Available Courses

• UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN; AN INTRODUCTION TO BACKWARDS DESIGN FALL2009

  • Teacher: Andrea Macario
  • Teacher: Jennifer Parente

  The backward design process of Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe begins with the end in mind. The design process involves teachers planning in 3 stages, each with a focusing question: Stage 1-What enduring understandings do I want my students to develop? Stage 2-How will my students demonstrate their understanding when the unit is completed? Stage 3-How will I ensure that students have the skills and understand the concepts required on the summative assessment? In this course, participants will learn ways they can foster student achievement by teaching for understanding. Participants will explore curriculum design, assessment tasks, and instructional strategies that promote student understanding in the context of standards and high-stakes tests and formulate a framework for designing their own UbD unit plan.   
• VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS - PART II FALL2009

  • Teacher: Kathleen Ambrose

  Using the skills and resources gathered in Introduction to Virtual Field Trips, participants will learn how to design and build their own trip! Prerequisite: Introduction to Virtual Field Trips I.
• CREATING WEBSITE WITH GOOGLE SITES FALL2009

  • Teacher: Helen Lein

  Google Sites enables users with a Google account to create and maintain websites. With a very easy learning curve, teachers can have a small site up and running in a few hours, and then continue to expand it. An excellent way to post lessons, classroom materials, study guides, and other resources that teachers provide for their students. Google Sites can be used as a learning tool as well - teachers can provide pages for students to showcase their knowledge.
• INTEGRATING STANDARDS IN TEACHING FALL2009

  • Teacher: Cecile Doyen
  • Teacher: Professional Learning Board

  Benchmarks? Rubrics? Assessments? Content, Instructional and Performance Standards? We're told that a standards-based curriculum is suppose to increase student learning and promote higher student achievement, but what is it really all about? This course helps educators untangle what turns out to be the not-so-mysterious-language of today's teaching and learning and put successful strategies into practice.