Professional Development in Missoula, Helena, and Billings areas

The Helena College’s College Readiness Program is organizing an exciting professional development opportunity focused on improving literacy in social studies, science, and technical subjects (like health) and helping teachers integrate Common Core standards.

The program, designed for teacher teams (one English teacher and one subject matter teacher), will model strategies for implementing Common Core State Standards that are critical to college readiness:

• Comprehend and analyze complex texts
• Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content
• Gather relevant information from multiple digital resources
• Cite specific textual evidence to support claims

 

Workshop Details

 

Participants throughout the state may take an online course (Digital Research: Searching, Selecting, and Citing) to help students: gather relevant information from multiple digital sources; assess the strengths and limitations of each source; and follow a standard format for citation. This six-week course includes resources and videos that can be used in the classroom, as well as access to a college database.

 

Onsite workshops will be offered in Helena, Missoula, and Billings. Each regional site will offer a series of 3-4 onsite workshops in which teachers will learn and apply 1) deep reading strategies for complex texts; 2) strategies for teaching authentic writing in selected disciplines; and 3) discipline-specific scoring rubrics, tied to the Common Core State Standards, to analyze and discuss samples of students’ cross-curricular, research-based, writing.

 

Along with Tom Rust and Michael Scarlett (MSU-Billings/National History Day), and Kathy Holt (Coordinator of Clinical Practices, MSU-B), I’ll be involved in the Billings workshop, “Perspectives and Biases in Social Studies.” Other regional offerings will focus on science (Helena) and health (Missoula).

 

Title II: Improving Teacher Quality funds provide college credit, OPI Renewal Units, workshop expenses, including food and materials, at no cost to districts, and substitute teacher pay for up to 75 participants, statewide, for three days each.

 

Registration closes January 15. You can register and learn more here: http://www.mus.edu/writingproficiency/index.asp.