If you are looking for a specific topic that is not on the live, remote workshop calendar or in the on-demand video library, or you simply would like a workshop on-site at your school, you or your administration can schedule a private remote or in-person workshop on a range of topics (see below) or on a series of topics to cover content and reinforce skills. All sessions are taught using hands-on methods to exemplify staging, scaffolding, and assessment, with student-centered, critical-thinking teaching techniques. Popular topics and skills include the titles shown below, but any combination of content and skills objectives can be identified to create a workshop or series tailored to the neds of the participants:
Teaching Practices that Optimize Engagement and Critical Thinking:
- Using Choice Menus for Differentiated Assessment
- Writing Easy-to-use Rubrics for Standards-based Grading
- Using Team Challenges to Foster Collaboration
- Setting Up Competitions to Engage an Online Class
- Interactive Debates for Asynchronous and Synchronous Classes
- Guiding Student-designed Experiments in a Remote Classroom
- Using Stop-animation Videos to Teach and Assess Content
- Teaching Graphing and Data Analysis Online
NGSS Instructional Methods and Phenomenon-driven Topics Specific to Science and Math:
- Guiding the Process of Science: From Research Questions to Data-based Conclusions
- Applying Hypothesis Testing and Statistics in AP or IB Science
- Helping Students Design Their Own Lab and Field Experiments
- Infusing Math in the Science Classroom: Data-generating Simulations, Games, and Labs
- Modeling Systems, Processes, and Phenomena in the Science Classroom
- Scientific Activities that Strengthen Evidence-based Argumentation
- (scroll down for additional titles and descriptions)
Topics for Faculty Development Across Subject Areas:
- Writing a New Course that Your Nails Standards and Skills
- Student-centered Teaching to Maximize Critical Thinking and Engagement
- Project-based Learning Techniques: Team Challenges, Model-building, Competitions, and Debates
- Strategically Improving Pass Rates for Standardized Exams (AP, IB, EOC, ACT, SAT)
- Unpacking Your State Curriculum: Writing Content and Skills into Student-centered Lesson Plans
- Creating a Cohesive IB Diploma Programme Across Groups
- (scroll down for additional titles and descriptions)
Approaches to Learning Workshops for IB Teachers and Administrators:
- Research and Writing Across Diploma Programme Subject Areas
- Approaches to Learning Series: Techniques to Provide Engaging, Interactive Experiences
- Approaches to Assessment Series: Authentic Methods for Measuring Thinking and Learning
- Creating a Continuous Cycle of Inquiry in Your Course
- Equity in Teaching: How to Build Inclusion, Differentiation, and Autonomy into Your Curriculum
- Encouraging Risk-taking to Advance Critical Thinking
- Group 4 Skills and Practices
- (scroll down for additional titles and descriptions)
Custom workshops are available in your region upon request. Please send an email to Kristen.dotti@catalystlearningcurricula.com to schedule dates for your school or district.
How Can I Support Your Faculty?
- Science Activities that Strengthen Evidence-based Argumentation. Teachers participate in several activities where the student is asked to produce a hypothesis or claim backed by evidence. Using a variety of methods, participants assess their own claims, the claims of their peers, and evaluate the evidence chosen as support. Teachers take time to brainstorm how the activities can be used with alternate content topics so the practice of making defensible statements can occur repeatedly throughout the year. 1-Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12
- Student-designed Labs and the Peer Review Process.
Teachers learn how to guide demonstrations that stimulate inquiry so students have a launch pad for designing their own procedures to address their personal interests. Participants employ the peer review process as a method for improving student-designed experiments and fortifying data-supported conclusions. 1-Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12 - Start Using Statistics in AP or IB Science. Teachers practice choosing and using statistical parameters–such as mean, variance, standard deviation, standard error of the mean and the 95% confidence interval–to accurately describe raw data. They then develop a method to determine the best statistical analysis for the data set given and perform an appropriate hypothesis test (chi-squared, t-test or test of correlation) to determine the significance of their findings. 2 Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12
- Developing and Using Models in Science. Participants use static and dynamic models of cycles, phenomena, or the functional unit of a biological, chemical, or physical process to better understand the details of a concept and to dispel misconceptions. A variety of activities are chosen to teach different practices and skills and to demonstrate how models can be guided and designed by the teacher or guided by the teacher and designed by the students. 2 Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12
- Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, and Phylogenetics Activities for Teaching AP/IB Biology. Participants in this workshop learn to collect and analyze data that can be used to construct a map of a chromosome, gene, or plasmid; compare similar or distant species for evolutionary relationships; navigate the protein and nucleic acid databases; utilize the websites for sequence alignments and BLAST analysis; create branching tree diagrams and analyze the outcomes of gel electrophoresis. 2 Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 9-12
- Using NGSS Instructional Techniques in Science. This workshop combines three workshops to address the practices needed for the implementation of NGSS skills: Developing and Using Models, Evidence-based Argumentation, and Student-designed Experimentation. 4 Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12
- Developing Phenomenon-based Unit Lesson Plans. This workshop focuses on curriculum writing, and designing lesson plans that fulfill the required course content using NGSS practices with diverse, well-balanced instructional methods. It is strongly recommended that participants in this workshop first complete a workshop on instructional techniques so they are comfortable with the NGSS expectations and have a repertoire of methods to draw from while designing original teaching units. 1-Day Workshop for Teachers of Gr 6-12