Great Teaching Ideas
workshops
SuccessLink Curriculum Initiatives
Great Teaching Ideas In-Services
Backward Design offers teachers a hands-on approach throughout the design process with opportunities for trial and error. It offers your teachers a chance to step outside of their regular routine of teaching with text books, the same old stand-by lessons, and other time-honored activities. They will be given the opportunity to look at what they want their students to know, how they are going to assess it, and then design the lesson and learning activities.
Assessment workshop is designed to help teachers and other educatiors make the most effective use of assessment. Participants examine their own classroom or school assessment practices and explore a variety of assessment formats and strategies that are closely aligned to meeting the needs of diverse learners, standards-based instruction and high-stakes testing.
3 essential steps:
1. Identifying desired results
- What do you want your kids to know and be able to do?
2. Determining acceptable evidence of achievement (scoring guides, rubrics)
- What kind of evidence do I need?
- What specific characteristics in student responses, products or performances should I examine?
- Does the proposed evidence enable me to infer a student’s knowledge, skill or understanding?
3. Planning learning experiences and instruction
- Move from thinking about what we want to accomplish to what our students will need to accomplish the end result.
- Lessons should be engaging and effective.
After we have assisted your staff in learing the 3 steps, they will begin writing their own lessons using Backward Design.
Once the in-service is concluded, your teachers will have a valuable lesson plan created by them to use in their classrooms. The created lesson will also be eligible for submission to our Great Teaching Ideas Monthly Cash Award Contest. Each month, from September to April, ten teachers are awarded $200 each.
Duration: This in-service can be completed in 2 whole days or 4 half days.
Fee: Fee is determined by location and size of in-service. Please call Becki at 888-636-4395 for further information or to schedule your in-service.
Each participant will receive a Backward Design book, a flip chart, and other workshop material
Assessment results have important implications for instruction. The primary aim of assessment is to foster learning of worthwhile academic content for all students (Wolf, Bixby, Glenn, & Gardner, 1991). Schools use assessment results in a formative way to determine how well they are meeting instructional goals and how to alter curriculum and instruction so that goals can be better met. But unless the content of assessment (what schools assess and the format of assessment (how schools assess) match what is taught and how it is taught, the results are meaningless, if not potentially harmful. The same is true if assessment tools are not of high quality. This quality workshop is designed to teach administrators and other educators to make the most effective use of assessment. Participants examine their school and district assessment practices and explore a variety of assessment formats and strategies that are closely aligned to meeting the needs of diverse learners, standards-based instruction, and high-stakes testing. This assessment workshop includes a sequence of activities that are specifically designed to engage participants in exploring assessment practices and determining strategies to assist educators in their efforts to help every student succeed. Participants will each receive 2 books valued at $50. Participants will learn how to:- Balance the use of informal and formal assessments.
- Balance the use of tests, performance events, and other types of assessment.
- Determine if your school and district assessment practices are aligned to stat standards and accountability testing.
- Use classroom assessments to help students prepare for standardized tests.
- Create an Assessment Profile for your school/district and an action plan to address identified areas of weakness.