Welcome by HCPS Director of Communications and Public Relations - Andy Jenks
Keynote by Glen Allen High School senior Caroline Sindelar - who will give a brief TED Talk "The Power of Human Connection: in the classroom and beyond"
Wednesday August 12, 2015 8:30am - 9:00am EDT
GAHS Auditorium
The session's goal is for teachers to learn and share ideas on how to create Performance Tasks. After providing examples of Performance Tasks based on a fictional novel and an author's biographical information, teachers will discuss ways to format a Performance Task to their content. Using primary and/or secondary sources, a Performance Task requires the students to use critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication skills to answer open-ended questions about a hypothetical, yet realistic, situation. A Performance Task also has an accompanying document library that includes a range of information sources (such as articles, photographs, letters, video, etc). The students are instructed to use these materials in preparing their answers to the Performance Task’s questions.
1) Using role play simulations to engage students 2) Main topic: Complementary Middle East Issues 3)Things to think about when forming groups and facilitating simulation interactions 4) Connections to Model United Nations
During this conversation, we will present a few of our self-paced learning modules. Each module is paperless and uses a variety of online tools to enhance learning and collaboration. The modules are designed to give both teachers and students flexibility and choice. We hope that the conversation will serve as a catalyst for innovative ways to use this method of organizing instruction and assessment. Teachers will walk away with a sample module and a module template on which to create their own self-paced lessons and assessments.
Effective problem-based learning that is both rigorous and relevant starts with an authentic task. This overarching task allows teachers to incorporate multiple learning objectives while also allowing for student voice and choice. An authentic task is a classroom activity that has value and meaning beyond the classroom. These tasks allow students practice real world skills and address problems and issues that are relevant and meaningful. This session will help teachers develop authentic tasks within their particular content area.
Think about the last good professional discussion you had. As educators, we crave opportunities to have professional conversations and work in small groups to increase our skills and, ultimately, the achievement and engagement of our students. So why are we hesitant to design learning spaces in our classrooms that offer those same opportunities to our students? Redefining and redesigning your classroom can be scary, but research shows learning environments structured as collaborative spaces where students can brainstorm, work in small groups, and receive direct facilitation from the teacher can do wonders. Ready for a new way of thinking about your classroom? START HERE!
For veteran teachers with an arsenal of lessons to choose from, it can be difficult to find the "Goldilocks" activity that reaches the middle of the group, and even then, the high and low students don't get what they need. Instead, give a pre-test to determine how and what students will learn and deliver what each group needs. We already have the tools to do this in our files and filing cabinets, so we can put an end to one-size-fits-all lesson planning.
Does instructing students on how to paraphrase inspire panic attacks? Does the thought of Wikipedia listed on a Works Cited page give you welts? If you answered yes, this workshop is for you!
The goal of this session is to take the fear out of teaching introductory research by scaffolding the skills necessary to write a research paper. Participants will leave with classroom-tested strategies to teach paraphrasing, parenthetical citations, and MLA format
Service Learning has been recognized as an effective instructional strategy for diverse learners. Service Learning has been shown to increase academic achievement, improve student self-esteem and confidence, and promote civics awareness and participation by creating meaningful connections between the community and the classroom. Teachers will gain an understanding of service learning as an effective teaching strategy as well as using best practices for practical application in the classroom.
Teachers need a specific, simple, customizable arsenal of tools with which to achieve personal and county instructional goals. We all fall back on familiar formative assessments (or don't formatively assess) when we don't have time to explore new options. It is wise to have a collection of go-to warm-ups and exits that are fun, easy to implement, and that capture data. Teachers will walk away with concrete ideas of how to quickly check in with student progress, and how to use technology to drive class reflections and discussion, not just individual student goal setting. This session is primarily a technology demonstration: using googleForms and Flubaroo for check-in quizzes (and to hold students accountable during videos), using PollEverywhere to encourage student discussion/reflection about personal assumptions, and using Kahoot games and data spreadsheet to assess class understanding.
In this project, students gather research and publish blogs on any topic they want. Students are taught copyright guidelines as they become digital citizens. The primary goal of this project is to encourage students to write more by creating a blog that will entice a large number of followers as documented by site visits.
Many students in secondary school don't realize that everything they google isn't credible information. This session shows how you can use Urban Legends as a mini-research project to begin a conversation about credible sources and have students question what they read, see, and hear to make their own informed decisions.
6 - 8 Middle School, 9 - 12 High School, Language Arts
In this session, teachers will discuss best practices for teaching writing in all content areas. When given a writing assignment, many of our students use Google as a surrogate brain to generate ideas, and then they write in short, choppy sentences to regurgitate those ideas. This session will serve as a workshop to generate lesson ideas to encourage students to use their actual meat brains to generate original ideas and convey them in writing that warrants reading. Some strategies discussed will include: mind mapping, modeling, on-demand writing, and managing the grading workload.
I would like teachers to walk away with some new ideas about facilitating Parent / Teacher / Student communication. Teacher Texting is a new tool for teachers to improve parent involvement, both to celebrate the positive and support behavior change for the negative. Power School now collects parent cell numbers for most of our students and shows authorization for texting.
Looking for a creative way to get to know your students while covering your class syllabus, first weeks' lessons, and classroom expectations? The session will provide teachers a new approach in training students to be successful from day one!
Based on the book: 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey
In a 21st Century classroom, students communicate and collaborate ethically and effectively to reach a common goal or create a product. The teacher uses a variety of communication methods, structures student interaction in groups, and engages students in collaborative projects. One such structure is Google Classroom. Google Classroom is an innovative new tool that assists teachers in creating an online environment that fosters communication and collaboration. This tools allows teachers to easily share documents, create assignments, share web links in a secure environment.
Teachers will learn how to revamp the Big6 by integrating EasyBib (evaluation, citations, note taking, & outlining), OneSearch (subscription databases), and Follett Shelf (e-books & digital audio books) into this tried and true research model.
Teachers will learn practical tips for integrating County provided digital resources into projects and assignments.
This session is intended to enhance the student centered project experience in the classroom. Even though all the examples are related to the Spanish IV and AP Spanish Class, teachers of cross curriculum related areas are welcome to attend. After a collaboration among members of the audience in which they will exchange ideas about their best project practices in the classroom, the presenter will lead the session by presenting a variety of projects that have been very successful in the Spanish Classroom, two of which have been Henrico 21 winning projects. Participants will engage in the viewing and discussion of a variety of projects that go from the poem in the style of a famous Hispano-American writer such as Pablo Neruda, to the creation of commercials based on different ideas, to the web page, to the memories, and others. At the end of the session participants will leave with instructions for each project as well as students examples to use as models, if they decide to implement any of these project ideas in their classrooms. Come and experience the realm of the project experience in the classroom, you will not be disappointed.
There will be 4 Food Trucks conveniently located behind the Commons at GAHS: Bon Bon Asian Fusion Carytown Burger & Fries The Boardwalk Gelati Celesti
Food Truck accept cash or credit cards.
Lunch time entertainment will also be provided by School of Rock.
Other close by options include local area restaurants at Crossridge Shopping Center on Staples Mill Road (East of GAHS): JJ's Grille, Martin's Food Court, Little Szechuan, and Nuevo Mexico.
This session will serve to start a conversation about the power of youth voice for social change. We will discuss ways to use critical service learning within the school and classroom to promote student empowerment, teacher agency, and meaningful school and community collaboration.This conversation will focus on inequities in our schools and communities and how teachers and students can challenge the status quo to make change.
Teachers will see an example of how I used Desmos to help my students go beyond equations of lines and quadratics in Algebra 1, and leapfrog into the idea that equations of lines, quadratics, circles, ovals, absolute value, trig functions and more can be used to crate a two dimensional high quality graphic design, in my case, a monogram. This program can be used for any math class that graphs equations on the coordinate plane. The program can also be used to create high quality graphic art work.
How to transition from School Space to Google Drive/Google Classroom in order to provide accommodations and services to exceptional educ students without so much of the headaches
Explain how to use strategic and flexible student grouping to optimize instruction time and foster engagement / classroom environment. Teachers will participate in a brief activity to experience different learning profiles and should walk away with ideas about how to implement them in their classroom.
Teachers will walk away with a better understanding of the comic/comic book medium and specific ways to integrate instruction using comic books, comic strips and graphic novels into their instruction. Generally, I plan to approach using comic books/graphic novels as a supplement to traditional literary works, differentiating instruction with leveled reading using comic books, and cross curricular/collaborative teaching ideas through comic books.
Not sure if all of your students are getting the point of your lesson? What about that quiet student in the back of the classroom? Socrative offers a quick and easy way to assess 100% of your students. Socrative is free online student response system that provides teachers with the necessary feedback and data to formatively assess your students. For those teachers who have used activengage in the past, Socrative requires very little initial setup and can be ready to go in a matter of minutes. It also has a modern clean look that activengage is lacking. Socrative is also a great way to provide your students with an exit ticket prior to leaving your class. If you are looking for a fun exciting way to assess what your students are learning join us today!
Because of the influx of new and digital literacies the ways in which we learn, socialize, and communicate as a society is constantly in a state of flux. This means that many of the common ways that we would learn from one another is constantly changing. For the educator this means that we have to develop and integrate ourselves into a professional learning network (PLN) to maximize these resources and better prepare our students. This session will focus on using Google + and Twitter to create your own relevant network of global educators and resources that can help you learn, grow, and inspire.
The session's goal is for teachers to learn and share ideas on how to create student centered learning opportunities. I will begin the session by sharing my "study group model" as explained in my H21 entry found here: http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/21/2013/04/11/collaborative-study-groups/
The goal of this session is to provide realistic, real-world tips for differentiating in today's classroom. Teachers will walk away with at least one way to help challenge all their students!
Gain a familiarity with MIT App Builder and it's companion download-able software that allows students to build their own smart phone app and actually use it! It's free, (relatively) easy to use software that introduces coding and allows you to build some pretty cool programs with little to no previous knowledge about coding.
I want teachers to collaborate with their school librarians for resources and lessons that are 21st century and engaging for students. I want teachers to walk away with the idea that they have a partner in their librarian to help them teach concepts and curriculum to their students. I want them to realize that their librarian is a great source of help in doing their job successfully.
This session emphasizes teaching students the importance of imagery, how imagery enhances reading comprehension, and how to get students to use figurative language in their own descriptions.
In a 21st Century classroom, students communicate and collaborate ethically and effectively to reach a common goal or create a product. The teacher uses a variety of communication methods, structures student interaction in groups, and engages students in collaborative projects. One such structure is Google Classroom. Google Classroom is an innovative new tool that assists teachers in creating an online environment that fosters communication and collaboration. This tools allows teachers to easily share documents, create assignments,and share web links in a secure environment.
Although old hat for some staff, many teachers and student don't utilize Google Drive. This session's goal is for teachers to be familiar with Drive as a tool to streamline instruction, hold students accountable for retaining digital work, and encourage student collaboration.
some technologies tools and resources for teachers to use in their classroom teaching right away. MORE INFO: I would introduce some tools for teachers to flip their classrooms. I’m going to talk about some tools we could use for free: Mozilla PopcornMaker (free) Create mash-ups that draw upon Soundcloud, Vimeo, or YouTube videos. Use this to make a fun teaser for our new elective celebrating reading and technology. TEDEd (free) Choose videos from the TEDEd files or add your own. Complete the lesson with questions and discussion prompts. Share the link for others to participate. Students will need to log in to interact with the lessons you create. I finished my first TEDEd flip, on the topic of innovation, in 15 minutes. SooMeta (free) This versatile tool can be used for digital storytelling or for more traditional flipped lectures. You can easily search for and pull in media from the web, add your own voice recordings or music from Soundcloud, then embed your mini-lesson in a blog or wiki. You can add polls too. I used this to prompt student writing about their summer reading. I chose a voice-over over “talking head” video, but that’s me. FlipGrid (free) This tool allows you to type a question and create a link for a “grid.” Students respond to the question in video format (they’re the “talking heads” this time) and are added to the “grid” of all the responses. Users must be 13 years old, but this tool could be a fun way to set up a lesson by getting students to think about and respond to a question at home. It might be great for building vocabulary in English or learning foreign languages. Warning: Users need to be able to use Flash on their devices, and they will need access to recording video as well.
Classdojo is a great behavior and participation tracking tool, no matter the grade level. Edmodo is a student/teacher communication tool similar to Facebook. Teachers will leave the session with the ability to set up classes and use the tools on the first day of school and beyond.
Introducing teachers to the ExplainEverything app on ipads and how students can be put in control of their learning by creating "How-to" videos. They have the freedom to teach and explain certain concepts that they've learned throughout the year in ways that can help future students get a "leg up" in that specific class.
Genius Hour affords students the opportunity to research what interests them. Teachers do not tell students what to research; students drive this unit. After a brief introduction and Q&A, the audience will have the opportunity to create their own Genius Hour documents for the classroom. The goal is for you to have material ready for the classroom by the time teachers leave this session.
In this session, we plan to discuss strategies of blended learning that have been successful in our classrooms and briefly share tools (from virtual classrooms to enhanced presentation formats and tools for students to create projects) that we've used. We will discuss personalizing projects and assignments to promote student interest and individuality in the classroom (including technology and hands-on projects). We hope that teachers can get ideas to take back to their classroom as well as brainstorm new ideas to implement in the upcoming school year!
Relationship building is critical to success in the classroom. Attendees will participate in a hands-on activity that they can take to their classroom for use during the 1st week of school! Participants will gain insight about themselves and be able to use this tool for structuring daily lesson plans to match student learning, communication, and leadership styles for maximum effectiveness throughout the school year. All materials will be available in both hard copy and electronically for participants.
The goal of our session is to demonstrate different ways of using social media to further student education. How can teachers harness this widely used tool to innovate and collaborate?
My goal is to build a student driven community of self-motivated learners. Students should be able to reflect and assess along the way by asking questions (to each other), giving constructive criticism and relying on a "studio community" instead of the teacher being the only "expert." Many simple questions that students already may know the answer to if they "stop and think" can be handled with the classroom catch phrase, "Ask three before me!" During "Critique Corner" another phrase such as "I need three!" can also be used to randomly volunteer students to give feedback via quality questioning to one another. Often times, these phrases are used during the process phase of learning and need not be used only for reflection/evaluation for final product phase.These approaches, although used in the art room/studio environment could be implemented in other subject areas.
There’s an app for that!.... There’s an App for EVERYTHING!
Student want to learn to code. Being able to create a tool that will do some function provides an excitement for learners. And, teachers do not have to be programming experts to help students learn to code.
Mastering the basics of coding will help student learn problem solving, communication, collaboration, and persistence. This session will give teachers the basics of coding as well as tools to teach students and resources to help students continue their own growth.
Think about the last good professional discussion you had. As educators, we crave opportunities to have professional conversations and work in small groups to increase our skills and, ultimately, the achievement and engagement of our students. So why are we hesitant to design learning spaces in our classrooms that offer those same opportunities to our students? Redefining and redesigning your classroom can be scary, but research shows learning environments structured as collaborative spaces where students can brainstorm, work in small groups, and receive direct facilitation from the teacher can do wonders. Ready for a new way of thinking about your classroom? START HERE!
We want teachers to walk away with the idea that you can use stations for your students to work together in leveled groups and also so that you can get individual time with your struggling students. Jigsaws allow students to work on various parts of an assignment and then come together to discuss it as one piece. Stronger students can take the more difficult pieces while struggling students can tackle easier parts. It is all about differentiation in the classroom.