2008-2009 National Professional Development Catalog
Downloadable Professional Development Catalog (PDF)
Here is our online catalog for five-day national institutes, three-day national institutes, and summits.
Before you register, please keep the following important information in mind:
What you need to know about registration
Within 10 days of registering, you will receive a confirmation email letting you know whether you have been accepted into the course or placed on the wait list. About six weeks before the event, you will receive a logistics letter with information about air and ground travel, hotel name and location, and other details. You will also receive travel and special needs forms to complete and email or fax back to ELS.
- All five-day national institutes begin at 8:30 a.m. on the first day and end at 2:00 p.m. on the fifth day. If you are not local, you will need to arrive the night before. ELS books your room, starting the night before the event begins. ELS also arranges for all meals, beginning with breakfast on the first day, except for one evening "out on the town," when you are responsible for your own dinner. Local participants receive lunch. A separate logistics letter will be sent to local participants two weeks prior to the institute regarding any required evening attendance.
- All three-day national institutes begin at 8:30 a.m. on the first day and end at 3:00 p.m. on the third day. If you are not local, you will need to arrive the night before. ELS books your room, starting the night before the event begins. ELS also arranges for all meals, beginning with breakfast on the first day. Local participants receive lunch. A separate logistics letter will be sent to local participants two weeks prior to the institute regarding any required evening attendance.
- After you sign up and are accepted into a summit, you will receive a logistics letter with start and end times, travel information, etc. Lodging and most meals are provided by ELS. Summits last for five days.
- You will receive information about three-day regional institutes in your region after you register on the ELS website. The school pays for room and board, but ELS makes all arrangements.
Things to consider before registering
If you cannot stay for the whole professional development offering, please take it at another time. The success and spirit of our institutes and summits depend on full participation. Late arrivals or early departures impede the building and sustaining of a productive institute culture as well as growth in your own learning. You and your principal or school director should read the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) carefully regarding cancellation policies and policies regarding late arrivals and/or early departures.
A word about our professional development
ELS professional development asks teachers and administrators to be learners and to experience fully what it means to read, write, assess, and do social studies, math, science, and art the "EL way." This means that facilitators model active pedagogy, and participants engage in the social construction of meaning by collaborating in small and large groups.
It also means that participants experience a slice of a learning expedition that explores significant content in science or the humanities. The slice provides the context--and motivation--for learning specific skills.
The topics covered, while useful for expeditions at various grade levels, are not meant to be "take home" units; instead, they are good models that engage adult learners and model curriculum design, instructional practices, and skill-building applicable to all grade levels. Typically, participants stay in "learner" hat for most of the institute, but they spend some time in their "teacher" hat, debriefing and applying lessons learned to their own classrooms.
ELS professional development brings together participants who teach (or administer) kindergarten through 12th grade; come from urban, suburban, and rural schools; teach a wide range of content areas; and have been members of the Expeditionary Learning Schools network for varying lengths of time. This diversity of background and experience allows our institutes and summits to become heterogeneous classrooms and offers the opportunity to forge a network-wide professional learning community.
Please consider these general ELS professional development learning targets
- I contribute to a productive and collaborative professional learning community.
- I can explain why each ELS institute features a slice of a learning expedition.
- I can distinguish when I need to be in "learner" hat vs. "teacher" or "administrator" hat.
- I can apply what I have learned and experienced to my own classroom or school.
- I can communicate and help to make school-wide the active pedagogy and disciplinary knowledge I learned at the institute.
We look forward to seeing you at one of our off-site professional development opportunities.
Course Descriptions
Summits: Learning Expeditions for Educators
Summits are learning expeditions for educators who want to learn how to plan and lead learning expeditions in their classrooms. For five days, participants immerse themselves in intensive learning experiences illustrative of the major components of a well-designed learning expedition. In addition to learning to create and polish final products, participants learn about how to facilitate crew meetings and teacher/student and student/student critique sessions. Educators delve into their topic through research and fieldwork. They learn how to use a variety of instructional strategies centering on how to teach academic skills and standards through engrossing learning experiences, how to instill a commitment to quality work, and how to demonstrate good character in a group.
Physiology and Fitness
You Are What You Eat: An Expedition about the Human Body
Target audience: 5th - 12th grade science, math, art, physical education, health and adventure teachers.
Eagle Rock School, in the striking setting of Estes Park, Colorado, provides the location for a five-day learning expedition about the human body in general and about participants' own bodies in particular. Participants explore a range of related topics including human physiology, nutrition, and fitness through the integration of science, math, nutrition, physical education and art. Educators take part in human body measurement and data collection, dissection, drawing, sculpture, and exercise to develop a new appreciation and respect for both the complexity of the human anatomy and the importance of nutrition and fitness. The major investigations and culminating project focus on the respiratory, musculoskeletal, and circulatory systems. In addition to creating drawings and a clay armature sculpture of the human body, participants learn how to design and complete a scientific investigation.
Civil Rights: The Little Rock Nine
Target audience: K-12 social studies and language arts teachers.
The struggle for civil rights is illustrated through the experiences of the Little Rock Nine, the African-American teenagers who found themselves at the center of the maelstrom resulting from the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AK in 1957. This five-day learning expedition takes place in Little Rock and demonstrates how to plan a major investigation using a variety of instructional strategies including observation, crew, and student assessment. It serves as an example of a learning expedition that integrates history, writing, and the performing arts. Through the use of primary sources, fieldwork, and experts, participants gain knowledge and understanding of the multiple perspectives around issues of race and equality. The culminating products will include reader's theater, tableaux, poetry, or fictional biographies.
National Institutes
National institutes are organized around specific skill sets in reading, writing, math, humanities, science and the arts. They use individual and group practices based in the skill set and critique and discussion to make clear how these skills can be used in the classroom and how they reflect educational standards. Institutes do not model a learning expedition but, rather, share specific practices and strategies that are used in Expeditionary Learning Schools. They are three or five days long.
Arts and Humanities Institute
In this five-day institute, participants experience first-hand how the arts enliven teaching and learning by taking part in several learning experiences in the context of a compelling humanities topic. The facilitators model how to infuse the arts into expeditions at every level: as a window into historical content; through art forms used to represent thinking and teach artistic skills; and through arts-informed instructional practices. Participants hone their artistic skills in a project in which they produce an artistic product. At the same time, they expand their artistic vocabulary and learn significant content knowledge.
Creating Quality Assessments
This three-day institute deepens participants' knowledge and understanding of the ELS assessment framework. Facilitators provide modeling and instruction about creating learning experience plans that contain appropriate and balanced assessments of learning and assessments for learning strategies. Participants experience and deconstruct the following: how to create clear learning targets; how to connect learning experience targets to daily lesson plans; how to match the assessment method to the learning target; and how to create accurate and high-quality assessments of learning.
Grading and Reporting
For three days, participants examine the role that portfolios, grades, and reporting systems play in communicating student progress to non school- based audiences. Participants learn how clear learning targets, connected to standards, can be used to tighten and align communication and reporting systems and analyze different parts of the ELS portfolio system to determine intent and audiences for each part of the system.
Early Literacy Institute
Participants have five days to experience powerful instructional practices that prepare them to teach phonemic awareness, decoding skills, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and writing to beginning readers and writers. They learn relevant content and pedagogy concerning early literacy and experience a "slice" of a learning expedition in which best practices in early literacy instruction are modeled. The institute includes several learning experiences: reader's theatre, fieldwork, and book clubs. Through examples, participants learn to integrate the teaching of early literacy into expeditions and develop reader's and writer's workshops for the primary grades.
Primary and Intermediate Math Institutes (K- 2nd, 3rd - 6th grade)
These institutes, which are each three days, address the following concerns in teaching mathematics: how to create a need to know and use math; how to design compelling contexts for math; how to use active pedagogy in math; how to enable students to become meta-cognitive about their mathematical understandings and problem-solving techniques; and how to build a collaborative mathematics learning culture that supports the social construction of meaning. Participants experience a compelling context and explore how to sequence mathematics instruction to promote a solid understanding of mathematical concepts. Through active participation in and debriefing of mathematical learning experiences, participants learn how to design such experiences for their own classrooms.
Middle School and High School Math Institutes
At these institutes, teachers and principals become mathematical learners, investigating key middle or high school topics while, at the same time, experiencing active pedagogy. Over three days, participants are introduced to the characteristics of ELS math classrooms by experiencing how they enhance their own mathematics learning. Participants also learn about and experience specific practices that foster those characteristics in their own math classrooms and work with colleagues to devise plans that incorporate these practices into their own teaching of mathematics.
Primary Institute
In this five-day institute, participants experience and analyze the structures, culture, and curriculum that are effective in primary classrooms. They take part in a "slice" of a primary learning expedition that includes a compelling topic, fieldwork, and creation of a high-quality product. The slice also serves as the vehicle to explore important issues in creating engaging expeditions for primary students. These issues include: topics that build excitement about learning; gathering important background knowledge and schema for subsequent expeditions; active pedagogy; integrating and motivating literacy; encouraging critical thinking skills; and assessment. In addition, participants examine the structures necessary for creating exemplary primary classrooms: daily and weekly schedules; classroom set-up; classroom management; and crew (or morning) meetings. They also explore the roles of ritual, repetition, rhythm, and joy in the primary classroom.
Reading 1 Institute
This five-day institute introduces a research-based framework for teaching reading comprehension K through 12 and across content areas. Participants learn about the seven key comprehension strategies in their own reading. As a result, they become aware and experience the teaching of these strategies in the context of a compelling topic. Facilitators model the reader's workshop, a generative structure for explicitly teaching comprehension strategies. Participants also take part in literature circles and are taught how to create their own mini-lessons for teaching comprehension strategies.
Reading 2 Institute
This advanced five-day institute deepens participants' understanding of the comprehension strategy framework they experienced in Reading 1 as well as teaches the strategies not covered in that institute. In addition, it looks at how to devise and implement a strategy study to ensure that students deeply understand and internalize each individual strategy as well as how to orchestrate the use of several strategies. Non-fiction book clubs are introduced, and the emphasis on Socratic seminars and other structured discussion protocols continues.
Science Institutes: Elementary and Secondary
In this three-day institute, teachers (grades 3rd - 12th) immerse themselves in a compelling topic that provides the context for learning important biological concepts and processes. The facilitators model active pedagogy to demonstrate how to build curiosity, create and sustain a "need to know," include the teaching of literacy in science content, and engage students in representing their thinking.
Secondary Schools Institute
In this five-day institute, participants develop an initial understanding of the Expeditionary Learning model tailored specifically to middle or high schools. Participants experience and debrief the following: a "slice" of a science or humanities expedition; the crew (advisory) structure, and workshops on the ELS assessment framework. Through the slice, they are introduced to effective instructional practices, the design of learning expeditions, and reader's and writer's workshops.
Writing 1 Institute
This three-day institute introduces participants to a research-based framework for teaching writing process and the 6+1 traits of writing across content areas. Participants see, first-hand, how a compelling topic motivates writing to learn and learning to write. Through active participation in and debriefing of writer's workshops, they learn how to teach writing traits and revision techniques in the context of academic content. Participants also have the opportunity to create and revise their own writer's workshop.
Writing 2: Humanities Focus
In this three-day institute, participants deepen their knowledge of the framework for teaching writing introduced in Writing 1. They are exposed to additional techniques for teaching writing traits, and they take part in writer's workshops on traits not covered in Writing I. Participants build background knowledge about a compelling humanities topic and respond to a writing invitation that increases their understanding of the content studied and allows them to hone their writing skills. During this writing project, they take their work through the writing process (from pre-write to finished product) and take part in successive drafting, revision, and editing workshops. Participants also create a writing project for their own investigation or expedition that involves a similar scaffolding of writer's workshops. They learn a variety of ways to craft mini-lessons on the writing traits; strategies for offering oral and written descriptive feedback; and techniques to sequence writer's workshops so that students can create polished writing pieces.
Site Seminars
Schools hosting site seminars are implementing Expeditionary Learning at a high level. During site seminars, participants visit classes, meet with administrators and teachers, and enjoy exemplary student work. Site seminar participants discuss theory-in-practice issues and share observations with fellow educators and administrators.
Rochester Site Seminar (K-6), Rochester, NY
- Genesee Community Charter School
- World of Inquiry-School #58
King Middle School (6-8), Portland, ME
City Schools of Decatur (K-3), Decatur, GA
- Clairemont Elementary School
- Oakhurst Elementary School
- Winnona Park Elementary School
To purchase additional slots or cancel professional development slots
If your school has a contract with ELS and you would like to purchase professional development slots in addition to those allocated in the MOU, please contact your school designer or regional director.
College graduate credit
Graduate credit for off-site professional development courses offered by Expeditionary Learning Schools is available through the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center for a tuition charge of $60.00 per semester credit hour, payable directly to the university. Three-day institutes earn one and one-half semester hours; five-day institutes earn two semester hours.
Participants selecting the graduate credit option complete a project showing how strategies presented in the course will be implemented in their classrooms or their schools. Participant project work is graded on a pass-fail basis, and transcripts are available from the university upon request at the end of the term in which the institute is graded. Credit will not apply toward a degree program. Participants who wish to earn university credit for an institute must register on the EL web site when they register for the course.
For further information, please e-mail pd@elschools.org
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