ABOUT OUR EDUCATION SOLUTIONS
The Difference
Adapting to Core Standards, literacy integration, ELLs, or other needs, teachers work collaboratively in small groups to design classroom materials and analyze results in short learning cycles – the engine of change. After this work, a delicate balance of factors will have determined whether or not an individual teacher reached a readiness threshold to try something new.
Preston Webster has refined an approach to professional development that addresses the challenges of improving teaching. The right combination of strategies, processes, and tools, leverage research-based strategies to improve teaching content, reading, and writing, often simultaneously.
Participants develop their own materials of practice during sessions, customized for their needs and style, aligned to specific objectives, and ready to use in classrooms. At the end of the program, teachers walk out with materials that bridge the gap between the professional development sessions and classroom instruction.
Teachers use their materials to facilitate quality teaching, assess learning, and provide student feedback. Students use the materials to articulate clear ideas, build understanding, correct and revise, make connections, and study. All stakeholders benefit from seeing and discussing evidence of teaching and learning. Finally, teachers use this evidence to conduct a collaborative analysis of student work. The process, strategies, and tools create ongoing cycles of improvement.
Solutions to Implementing Common Core State Standards
Readiness and relevance challenge: Teachers don’t feel prepared or are unsure how to translate new standards or strategies into practice.
The solution: Teachers prepare by adapting their “daily” classroom materials (evidence), which align to particular objectives. Change is relevant and achievable.
Capacity to align and adapt challenge: We run out of time working on the “what and when” of curriculum before adapting classroom
materials defining “how” to teach.
The solution: Quick and effective processes and tools that build capacity to adapt and align curriculum whatever the need. Teachers become learning teams producing results ready for the classroom.
Time challenge: We run out of time trying to achieve these critical steps, before fully translating what to teach into detailed materials that define how to teach and measure outcomes.
The solution: Capacity efforts must align with the time available by teams creating results in brief cycles (i.e., adapting classroom materials or analyzing results).
Subjects
Instructional Design, Expository Evidence, Organizers, Reading Tools, Writing Tools, Vocabulary Tools, Note Taking, Leveraging Research-based Strategies and Conducting Student Work Sample Analysis
Outcomes of the Sessions
- Standards-based and research-based classroom materials
- Professional development hours – University credits
- Participants prepared to teach, evaluate practice, and provide evidence of quality teaching to stakeholders
