for successful teams, or authentic assessment design.

Intended Audience: K-12 administrators, teachers, and curriculum specialists; pre-service and in-service teacher educators

RB Educational Consulting currently offers these workshops: Building Professional Learning Communities, Integrated Curriculum/Interdisciplinary Teamed Instruction, Project-based Learning, Effective Teaching: Building on Students' Strengths, Authentic Assessment, Developing Effective Interdisciplinary Teams, Standards-based Instruction and Culturally Responsive Schooling and Teaching Practices.

Building Professional Learning Communities

What is a professional learning community?
Why are professional learning communities beneficial for both staff and students?
How do we get started with professional learning communities?

School and district leaders who are looking for more effective and cost-efficient professional development for educators will find this workshop helpful. Professional learning communities (PLC) can empower educators, transform school culture, and improve student outcomes.

In this workshop, participants explore the rationale, attributes, and processes of PLC, and they gain insights about and identify beginning steps for creating PLC in their educational setting. Workshop content includes activities, readings, and discussion about effective professional development; attributes of professional learning communities; various ways to organize PLC (e.g., action research teams, critical friends groups, book study groups, content area study teams, lesson study teams, and interdisciplinary teams); research base for PLC, and eight steps to success with PLC. At the end of the workshop, educators leave with a plan for initiating and supporting PLC in their school or district. (See Resources).

Meeting StandardsIntegrated Curriculum/Interdisciplinary Teamed Instruction

Workshop Outcomes

  • Use strategies for synchronizing standards across the disciplines
  • Identify when and how to use the three approaches to integration in their classroom/school
  • Understand the importance of the KNOW/DO/BE framework in ensuring a rigorous and relevant curriculum
  • Increase competence in designing integrated curriculum and interdisciplinary assessments
  • Enhance skills in aligning instructional strategies and assessments

Many schools under pressure to meet new standards of learning mistakenly believe that they must adopt a narrow curriculum that imposes strict boundaries on what students are taught. Rebecca Burns addresses this issue by offering strategies for synchronizing standards across the disciplines.  This workshop begins with an overview of three approaches to curriculum integration and provides a research base for using curriculum integration to ensure rigor and relevance in an era of accountability.

ITI Success Story

Auburn High School in Montgomery County, VA, has a long history of success with Interdisciplinary Teamed Instruction (ITI). In 1992, they began working with Rebecca Burns on a two-year research project designed to assist the VA Department of Education with developing print and human resources for cross-curricular integration of the Common Core of Learning, now the state’s Standards of Learning. Teachers participated in a number of workshops; developed, taught, and evaluated new integrated curriculum units; and learned to work effectively in teams. As a result of the quality curriculum they developed and the enthusiasm teachers, administrators, students, and parents showed for the integrated approach, teachers at Auburn continue to design and implement integrated curriculum. They also write about their work and present at state, regional, and national conferences. Student performance continues to improve, the school is fully accredited by the VA Department of Education, and students continue to make AYP. To learn more about ITI at Auburn and to see examples of their curriculum units and projects, go to www.teacherbridge.org/users/cjervis.

Participants then engage in a user-friendly process for designing integrated curriculum. At the heart of this process is the KNOW/DO/BE framework, which teachers can use to ensure a curriculum that is both rigorous and relevant to K-12 students at all stages of proficiency. Participants also review examples of integrated curriculum units, projects, and interdisciplinary assessments from schools that have successfully integrated curriculum and enhanced student achievement. Meeting Standards through Integrated Curriculum, the text for the workshop, may be purchased from ASCD. Research on integrated curriculum and student achievement, click here. (More >) (See Resources).

 

Project-based Learning

Projects are intensive learning experiences that engage students in activities that are relevant to them and important to the course (s) of study.

What Teachers Say About PBL Workshops

RB Educational Consulting recently led a PBL workshop at the University of Cincinnati for Project GEARUP resource teachers. Here are some of the things teachers had to say about the workshop.

It gave us the opportunity to brainstorm ways to engage students in active learning. It helped me reflect on what we are doing and how we impact the kids we work with. The workshop also helped me focus on the needs of the kids and how I can allocate my skills to best serve them.

The seminar provided more than information. It gave us the opportunity to apply learning.

The workshop helped us learn how to engage students in any learning activity.

The information was adaptable and useful to our program.

Working as a group to plan a project was great. We got to interact with others and experience putting a project together.

The workshop information and direction to information for future use via the Internet were very helpful. Rebecca provided sound instruction along with group interaction.

I liked the systemic approach and tools provided to implement PBL. I already believe in this method and appreciated the tools to plan a project.

It was great to get ideas on constructive ways to reinforce what students learn in class.

I enjoyed the opportunity to practically apply and actively work with our ideas during the training.

The workshop provided good ideas and examples of PBL and a good understanding of the need/value of PBL. It also gave us a way to structure projects, good ideas for projects, and lots of resources. This workshop started the wheels turning on how to begin implementing PBL.

My background is in problem-based learning rather than project-based learning. It was great to learn how similar the two are and to be able to build on what I already knew.

When teachers use project-based learning, students are engaged in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks. Good projects are standards-based.

Authentic AssessmentPBL is rooted in 100 years of educational history going back to John Dewey and others who have reported on the benefits of experiential, hands-on, student-centered learning. Its popularity has intensified in the past 25 years due to a revolution in learning theory and a rapidly changing world. PBL is based on the philosophy that learning is a partly social activity and takes place within a context of culture, community, and past experience. Furthermore, PBL helps students gain both knowledge and skills that help them meet workforce demands, learn civic responsibility, and adapt to new roles in a global society.

Workshop participants will use a “backward design” process and a project design template based on the work of Rebecca Burns, Susan Drake, and Sylvia Chard to complete their projects. (See Resources).

 

Effective Teaching: Building on Students’ Strengths

Workshop Outcomes

  • Understand how culture affects learning and how to use cultural traits to enhance learning
  • Use tools to identify students’ learning strengths
  • Design instruction and classroom grouping using multiple intelligences
  • Increase competence in developing students’ thinking skills
  • Enhance the use of cooperative learning and classroom management strategies
  • Explore ways to use the community as a resource for learning

Research shows that students perform better when they are taught in ways that are compatible with their strengths.

This workshop introduces educators to processes for identifying students’ strengths and methods for designing instruction that builds on those strengths.

Participants learn to differentiate instruction using cultural funds of knowledge, multiple intelligences and learning styles, thinking styles, cooperative learning, effective classroom management, and community-based learning. (See Resources).

 

Authentic Assessment

Why is assessment important?
What are some types of assessments and when should we use them?
What are the elements of a good assessment?
Why are rubrics important?
What are some good resources for designing assessments and rubrics?

The workshop includes answers to these questions. Like all of the workshops offered by RB Educational Consulting, this is a hands-on experience where participants learn about authentic assessments and rubrics, explore Web sites that can help them design good assessments and rubrics, and design assessments to use in the classroom. (See Resources).

 

Developing Effective Interdisciplinary Teams

What is the role of administrators in supporting interdisciplinary teams?
What organizational structures are needed for effective teaming?
What resources do teams need?
What is teamed instruction and how do we get there?
Who should be on an interdisciplinary team?
WorkshopsHow do effective teams operate?

If you are planning to implement interdisciplinary teaming in your school or district, or if you have already done so but are finding that some teams are struggling, you may be asking yourself some of these questions. This workshop is designed for K-12 school districts and schools to help them build effective instructional teams and professional learning communities.

The workshop offers educators a process through which to examine both personal belief systems and a range of possible models for teaming and curriculum integration. The activities facilitate building a faculty’s readiness for interdisciplinary teamed instruction before they begin the journey. (To View material on Assessing Your School’s Readiness for Teamed Instruction, click either .pdf format or Word .doc format.)

 

Workshops

Workshop Outcomes

  • Define standards-based instruction
  • Identify the components of a standards-based curriculum
  • Experience a “backward design” process for developing standards-based curriculum units and lessons
  • “Unpack” standards to determine what students are required to know and do
  • Work collaboratively

Standards-based Instruction

What is standards-based instruction?
Why is it important?
How do we design it?

At the center of a standards-based curriculum are the content standards. Educators first must be able to analyze the standards to determine the knowledge and skills students need to acquire, and second, they must be able to design rigorous and relevant curriculum and instruction that leads to improved achievement for all students.

This workshop focuses on helping educators develop these skills and apply them to curriculum and instruction in the classroom. (See Resources).

What Teachers Say
About SBI

  • Makes you focus on your state standards, not on the textbook.
  • Works for all grade levels and inclusion.
  • Helps you begin with the end in mind and consider the big picture.
  • Addresses student diversity.
  • Requires teachers to collaborate.
  • Promotes efficient planning of lessons and unit.
  • Helps students develop critical thinking skills.
  • Allows teachers and students to see the interconnections among subject standards.
  • Leaves no child behind.

 

Culturally Responsive Schooling and Teaching Practices

RB Educational Consulting collaborates with Edvantia, Inc. to provide institutes that can help educators become more responsive to the needs of all students—particularly those who are culturally and linguistically diverse. The Level 1 institute, Foundations of Culturally Responsive Practice, is designed primarily for school teams or faculties. During the institute, participants explore issues of culture and how they affect how teachers teach and how students learn. The Level 2 institute, Guiding the Journey toward Culturally Responsive Schools, is designed to prepare school, district, or state leaders to facilitate the development of instruction and schooling practices that support the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. For more information, visit www.edvantia.org and read about the institutes under “For Educators, AYP/Achievement Gap.” (See Resources).