Ask your administrator to set up an on-site workshop customized to the topics and skills that are most relevant to your faculty. Training fees are travel plus $1900 per day for groups and can be scheduled to reoccur throughout the year for continuing support or for incremental change during a long-term improvement plan. All sessions are taught using hands-on methods to exemplify the staging, scaffolding and use of student-centered teaching methods. Popular topics and skills include:
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 Phenomenon in the Science Classroom
- Scientific Activities that Strengthen Evidence-based Argumentation
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Topics for Faculty Development Across Subject Areas:
- 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)
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 claim, 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 to fortify 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 biologic, 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, 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