Integrating Essential Skills into the Curriculum

Every teacher can help students integrate learning. In this course, curricular integration is explored through current research on experiential learning and higher-level thinking processes. Students learn best when associations and connections are provided in our lessons. Integration structures include applications within a traditional instructional approach, as well as those that require teachers to collaborate in their planning. In this course, structures are demonstrated, practices and applied at elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Education A5228        3 credits (G)

Increasing Student Responsibility and Self-Discipline in Learning Communities

This course provides a three-dimensional model for understanding why certain students act irresponsibly inside and outside of the classroom. It involves an intrapersonal approach that focuses on students’ internal dialogue, and helps them resolve their inner conflicts, develop more productive self-talk, and become more responsible and self-disciplined.
Education A5226       3 credits (G)

Teaching Writing and Thinking Across the Curriculum

Based on the theme, “Writing to Learn and Learning to Write”, participants will learn how to effectively integrate cooperative learning with the teaching of writing as a thinking skill in all subject areas. This course offers a systematic developmental approach to the teaching of writing in support of thematic, interdisciplinary, or subject specific instruction.
Education  A5409       3 credits (G)

Assessment Techniques: Assessing for Student Learning

(Formerly known as Classroom Assessment Techniques.) The main focus of this course is on using assessment to support teachers in examining the effectiveness of their own practices, to improve student learning and to help students become effective self-assessors. Have opportunities to use a wide range of assessment tools; develop skills that reflect a personal philosophy. Key ideas are addressed; the emphasis is on performance assessment. Key ideas are discovered experientially through a hands–on approach.
Education  A5225        3 credits (G)

The Culturally Distinctive Classroom

Formerly known as “Teaching for Success in the Multicultural Classroom.” Participants will examine curriculum, understand and develop a sensitivity toward the cultural “perils and pitfalls” in teaching different ethnic groups, and work to develop a variety of instructional techniques.
•    Critically examine and challenge personal, cultural and curricular assumptions and values
•    Develop classroom lessons that include diverse cultural perspectives, and address the cognitive, affective and pedagogical components of multicultural understanding of the classroom level
Education  A5229       3 credits (G)

Encouraging Skillful, Critical and Creative Thinking

Formerly known as “Expanding Student Thinking in the Classroom”
Based on recent brain research and learner-centered principles, this is a practical experiential course on how to teach for, of and about thinking. Topics include the thoughtful and respectful classroom, specific thinking skills and processes, questioning frameworks and methods, metacognition and reflection, graphic organizers, and cooperative learning to enhance thinking.
Education  A5220    3 credits (G)

The Cooperative Classroom: Kagan’s Instructional Practices

Learn the theory and research of cooperative learning and the approach developed by Dr. Spencer Kagan. The course guides participants in the acquisition of a wide range of practical instructional methods called Co-op Structures, and provides them with a theoretical framework that helps teachers decide which structures or tools to use at different points in the instructional cycle.
• Intensify motivation to learn
•    Decrease time lost to classroom management
•    Deepen thinking skills
•    Improve acceptance of mainstreamed students
Education  A5291       3 credits (G)

Brain-Based Teaching and Learning

This course provides classroom application strategies and techniques for translating the current research in cognitive science on teaching and learning. Beginning with how the brain processes information, the course includes the function of the senses, working memory, long-term memory, storage and retrieval, and the development of the self concept.
Education  A5726       3 credits (G)

Cooperative Discipline

This classroom management program shifts the discipline paradigm from controlling student behavior through rewards and punishment to managing and motivating students by building self-esteem and helping all students make better choices. The goal is student growth: academically, socially and psychologically. As part of the course students will learn over 50 strategies to use the moment misbehavior occurs and increase student achievement.
Education  A5296     3 credits (G)

Styles of Teaching: Personality Types in the Classroom

Style of teaching, based on Jung’s four basic personality types, will be explored and compared. Delve into an understanding of your own style and organizational preferences, while simultaneously building a clearer understanding of the needs of others. Issues pertaining to teaching, learning, classroom management, communicating,conflict resolution, esteem-building, and problem-solving will be examined and applied to classroom situations.

Education  A5289         3 credits (G)

Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences 
Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences provides an innovative perspective on creating effective teaching/learning environments. Participants will be involved in experiential activities which will broaden their understanding of Gardner’s work and guide them in developing practical applications for using this theory at all grade levels and in content areas.
•    Theories of human intelligence as applied to educational environments
•    Enriching required subject areas by using strategies that utilize several intelligences
•    Motivational strategies to engage the “hard-to-teach” student
•    Rotating teaching techniques to apply to a variety of intelligence preferences
Education  A5221       3 credits (G)

Skills and Strategies for Inclusion and disAbility Awareness

Students will gain a deeper understanding of disabilities and examine the social, academic and physical considerations in school, community and home environments. Special emphasis is made on the ways that teachers can integrate information about disabilities into the teaching of their curriculum and in managing their specific classroom environments..
Education  A5727       3 credits (G)

Teaching Readers to Think

The course explores the concept of balanced literacy and how to create a literate community within every classroom. Participants will learn how to create individualized reading timelines for students, building home and school connections. The techniques unlocking the written word and strategies to read reflectively both as part of class activities and independently will be developed. Ways to assess the success of the balanced literacy program will be discussed.
Education  A5117       3 credits (G)

Stress and the Teaching and Learning Process

This graduate course is designed to give participants a comprehensive, research-based view of stress as it relates to their individual lives and the teaching and learning process. The implications of stress in this context will be examined from three perspectives: Stress and the learning environment, stress and the student, and stress and the educator.
Education  A5145       1 credits (G)

Differentiated Instruction

The focus of this course is to provide a framework to design effective instruction for all students using differentiated instruction (DI). Participants will investigate the theoretical background, rationale, and principles of differentiated instruction and translate them to their classroom setting. Course instruction will include modeling of DI principles and strategies
Education  A5146         3 credits (G)

Dealing with AD/HD-type Behavior in the Classroom

Regular classroom teachers must deal every day with students who are inattentive, impulsive, disorganized and/or distracted. This is AD/HD-type behavior, whether or not the students are so classified. The course provides teachers with comprehensive brain researched understanding of these behaviors, and provides ideas and strategies to stop these behaviors from interfering with school achievement.
Education  A5728    3 credits (G)

The Kinesthetic Classroom

Enliven your K-12 classroom and content through the use of dynamic movement and kinesthetic activity. Participants will explore the connection between movement, fitness and the brain, implicit learning, why movement enhances the learning process, class cohesion activities, attaching kinesthetic activities to content, brain breaks and energizers, and movement-oriented content games.
Education  A5105    3 credit (G)

Wellness: Creating Health and Balance in the Classroom

Formerly known as “It’s All About You: Wellness and School”
The impact of stress, poor nutrition, time management, and lack of physical activity will be examined in order to better serve educators on both a personal level, and in the teaching and learning process. Participants will learn stress management techniques, the essential elements of supportive nutrition, time management skills, and the benefits of physical fitness.
Education A5935      3 credits (G)

The Gendered Brain

Participants will discover the current research on the developmental, functional, and structural similarities and differences in the male and female brains. They will research and discuss the effects of gender differences and how to provide educational equality enhancing each student’s personal worth and meaning. This course will expose educators to a variety of gender specific activities that will further enhance their teaching styles and techniques.
•    Enhance learning environments with practical activities through a gendered perspective
•    Motivate and empower learners of both genders
•    Address the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of both genders in the classroom
•    Deepen awareness of the current understanding of perceived differences in the male and female brain
Education A5101           3 credits (G)

Response to Instruction and Intervention (K-6)

Do you have students in your classroom who are not achieving the required skill levels? Response to Instruction and Intervention is designed to provide teachers with in-depth, practical knowledge of the necessity of assessment, data analysis, and progress monitoring in helping all students succeed as learners. The RtII framework includes assessment and progress monitoring tools, interventions, and proven strategies associated with the critical nature of data-based decision making in a K-6 setting. Finally, participants explore the connection between the academic and behavioral elements of a successful RtII program at the elementary level.
Education A5103    1 credit (G)

Universal Design for Learning: Reaching All Learners in the Digital Age

This course will provide practical, hands-on, digital age solutions to reach and teach all learners. Universal Design for Learning is a framework to help educators meet the challenge of teaching diverse learners in the 21st century. UDL provides a blueprint for creating flexible goals, methods, materials and assessments that enable students with diverse needs and learning styles to succeed in an inclusive, standards-based, digital classroom. Please Note: A laptop computer is required to participate in this course.
Education A5102    3 credits (G)

Motivation: The Art and the Science of Inspiring Classroom Success

The qualities of motivation as it pertains to the teaching and learning process will be examined and experienced through the following:
•    The human needs that bond teacher and student
•    The driving force behind all human behavior
•    Inspiration and peak performance for both teacher and student on a daily basis
•    Energizing classroom strategies that make a meaningful difference
•    The powerful 4-step process to successful change and achievement
Education A5120    3 credits (G)

Using Portfolios for Instruction and Assessment

By examining some of the purposes, practices, and protocols of portfolio use, this course provides teachers with an understanding of how to meet the challenges of implementing a system of portfolio assessment appropriate for them. Participants will develop strategies for portfolio assessment in their own classroom.
Education  A5279    1 credit (G)