Teacher Training
All workshops described below are customized to meet the needs of the individual settings and teachers receiving the training. Content, presentation style and activities are adjusted to address the age levels being served at your site (preschool, kindergarten, elementary or middle school) as well as the needs identified by your staff making each workshop readily transferable to your specific setting/classroom/school.
If there are particular interests, needs or areas of focus you have identified for your learning community, e.g. attention, assessment, best practices, literacy development etc., specific professional development workshops can be requested and will be designed to meet those goals.
So What's Smart?
Trainers: Wendy Banning, B.S. Ed. and Patti Donnelly, M.Ed. , N.B.C.T. - M.C.
This ninety minute workshop provides an opportunity to look carefully at how we perceive children's strengths and needs across all areas of development including but not limited to: socio-emotional, physical, neurodevelopmental, and language development. Some elements address home vs. classroom, individual vs. group interactions, and indoor and outdoor spaces for learning. The presentation then goes on to facilitate a deeper understanding of how different forms of assessment (e.g., observation, dynamic, formal) can help educators more clearly see/reveal the unique strengths, gifts and / or needs and challenges individual children present as well as how to support and celebrate those more fully within the context of each child's school experience.
This workshop can be followed by an additional one-hour session for educators wanting to look at these issues with greater depth. The follow-up workshop includes opportunities to look at case studies and delve into each area of development more fully. It also provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between assessment and creating a responsive curriculum for each child given the context of the community of learners and educators they interact with each day as well as the curriculum, classroom environment, and families.
This workshop can also be enriched by a follow-up consultation for individual schools and/or teachers or families. Consultations can be school-based, by phone, by email or through individual classroom observation.
Creating Mutually Satisfying Partnerships with Families
around Children's Growth and Development
Trainers: Wendy Banning, B.S. Ed. and Patti Donnelly, M.Ed. , N.B.C.T. - M.C.
This ninety minute workshop helps educators develop strategies for building authentic partnerships with parents that help support strong school / home communication and valuable parent-teacher conferencing throughout the school year. Teachers will emerge with a deeper understanding of how authentic parent / teacher partnerships are critical in supporting children, their experiences and their growth and development. Topics include setting realistic goals, observing and documenting growth and development, varied levels of child, teacher, and parent involvement in the process, and sustaining ongoing communicating with children and families.
The Hidden Curriculum
The underlying systems that are the foundation for successful, authentic learning experiences for children
Trainers: Wendy Banning, B.S. Ed. and Patti Donnelly, M.Ed. , N.B.C.T. - M.C.
This ninety minute workshop looks carefully at space design, routines, transitions, guidelines and processes for conflict resolution and community-building within the school environment as the essential framework and building blocks for successful, authentic learning experiences for children. Discussions and activities include the following: designing engaging and meaningful spaces for learning, creating and maintaining routines to facilitate effective transitions for children, tips for conflict resolution from a child's perspective, and communicating ideas to share with families to support the child's individual goals within a the classroom community.
Grab Your Camera!
Using the power of photography to document and enhance learning outside
Trainers: Wendy Banning, B.S. Ed. and Ginny Sullivan, M.Ed., MALD
This one hour workshop explores the use of photo documentation in the play yard as a vehicle for formative evaluation of teaching, learning, and site design, leading to improvement in the quality of each child's (and each teacher's!) learning experience in the out-of-doors. Through the camera and the images it captures, educators can view both the outdoor learning environment and the activities that take place there with “new eyes”. Photos provide a valuable window that allows us to see more of what is really going on for children and for teachers as they work and play.
Teachers will learn how to use photo documentation to record, analyze, and better understand individual children's growth, development and particular interests. They will understand the use of such records for self-assessment of their own professional performance. They will leave with a powerful tool for curriculum development, as well as a vehicle for pre- and in-service training of fellow professionals and others working in their classrooms. They will be able to develop a photo-file for use with volunteers and parents in discussing and assessing children's growth.
The presentation references a new resource currently being developed for teachers entitled the Early Learning Images Gallery (ELI). The ELI project uses the Foundations Curriculum: Early Learning Standards for North Carolina Preschoolers and Strategies for Guiding Their Success but can be applied to all early learning curricula. The Early Learning Images Gallery examines how to apply the Widely Held Expectations (or objectives) delineated in the curriculum to work with children in outdoor learning environments.
Taking Your Curriculum Outside
Trainers: Wendy Banning, B.S. Ed. and Ginny Sullivan, M.Ed., MALD
Experience and play in the outdoors are vital to the well-being, health and development of children of all ages. Children learn by doing. The out-of-doors provides an exciting, hands-on, deeply interesting space in which to learn from the natural world and from one another.
This two-hour workshop provides an overview of ways to integrate outdoor learning and develop activities to support your curriculum goals. Teachers will emerge with a deeper understanding of the resources offered at their own school site, and will be motivated to use what’s already there to enhance teaching and learning. This workshop also guides teachers to look at ways to extend and develop their existing outdoor space. Each workshop is site-specific and custom designed to explore the resources available at individual schools for teachers.
Follow-up consultative services can include designing activities related to specific units of study as well as offering additional grade-level training sessions for teachers as well as for parents on supporting and using the outdoor learning environment.
Wendy Banning, Educational Consultant
919.942.7773
wendy@learn-outside.com
www.learn-outside.com
