Topics
Explore More from TCM Professional Learning
TCM offers a wide range of popular, relevant topics to jump start your professional learning. In addition to the offered topics, we offer fully customizable PD.
We'll help you design the perfect Professional Learning Plan.
.png)
50+ Simple Strategies for Teaching Virtually Today
As schools tackle the enormous shift to teaching in the virtual world, it is imperative that teachers have a wide breadth of strategies to support this new and evolving instructional model.
Teachers must have a range of age-appropriate activities that support content and enhance engagement
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover quick, yet powerful ways to set up an organized virtual classroom
- Encounter a plethora of strategies to build classroom community, with a focus on climate building and social-emotional skill building
- Recognize, practice, and plan for a variety of engagement strategies to combat screen fatigue and ensure a focus on learning
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
Best Practices Webinar
Lift Every Learner towards a Life of Achievement
In this inspirational keynote, Dr. Almitra Berry, author of Effecting Change for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners, shares her story and why it is critical to reach and teach every learner with a lens toward equity.
In this keynote, Dr. Berry will:
- Share her lived experience, beginning with her early childhood as a learner of color and trauma and the role teachers good and bad played in her educational journey
- Deconstruct the trauma served to learners through implicit bias
- Connect the dots between intentionality and actuality when it comes to teaching and learning
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Five Steps to Equity
In this motivating keynote, Dr. Almitra Berry, author of Effecting Change for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners, prepares educators for traveling down the metaphorical Road to CARTI. It’s a journey through the five steps of her culturally appropriate response to instruction (CARTI) framework.
In this keynote, Dr. Berry will:
- Share her motivation for writing Effecting Change
- Outline the journey, describing why the framework must be taken as a sequential whole
- Explain the key role of mindset and cultural connectedness in creating a culture of equity
- Discuss the need to drive in both the lanes of school structure and culture in order to create a school built on equity for learners of cultural and linguistic diversity
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Social-Emotional Strategies for Every Classroom
There has long been a focus in education on the whole child and student well-being. That focus gained increased attention recently due to the challenges posed by remote learning. This workshop provides educators and parents with easy-to-implement social-emotional learning (SEL) strategies to address and improve student well-being.
In this workshop attendees will learn how to:
- Explain the importance of SEL to students
- Develop self-awareness and a strong sense of identity
- Teach and encourage the use of self-management strategies
- Foster social awareness in a variety of scenarios and settings
- Help students develop and deepen relationship skills
- Engage students in responsible decision making
Workshops can be delivered in English and Spanish for teachers or caregivers.
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Infusing SEL Strategies Across the Curriculum
Deepening social-emotional skills in students is rewarding; students benefit both personally and academically. SEL strategies can and should be infused throughout the instructional day. By infusing SEL competencies in literacy, social studies, science, mathematics and elective areas, students will gain the skills needed to be successful in today’s world.
Attendees will learn how to:
- Explicitly integrate SEL throughout the instructional day
- Relate the SEL competencies to content-area topics
- Infuse SEL into, through, and beyond your lesson
- Build SEL into your classroom and school culture
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Managing Your Classroom Through an SEL Lens
A well-managed classroom is a key element in creating a safe learning environment. By integrating social-emotional learning competencies and principles, educators can build a safe, equitable, and positive learning environment for all students.
Attendees will learn how to:
- Create a safe, positive learning environment for each student
- Incorporate SEL competencies and principles into classroom management
- Manage classroom behavior fairly and equitably
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Building Knowledge and Vocabulary: Reading Complex Text Across the Content Areas
Students need to access rich, challenging text to develop knowledge, build vocabulary, and improve comprehension across the content areas.
As students tackle difficult text, a wide breadth of effective strategies are needed to uncover meaning and build students’ skillset.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover nuances within text that make it difficult
- Uncover student-centered ways to support knowledge and vocabulary development
- Encounter and practice strategies to empower students to conquer challenging text
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Phonological Awareness: Supporting Foundational Literacy
Research has indicated the critical need for explicit instruction to ensure all students have the foundational literacy skills.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify the research that indicates the importance of phonological awareness.
- Develop understanding to plan effective phonological awareness instruction.
- Practice engaging strategies to develop phonological awareness.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Phonics: Systematic and Explicit Instruction
Ensuring that all students have foundational literacy skills that support decoding and fluent reading includes a deep understanding of phonics instruction.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify the research that showcases the Science of Reading and Writing to support systematic and explicit phonics instruction.
- Develop understanding to plan phonics lessons that are systematic and explicit.
- Practice strategies, including the use of decodable text, to support phonics instruction.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Authentically Building Fluency
Moving beyond the understanding of fluency as a speed-reading concept, a clear definition of fluency includes accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify the research that demonstrates that fluency is critical to reading comprehension.
- Develop understanding of effective assessment and instructional methods to develop fluency.
- Practice strategies and discover tools to support fluency development.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Making the Complex Simple: Using Rigorous Texts
Students need to access rich, challenging text to develop knowledge, build vocabulary, and improve comprehension across the content areas.
In this session, learners will:
- Identify nuances within text that make it difficult.
- Develop understanding of student-centered ways to support knowledge and vocabulary development.
- Encounter and practice strategies to empower students to conquer challenging text.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Untold Stories: Using Powerful Texts to Build Literacy Skills
Inspire students to read and analyze short texts that focus on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Explore how to use short texts to provide powerful teaching opportunities that support a variety of instructional needs, content areas, and reading levels.
- Discover ways to add relevancy and purpose to any literacy curriculum with fascinating stories about real people and real events throughout history.
- Learn how to support collaboration and focus on active listening and strong speaking skills as they read, write about, and discuss the untold stories.
- Discover strategies that empower students to explore and share their own untold stories.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Close Reading to Dissect Text
Rereading text, with different purpose and focus supports the careful uncovering of the texts that students read.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify key components to rereading to uncover the meaning of text.
- Develop understanding of how to use syntax, semantic clues, vocabulary, clues, and evidence to support deep understanding.
- Practice high-yield strategies to support students as they navigate text, moving toward independence.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies to Develop Critical Readers
Supporting students with a range of tools and processes to navigate through a variety of texts will support them in becoming critical readers.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify specific tools to support understanding with texts from a range of genres.
- Develop an understanding of planning to support critical reading.
- Experience classroom examples that incorporate a range of strategies to support students with a range of texts.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Supporting Academic Language with Speaking and Listening
There is a fundamental relationship among listening and speaking, written language, and reading.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Identify the research that showcases the power of language development through speaking and listening.
- Develop understanding to plan effective, integrated speaking and listening activities.
- Practice strategies to engage students with speaking and listening.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Smoothing the Road to Reading with Vocabulary Activities for Early Learners
One of the key elements to reading comprehension is vocabulary. If you think of all the layers of comprehension like building a road, you need to think of vocabulary building like filling the potholes in the road. If the vocabulary knowledge is incomplete, the road to comprehension will be bumpy.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover vocabulary ideas for engaging students in developing meaningful vocabulary
- Reinforce the importance of vocabulary to all learners
- Compile practical instructional ideas for vocabulary development
- Reflect on ways to support early readers with vocabulary
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Building an Inquiry-Based Learning Environment
Teaching and learning using the inquiry-based instructional framework is beneficial for students in multiple content areas and increases student engagement.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Be instructed on how to construct an environment to promote inquiry-based teaching and learning across multiple content areas.
- Learn strategies that allow students to deeply analyze instructional sources as well as using documents that support inquiry practices.
- Practice strategies that develop students’ thinking processes to analyze and inquire about information in and out of the classroom.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Building Knowledge & Vocabulary: Reading Complex Text Across the Content Areas
Students need to access rich, challenging text to develop knowledge, build vocabulary, and improve comprehension across the content areas.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Discover nuances within text that make it difficult and uncover student-centered ways to support knowledge and vocabulary development.
- Encounter and practice strategies to empower students to conquer complex text
- Learn new ways to engage students with rich, powerful vocabulary and proven strategies to help students learn those words as well as how those new words work.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Improving Student Writing Skills: Learn how to develop skilled and enthusiastic writers.
Writing has many purposes – to think, to prove, to learn, and to summarize. In today’s alternate learning environments, writing offers opportunities to gauge students’ conceptual understanding across content areas.
That’s why learning effective strategies for teaching writing should be an integral part of any professional toolbox.
This workshop will provide:
- Best practices in writing instruction and the research supporting short writing assignments
- Discover innovative ways to help students master the four main categories of writing including Informative/Explanation, Opinion/Argument, Narrative Fiction, and Narrative Nonfiction
- A guide for creating and assessing short writing activities including incorporating instructional mini-lessons and designing rubrics
- Strategies for applying learning to tomorrow’s classrooms, wherever those classrooms might be
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies for Building Academic Vocabulary
Teach students independent word learning strategies so that they understand what words mean and ultimately read more effectively.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Empower students with a powerful step-by-step strategy to effectively uncover the meaning of words using Greek and Latin prefixes, bases and suffixes
- Discover key steps to engage students in meaningful conversations that promote oral language
- Reinforce the importance of word learning and word play in the classroom through fun activities and games
- Compile practical instructional tools to make academic vocabulary strategies a priority to ensure college and career readiness
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Effective Implementation of a Balanced Literacy Framework
Explore the elements that comprise a comprehensive balanced literacy classroom from phonics and word study to shared, guided and modeled reading to writing.
Educators will learn how to:
- Marry guided reading instruction with increased text complexity
- Develop close reading strategies during Guided Reading, Modeled Reading, and Shared Reading instruction
- Learn high-yield instructional strategies for implementing all components
- Formulate balanced assessments that align to each component
- Foster the reciprocal connection between reading and writing instruction
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Improving Student Writing Skills Using Mentor Text
Using mentor texts allows teachers to accomplish multiple goals using the same piece of text.
In this professional development, learners:
- Discover how authentic writing instruction can encourage writers to develop their own craft
- Develop strategies to analyze mentor texts as platforms for writing topics and examples of author's craft
- Practice strategies to support the writing process including prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading, and publishing.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Getting Started on the “Write” Foot with Early Writers
Overcoming the fear of writing is the key to teaching early writers to be successful. Early learners need explicit instruction and repeated practice to build the confidence for independent writing.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Learn how to develop early writers with a step-by-step procedure for success
- Transition students from whole group interactive writing to independent authors
- Use a variety of writing techniques and ideas to build writer confidence
- Construct a learning environment that supports all writers
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Write Now! Effective Strategies for Writing Instruction
Writing is an essential and vital part of every classroom. However, teaching writing can be challenging and overwhelming for students.
In this professional development learners will:
- Review best practices in writing instruction.
- Explore ideas for creating writing activities within any content area.
- Discover innovative ways to help students master the four main categories of writing including Informative/Explanation, Opinion/Argument, Narrative Fiction, and Narrative Nonfiction.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Engaging Students with Interactive Notetaking
Provide a setting where students create and store their notes on different subjects and employ innovative ways to learn and remember content.
Attendees will:
- Explore the rationale and research behind interactive notetaking
- Practice and discover first-hand how to use interactive notetaking in a variety of instructional settings
- Develop plans of action to take interactive notetaking back into the classroom
- Reflect on how the strategies presented in the session align to the content areas and how they can be easily implemented in the classroom
Training Options
Strategies for Supporting Language Learners
Reaching and engaging language learners at varying levels of language proficiency requires dedicated and sometimes unique strategies.
This workshop will guide you through the steps necessary to make sure all students continue learning and growing in any environment.
Attendees will learn:
- How to create a language rich environment to foster word consciousness for ELs in any instructional setting
- Practical strategies to support students in understanding complex text
- Authentic language development activities for immediate application in all four domains
- High-utility strategies to support students in writing in response to text
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Literacy, Language, and Learning: Effective Strategies for Early Childhood Instruction
Learn to meet the unique needs of early childhood students, including their ability levels and interests, with engaging activities and strategies for utilizing thematic curricula.
Educators in this workshop will:
- Learn developmentally-appropriate instructional strategies to move students forward in their academic and social growth.
- Create daily lesson plans and thematic units using tools and structures to make this task easier.
- Discover the impact that a rich oral language experience can have on English language learners.
- Help students detect and manipulate language through songs, role-playing, and other engaging activities that support the development of early literacy skills
- Learn the important components needed to develop structure and a positive environment and explore the best practices to create a sense of order, continuity, and routine
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Selecting, Supervising and Supporting Independent Centers
While teachers are providing small group instruction, students need to be completing independent and engaging activities. Teachers often struggle with this time of the day, but they don’t have to.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Learn to select engaging and independent centers
- Uncover student-centered ways to support independent learning
- Discover ways to supervise students during independent centers
- Empower students to complete independent centers with pride
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Get the Picture: Visual Literacy in Content-Area Instruction
Literacy learning is no longer limited to reading, writing, listening, and speaking; we must include visual communication and expand our definition of what it means to be literate.
This professional development workshop will provide teachers with new and engaging strategies to help students learn how to analyze and create through visual communication.
Based on practical research, this workshop offers concrete tools and techniques and a wide range of suggested visual texts to effectively use in the classroom from primary sources, to digital media and the visual-heavy world of 21st century learning.
Attendees will:
- Examine ways to incorporate visual texts into instruction, including what visual literacy lessons look like in the primary grades
- Practice instructional strategies and develop sample lessons for teaching students to read visual texts for understanding
- Practice and discover instructional strategies for guiding students to visually illustrate understanding, specifically targeting support for improving reading and writing
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Exploring Social Studies
Help students develop a unique understanding of history with an inquiry-based approach to active learning.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Learn how to integrate social studies into literacy instruction to deepen understanding
- Explore ready-to-implement approaches to teaching social studies including brainstorming and integrating primary sources.
- Use strategies to generate higher-order thinking skills such as creative thinking, problem posing, and problem solving
- Learn strategies to help students make a personal connection to historical people and events
Training Options
Workshop
Best Practices Webinar
iCivics Readers
Engage students in critical thinking, thoughtful discussions, and engaging activities that will guide them to becoming active, civic-minded members of society while also building key literacy skills.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover how literacy and civics education integrate seamlessly to help students gain civic knowledge, practice civic skills, and develop civic dispositions.
- Learn strategies to prepare students for both civic engagement and citizenship responsibilities.
- Explore ways to help students make sense of social issues, understand our political systems, make logic-based arguments, and consider ideas different from their own.
- Discover ways to build content area literacy and support students in making concrete connections to key topics through paired fiction and non-fiction texts.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
No More Problems with Problem Solving
One of the greatest hurdles of teaching mathematics is teaching students to become mathematical thinkers and to solve challenging problems. In this session, we will explore why students struggle with problem-solving and how to build their perseverance.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Learn predictable routines that enable students to think critically and become confident, proficient problem solvers.
- Recognize and choose appropriate high cognitive-demand tasks to engage students in authentic problem solving
- Learn ways to be linguistically responsive while teaching problem solving skills to all students
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Let’s Talk Math: Engaging Students as Mathematical Thinkers
In this session, learners will examine high-cognitive demand tasks and deepen their understanding of how to develop mathematical thinkers and to choose rigorous tasks that promote problem-solving skills. Learners will also explore how being linguistically responsive can help students to be more successful when using tiered vocabulary and problem-solving structures in the classroom.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover high cognitive-demand tasks and how these tasks provide opportunities for learners to become mathematical thinkers
- Understand how to identify tiered vocabulary in a way that makes problem contexts more comprehensible for students
- Apply classroom structured mathematical discourse that supports the problem-solving process by enabling students to articulate their own thinking and become active listeners.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Guided Math: A Proven Framework to Reach All Math Learners
In this workshop you will learn how to provide an innovative approach to mathematics instruction that fosters mathematical thinking and conceptual understanding.
Explore the benefits of a variety of research-based instructional models, including mathematical discourse, whole-group and small-group lessons, math warm-ups, workshops, and student conferencing. Discover how to use assessment throughout this model so that true data-driven instruction can take place.
Each attendee will learn:
- The importance of student choice in selecting tasks that are purposefully planned to accelerate student achievement and meet the mathematical needs of students
- How to accurately deliver a whole group lesson that is immediately followed up by intensive small group instructional activities using a menu of instruction and assessment options
- Practical classroom management techniques that set up any Guided Math classroom for success
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies for Teaching Science
Facilitate students’ exploration of science and STEAM concepts with sound strategies for engaging, exploring, evaluating, elaborating, and explaining science concepts with real-world connections.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Engage students in the scientific process and inspire curiosity and perseverance while developing crucial critical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Captivate students’ minds with thought-provoking, open-ended discussions and projects.
- Cultivate content-area literacy by using related texts and writing prompts to help them explain their thinking
- Organize lessons and projects that provide interesting, content-based, grade-appropriate science activities that bring science to life for students
Training Options
Workshop
Best Practices Webinar
Journey to Responsiveness
- Defines concretely what is cultural responsiveness and why it is necessary in our schools today.
- Builds knowledge and creates the context for addressing the needs of underserved students in terms of their sociopolitical and sociolinguistic relativity in the American educational system
- Promotes the focus on effective instructional strategies utilization in a way that validates and affirms underserved students across content areas and grade levels
- Keynote presentations and webinars are facilitated in partnership with Dr. Sharroky Hollie
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Classroom Practices
- Introduces culturally responsive teaching and explains why it is necessary in our schools today
- Places emphasis on the skillset of CLR with a focus on the use of culturally responsive classroom management strategies and culturally responsive texts to validate, affirm, build and bridge students across all content areas and grade levels
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies for Creating Social and Emotional Learning Environments
If there is one thing teachers can agree on, it's that social and emotional learning (SEL) is a hot topic in education. But beyond this, questions still remain. What exactly is SEL? How should it be taught? What does it look like in the classroom? How do we teach students non-academic life skills?
This session will help to define SEL and dig into the real work of how to incorporate SEL in K-12 schools. Strategies learned will help to addresses students' different interests and varied learning styles to help teachers recognize alternative opportunities for engaging students in activities that support SEL.
- Explore the rationale and research behind social and emotional learning
- Examine the classroom strategies needed to identify and regulate emotions effectively
- Develop plans of action to help students make responsible decisions in and out of the classroom
- Reflect on how the strategies presented in the session align to content-area topics and positive behavior support systems
- Practice “Mindful Moments” that encourage understanding, learning, and reflection
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Applying Differentiation Strategies
Participate in professional development that focuses on the “how” of differentiation, supported by current theory and pedagogy.
- Learn strategies for differentiating by content, process, and product and understand the role each plays in differentiated instruction
- Develop new and effective ways of teaching English language learners, gifted students, special education students, general education students, and at-risk students
- Experience model lessons using the strategies and apply the strategies in structured planning tasks
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar