A.P.P.L.E.

Lietuviškai

Summer - 2014

Real World Applications of What We Teach

June 25 - 28 and June 30 - July 4

Administration I

Proposal for this coming summer seminars will be a continuation of what I taught last summer and is impacted by the evaluation form feedback from the attendees as well.

  • Building a climate of trust and collegiality

  • Establishing Norms of Collaboration

  • Professional Learning Communities and connection to school improvement

  • Teaching Principles and Attributes

  • Difference between Administrator as coach/supervisor and evaluator

  • Instructional practices to support all learners; student engagement, assessment practices, cognitive level of classroom questions and activities, teacher techniques and learning environment.

  • Systematic approach for administrators to ensure high-quality instruction.

  • Supervision and Evaluation techniques of teachers and overall school performance through a classroom walk through model.

Supervision and evaluation and essential components of an administrator's responsibilities that are critical in driving school improvement.  Building a climate of trust and collegiality is also essential in order for teachers to trust the process of supervision and coaching.  This seminar will help administrators understand the process to help build the necessary school climate in order to develop working relationships with teachers for improved teaching, student learning and overall school improvement.  I will provide a foundation of research-based practices needed to plan, deliver, and assess effective, rigorous instruction.  I will also provide ways to provide ongoing, specific feedback to teachers to improve their ability to plan, deliver, and assess effective, rigorous instruction.

Lecturer: Linda Brenneman

Administration II

Dr. Kristin and I will join together again as we did successfully in 2011 and 2012 to bring a program that integrates the theme of 2014 of REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS OF WHAT WE TEACH' through ingular, but complimentary content.  This page of our proposal highlights the goals, teaching methods and instructional materials and activities that will be part of my portion of this year's Aministration Strand.  Kris will follow with a similar page describing the highlights of her content.

This year my classes will focus on two critical elements associated with the effective administration of the schools the participants are responsible for... TEAM BUILDING STRATEGIES AND FACILITATING EFFECTIVE MEETINGS. My focus will be to enable my administrators to gain reasonable proficiency in the elements of planning, introduction/promotion, acceptance, implementation and sustainability of these concepts.

Both modules will have as their stated goals the improvement of the effectiveness of school administrators in affecting the changes they feel are necessary to move their organizations forward while providing them with real world applications or their use on a daily basis.

As in previous years, I will continue to employ a primarily Socratic teaching methodology that lends itself more toward facilitating learning rather than a lecturing approach.  In this process, the participants will be challenged to resolve problems associated with achieving their goals through a series of exercises, case studies and open discussions.  All participants will receive electronic copies, in Lithuanian, of all slides presented.

My sessions will address teacher development and evaluation and will use small group work and professional sharing.  The strategies and topics are complementary.

My class will deal with teacher development and evaluation.  We will initially look at how teacher performance is measured in American systems developed by Charlotte Danielson and Robert Marzano.  Administrators will share performance measures they currently use for teacher evaluation and discuss the possibility of integrating American educators' domains with theirs.

Identifying levels of performance in each of the domains is an important part of teacher evaluation.  The rubrics used to identify the various levels will be shared.  Administrators will discuss how teacher performance is measured in Lithuanian schools and compare this with the American measures and rubrics.

The evaluation process will also be studied--both Danielson's and Marzano's.  Administrators will discuss the process they use in Lithuanian schools.  They will compare and contrast their process with the American processes identifying strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, there will be a review of the professional development inherent in the American evaluation systems.  In these systems, teachers identify areas they want to improve, plan how they will do this and how their success will be measured especially in terms of student learning.  We will compare this approach to professional development ith the Lithuanian professional development process.

Lecturers: Ed Topar, Dr. Kristen Ross

Language Arts

Proposal:  "Creating and Sharing Works of the Imagination in the Classroom"

I am proposing a two-person strand that I feel, fits nicely into the overall theme for the summer, "Real World Applications of What We Teach"

Objective:  Of course, imaginative literature, such as poetry and fiction are taught in Lithuanian schools.  But the purpose of this portion of the strand is to provide hands-on experience for teachers in the writing of ORIGINAL works of the imagination, in particular, lyric and narrative poetry, as well as short stories - in other words, "practicing what you teach" by teaching teachers to generate their own works of literature. 

Outcomes and Activities: Four that are theoretically based:

Expressive Aim:  Teachers in APPLE seminars will practice well-defined writing exercises aimed at inventing their own poetry and short stories.

Formal Aim:  Teachers will practice at least 2-3 poetry forms: at least one lyric form, such as the pantoum and ghazal; and one narrative form.  Teachers will also practice writing at least 2-3 short stories based on archetypal patterns, such as the contest, initiation, metamorphosis, scapegoat, and trickster patterns.

Social Aim:  Teachers will share and critique their original works in a "studio workshop" setting.

Cognitive Aim:  Teachers will reflect in writing about their creative process, from invention, to sharing, to challenges in writing forms.

If  working with Wendell Mayo, he would design and teach the genre lesson in the morning and I would support his lessons during writing workshop in the afternoon.  The afternoon sessions would be based on Chris Tovani's workshop model and would be comprised of reading and writing lessons in a workshop environment.  The first part consists of an opening discussion which reviews the learning goal for the day.  Then follows a mini-lesson that teaches students what they need to concentrate on for the day.  After that, students read, write, or talk about their writing with other students while I conference with as many students as possible.  I write notes about the students I conference with on my iPad, using an app called "Confer".  Students work for the remainder of the class, although I practice what Tovani calls "catch and release".  This is a quick time-out when I share a strategy that will help the entire class, or clear up any confusion I see while conferencing.  I may do this a couple of times during the session.  We end with a debriefing where students can share what they have been writing.

I also have prepared many writing guides (including a grammar style sheet) that students can use as resources while they write.

Lecturers: Dr. Wendell Mayo, L. Hendrickson

Science

Proposal: Best Practices: The Art and Science of Teaching in the Biology Classroom

For science teachers, especially in biology and chemistry who wish to develop and use examples of best practices in science education techniques. 

Educational best practices for effective instruction, as espoused by Robert Marzano, require students to demonstrate and practice the scientific method as well as challenge them to learn scientific knowledge.  Best practices of science education will be considered, including inquiry and research, real-life situations, problem solving and issue-based learning.  Classroom techniques, which may be applied to other fields of science, such as wait times, questioning, using analogies, simulations and role playing, brainstorming, graphical organizers, and share/pair discussion of a common text will be used.

Lecturer: Dr. John Trimble

Information technologies

Proposal: Using Technology to Support Relevance in Teaching and Learning

For teachers of all subjects interested in using technologies in their classroom as a teaching tool.

In today's world application for what we teach is often realized through technology.  Whether we use Web 3.0 applications like Twitter to interact with learning internationally or Web 2.0 applications such as Prezi to deliver information, chosen technology frames what we know and expands what we can do.  This session directly reflects that philosophy as the leader uses various technologies as the source of instruction as well as their products to serve as models for learning outcomes.

In the first two days of this interactive four-day seminar, participants will be guided through the use of Web 3.0 social media technologies as well as popular Web 2.0 presentation technologies.  On day three of the session, participants will develop practical curricular applications of a selected technology or group of technologies.  The final student centered day will provide an opportunity for participants to share means of integrating technology and content into relevant and real world instructional designs.

Lecturer: Dr. Dea Conrad-Curry

Elementary education

Lecturers will review elementary programs and schedules, will discuss methods of bringing students from "fair readers" to "proficient independent readers". Discuss methods of teaching writing, math and sciences. All suggested methods will be easily applicable to any elementary classroom.

Lecturers: Anne Erbe, Tracy Mandara

 

 

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