Integrating the arts into mathematics learning allows students to experiment with shape and form, investigate abstract concepts with concrete materials, and approach problems from multiple perspectives. Students realize that mathematics can help them order and understand the natural world. At the same time, art invites students to participate in the creative playfulness and aesthetic expression so often missing in classroom mathematics.
Do you find it challenging to develop assessment tasks that measure student thinking and understanding? If so, you're not alone. Authentic assessment--the kind that tells us what students know, what they've learned, and how they are relating to the math content--can be one of the keys that unlocks powerful teaching and learning in the classroom.
Explore the major events in the history of astronomy as you journey through our solar system through readings, media presentations, and observations. The goal of this course is to expand your understanding of the night sky through active investigations. Examine and apply the Next Generation Science Standards, as well as the connections between the NGSS and the Common Core, as you develop lessons and activities to enrich your science curriculum.
Discover the vastness of our universe as you learn about celestial objects such as galaxies, black holes, stars and nebula. Explore deep space and intergalactic activities through media and resources found on the Internet. Examine and apply the Next Generation Science Standards, as well as the connections between the NGSS and the Common Core, as you develop lessons and activities to enrich your science curriculum.
Learning how to bring children and books together in productive and satisfying experiences is the ultimate goal in this course. You will become more aware of the wealth of available children's literature and will develop skills for selecting literature that is enriching and beneficial for children. Few experiences are so universally enjoyed by children as reading.
Explore animal life available on your school site with this Online course. Topics of this class include insects, birds, pets, mammals, spiders, etc. You will receive easy-to-follow directions to help make an ant farm or insect collection. Participate in a planned series of experiments/experiences with your students. This 'hands-on' activity-based curriculum aligns with the California State Science Framework for grades K-12.
Discover how to construct a cell, and learn about mitosis, meiosis, genetics, cells, and the parts of the cell. Apply this information to your everyday life in a meaningful way through the hands-on experiences provided. This standards-based course is designed to bring the materials of science into the K-12 classroom in a new and innovative manner. Explore many resources that will enhance the study of cells and genetics.
Explore topics of earth science available in the classroom, school site and in the community to enrich your science program with this course. Topics covered include (1) experiments that deal with rock, minerals, soil, volcanoes, rivers, caves and erosion; and (2) easy-to-follow, hands-on ideas and some suggestions on how to effectively use the personnel at the school site and in the community.
This methods course has an emphasis on pollution for grades K-12. It is an activity-based, integrated unit which addresses real-life issues that directly affect the communities in which we live. Covered in this course are population growth, air quality, water quality, and land-use issues affecting our communities now and in the future.
Explore how the study of the human body can be used to enrich your science programs with this Online course. Complete and evaluate a planned series of experiments dealing with the five senses, circulatory and respiratory systems, and related topics. This 'hands-on' activity-based curriculum aligns with the California State Science Framework for grades K-12.
Enrich your science program with this K-12 methods course, designed to explore matter and energy. Topics include journaling; the study of matter; how light, heat, sound and electricity are used as energy sources. Study how food provides energy; how the five senses develop an understanding of matter and the states of matter.
Explore plant life available on your school site and in the community to enrich your science programs. This ONLINE, 'hands-on' activity-based curriculum aligns with the California State Science Framework for grades K-12. You will be conducting and evaluating experiments with your students. Learn how to demonstrate making science learning relevant to daily life.
Discover the many facets of weather-water problems that exist in most communities. You will have the opportunity to complete and evaluate a planned series of experiments/experiences with your students. You will learn lessons which you can use in the classroom, home or neighborhood. This 'hands-on' activity-based curriculum aligns with the California State Science Framework for grades K-12.
This course equips educators with the tools and strategies to foster character in the classroom by focusing on core virtues such as honesty, integrity, compassion, humility, perseverance and self-control. Designed for K-8 teachers, this course emphasizes the integration of character education into everyday lessons, helping students develop ethical and moral reasoning alongside academic growth.
Students bring a rich variety of cultural backgrounds and identities to classroom learning. Research suggests that teachers who value student culture and experience are better able to foster academic success, cultural competence, critical citizenship, and caring relationships. Culturally responsive mathematics is a pedagogy that seeks to energize the relationship between students' home and community culture and classroom mathematics learning.
When games are integrated into a meaningful way in your classroom they have the power to keep students motivated, engaged, and curious. Games are not only a novelty but they provide an attractive framework for learning and make learning fun for students. In this course you will have the opportunity to explore how traditional games as well as the plethora of online instructional games will enhance instruction in the content areas.
With student reading scores declining and attention challenges rising nationwide, many teachers are reexamining the role of technology in the classroom. This course explores practical strategies for creating more focused, connected, and intentional learning experiences with reduced reliance on screens.
This online art education course prepares educators to successfully teach students drawing techniques that improve their perceptual-cognitive skills. Teachers in all subjects can benefit from the course. Drawing skills increase the ability for students to accurately perceive, process and use visual information - skills that transfer to all disciplines of learning.
The focus of this course is promoting the active engagement of all students by embedding cooperative structures into daily instruction. Participants will gain a foundational understanding of cooperative learning at both the theoretical and implementation levels. Participants will engage in a variety of learning activities such as reading the works of leading theorists, creating original definitions and rationale for use of cooperative learning.
Essential Strategies for Understanding in ELA engages teachers from all disciplines, K-12th grade, to examine seven thinking strategies for your Educator-Strategy Toolbox for in-person, virtual or hybrid classrooms. The essential meaning making strategies are: Conceptualizing, Note Making and Summarizing, Comparing, Reading for Understanding, Predicting and Hypothesizing, Visualizing and Graphic Representation, and Perspective Taking and Empathizing.
Discover powerful ways to engage students in mathematics discussion. This online course will explore principles of productive talk and specific techniques that will get your students talking about math. Collaborate with online colleagues as you add useful strategies to your math talk toolkit. All of the readings and activities are built upon the Common Core standards. Teachers may complete this course with or without students.
Explore the stories behind mathematical discoveries which are fascinating but rarely told. When students learn how people like themselves have discovered and shaped mathematics, their interest and motivation grows. Share with students the stories about mathematicians and engage in problems similar to the ones these mathematicians worked with, which opens the door for students to see how mathematics is inter-connected.
Surprise and excite students as they discover mathematics come from real human beings like themselves. Learn how to take the fear and apprehension out of mathematics. The stories behind mathematical discoveries are fascinating but rarely told. When students learn how persons like themselves have discovered and shaped mathematics, their interest and motivation grows. This course examines the lives and work of great mathematicians who lived before 1700.
Do your students struggle with math facts? Are you looking for practical methods that go beyond memorization? This online course will introduce you to number talks, a classroom routine that engages students in the use of strategies that support number flexibility and fluency. During number talks, students explore and discuss number structure and relationships for mentally calculating addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, percents and decimals.
Enrich your Science programs by discovering ways to teach the study of Biology with emphasis on the systems of the body. You will be required to complete and evaluate a planned series of experiments/experiences with your students. This curriculum aligns with the California State and National Standards. Use experiments/experiences with children in the classroom, home or neighborhood.
Learn to remember. Remember to learn. Learn to apply Sprenger's 7 stages of learning/memory and Marzano's strategies to develop academic language and retain information. Content is applicable, K-12, all curriculum areas and fully aligns with the Common Core Standards (CCSS) to support development of language, reading and literacy skills.
Learn innovative teaching strategies integrating theory and practice utilizing a variety of high-interest formats. The activities are designed to serve as reviews, diagnostic aids, and remedial teaching tools for teachers who are working with students in grades four, five and six. The learning experiences are easily adaptable to meet the various learning styles and needs as well as prepare students for achievement testing.
Providing a diverse and culturally sensitive curriculum is essential in today's classrooms. In the online Multicultural Literature & Teaching course, educators engage in discussions and learning opportunities for supporting diverse learners and exploring multicultural literature with their students.
Organizing Learning Environments for Math is designed to offer Preschool, Transitional Kindergarten, and Kindergarten teachers a guide for designing a learning environment that supports the development of understanding math concepts for young learners. If lessons are developed to encourage and promote understanding, children will learn that mathematics makes sense and is applicable to their everyday needs.
This course serves as an introduction to the history of the use and preservation of the National Parks Service from its inception in 1916. Through the text, videos, and the myriad of resources offered on the Internet, students will gain insight and knowledge into the National Parks rich heritage and the issues surrounding the Park Service.
We all know how important it is to get parents on board when it comes to their children. Explore the issues of educating parents through the study of specific developmental assets that integrate factors such as family dynamics, support from community adults, values development and social skills. Parenting is a process and has a variety of rights, responsibilities and roles that change across the lifespan.
Many of us already know that problem solving can be an exciting, exhilarating adventure. Students who have caught this enthusiasm may simply be given a problem and "turned loose" to see what they can find. Others, frustrated by lack of direction or insecure about process, will find the activities in this course guiding them towards success. With just a little help, every student can make some significant discoveries about mathematics.
Discover how to use hands-on materials, real-world problem-solving and playful activities to support number concepts while introducing students to the building blocks of Algebra. This course will help you extend primary students' experiences with numbers through the use of patterning, number relationships, and graphing.
From first steps to alphabets, all children are born with a natural inclination to learn. Although most educators are familiar with the merits of play, many schools struggle to put play to work for classroom learning. This fully online course will introduce teachers to playful pedagogies that support academic learning at any level. Play-oriented lessons provide students with opportunities to imagine, create, ask questions, take risks, and collaborate.
Children naturally love poetry. This course is designed to help teachers gain confidence in teaching poetry--both reading and writing. It introduces rationale, techniques and strategies for sharing poems with children. Teachers will discover the potential of poetry to enrich their classrooms plus practical ideas to inspire and encourage children to enjoy reading and writing poetry themselves.
Through this 100% online professional development course, educators will discover how recreational mathematics is real mathematics but presented in a context that makes it engaging, interesting, and challenging. The regular use of mathematical recreations throughout the school year can serve to convince students that math can be exciting and rewarding.
Routines help us develop healthy daily habits, math classrooms establish routines for lectures and homework, fewer offer specific daily routines to help students think, communicate, and reason like mathematicians. If your students struggle to get started on mathematical tasks or if they rely on teacher examples in order to 'do problems', this course offers an exciting set of practices to foster confident mathematical thinking.
Grow your students' love of learning with a school garden! School gardening cultivates patience, responsibility, and collaboration as students sow and nurture their crops. Students who grow their own food are more likely to appreciate a variety of fruits and vegetables. Gardens expand the walls of the classroom, providing rich opportunities for hands-on learning in science, technology, mathematics, social studies, ELA, nutrition, and the arts.
Discover how to plan and implement teaching strategies and content in the area of science into the early childhood curriculum. Explore the Guiding Documents to help align your science curriculum with Foundations and Standards. Gain access to current research for science in early childhood classrooms.
This course will take the teacher through the interactive book 'How to Teach your Children Shakespeare', by Ken Ludwig. You will learn the value of teaching students how to memorize Shakespeare's passages, strategies of memorization, and make social emotional connections for your students with famous themes and characters.This course will give teachers something new and exciting in their toolbag!
Explore the National Core Arts Standards as a guide to provide quality arts education in your classroom! Gain a repertoire of purposeful games to engage your students and give them a new perspective in the subjects you are already teaching: literature, science or history! Understand grace in your classroom as you implement the Creating, Performing, Responding, Connecting process.
Transform the way your students engage with text by turning public speaking into an exciting, creative classroom tool. Designed specifically for K-5 educators, this independent study course bridges the gap between literacy and oral communication by mastering three distinct public speaking genres: Storytelling (retelling in one's own words), Oral Interpretation (bringing literature to life while staying true to the text), and Traditional Speaking (delivering presentations with visual aids).
This course is an introductory course for supporting Multilingual Learners in the mainstream early learning classroom, ages 0-6; written for the general education teacher who has a population of MLLs in their mainstream classes, or for the ENL teacher. This foundational course discusses the similarities and differences of first and second language acquisition, asks students to consider the bilingual/multilingual accessibility of their physical classroom environment & school environment as well as how they utilize and incorporate bilingual helpers in their community.
This fully online course provides teachers with effective techniques for engaging English language learners, also called multilingual learners, in rigorous mathematics learning. Participants will explore the ways that language proficiency and cultural background can shape mathematics learning and achievement. The course provides strategies for supporting language development and cultural awareness as well as methods to foster a learning environment that encourages participation and engagement.
Teaching grammar has never been so fun--or effective! Students of this online course will discover how innovative instructional strategies can make the teaching of grammar and mechanics rewarding and meaningful. Designed for teachers of grades 4-12, this standards-based course offers practical ways to reinforce the conventions of language within the context of student writing.
Remote technologies that connect people have expanded the ways we teach and learn. Many schools are embracing digitized education through blended and online offerings. With a higher prevalence of remote learning, it's increasingly important for educators to develop pedagogical approaches that maximize benefits for online learners.
Teachers recognize that equipping students with essential writing tools will shape them into strong and effective communicators. Writing is a practical and enriching skill that will always be valued, no matter what career or vocational field students choose. This online professional development course is designed to explore the writing process, as well as the types, styles and mechanics of writing.
The activities in this online course will provide you with multiple opportunities to deepen your understanding and apply insights to your own teaching. Designed to provide you with a foundation for using technology to enhance students' mathematics learning in your classroom, participants in this course will examine best practices for technology-based mathematics using dynamic calculators, digital games, virtual manipulatives, interactive online tools, and more.
Have you wondered how to capture the excitement of children's literature for the purpose of teaching mathematics? A great story can become a springboard for teaching or reinforcing a mathematical concept. Learn how the linking of mathematics and literacy effectively enhances children's learning. Ideas and sample lessons will enable you to design and teach activities appropriate for K-6 grade levels.
Investigate virtual pattern blocks, geoboards, function machines and more. This online course will introduce teachers K - 12 to the world of virtual manipulatives. You will compare and contrast virtual manipulatives to traditional manipulatives and discover ways to integrate them into their standards-based mathematics instruction. You will become familiar with current research on the use of computer-based virtual manipulatives in the classroom.
Educators- teachers, administrators, counselors and coaches (K-12) -are often feeling pushed to their personal and professional limits as they strive to meet the complex demands of their roles. This course is taught by a former school counselor and current consultant to teachers, administrators, and parents as a licensed therapist.
This course explores "The Whole-Brain Child" by Dr. Dan J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, helping educators understand the brain's role in student behavior. It examines child cognitive development and how the logical left and emotional right brain develop and integrate, influencing reactions to stress. Educators will learn 12 emotional regulation strategies to integrate whole-brain teaching into their classroom and help students reprogram their responses in healthy ways.
Learn how to teach K-12 students to reflect, share ideas and understand the meaning of math through writing. Teach students to explain and justify their thinking to others. Writing helps them organize their thoughts and procedures clearly. Writing in the mathematics classroom also provides opportunities for students to rethink explanations as peers listen and respond.
Cart (0)
