What We Do
Our CTLG consultants meet with you to collaboratively develop a professional learning plan that is tailored to your school division’s needs. We want to share our knowledge and expertise and provide ongoing support to ensure success.
All of our professional learning options are focused on increasing student learning and closing learning gaps. Here are some of the services that we can provide:
Increasing Student Engagement in Order to Impact Student Achievement
What can we do to foster positive student engagement in the classroom? We will model proven strategies that teachers and school leaders can implement to enhance student motivation and achievement.
Building Thinking Classrooms
The goal of thinking classrooms is to build engaged students that are willing to think about any task. As Peter Liljedahl says, thinking is a necessary precursor to learning, and if students are not thinking, they are not learning. Let’s explore the 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning and start implementing them tomorrow!
Instructional Best Practices & Content Alignment
Successful teaching and learning begins with the alignment of the Written, Taught, and Tested curriculum. We provide services that build the capacity of your teachers, schools, and district by supporting the use of effective, research-based instructional practices to engage and motivate all learners. Whether it is curriculum design, pedagogy, or instructional best practices, we tailor our professional development to meet your specific needs and goals.
This session combines many of the topics listed here – Reasoning Routines, Discourse and Questioning, Small Groups and Stations, Tasks, etc.
Standards Revisions and Implementation Training
Change is hard! We are dedicated to helping teachers adjust to changes in content standards by having in-depth discussions about the standards, developing instructional resources that are aligned, and discussing strategies for implementing them into classroom instruction.
Empowering Learning through Performance Tasks
Move away from multiple choice and bring balanced assessment into your classroom! Performance tasks are an effective instructional tool to get insight into what students really know. We will discuss how to deliver the Task and Share routine using the 5 Practices for Orchestrating a Math Discussion. In doing so, your students have opportunities to engage in a task promoting critical thinking, problem solving, communication, reasoning, connections, and representations.
Math Workshop
How can we ‘change the story’ for students who have unfinished learning and math anxiety? Math workshop allows teachers to differentiate and creates an environment where students feel less anxious, take risks, and engage in discourse. Let’s explore how moving to a workshop model is best for everyone by changing what math classrooms look like.
Building Classroom Communities with Reasoning Routines
Explore how to cultivate a supportive and engaging learning environment by integrating effective reasoning routines that promote critical thinking and inclusive discussions. Instructional best practices will be modeled to help you deliver these effectively. Walk away with a plethora of routines to implement that foster deeper student connections and meaningful learning experiences.
Small Groups and Stations
Elevate your teaching practice in our specialized professional learning session. Explore the power of stations and small groups to personalize instruction, boost student engagement, and cultivate communication and collaborative problem-solving. Unlock strategies for creating a dynamic, student-centered classroom that fosters deeper understanding and confidence.
Discourse and Questioning
How do we ensure our students are doing most of the thinking? Discourse and questioning strategies ensure we elicit the levels of student thinking that are aligned to the curriculum. We will engage and demonstrate teachers in these strategies using examples in your curriculum.
Join our content-focused professional learning, delving into the art of student discourse while embracing the educational 5 C’s:
- Communication: Explore strategies to ignite vibrant discussions, fostering articulation of reasoning and perspectives.
- Collaboration: Elevate your classroom by nurturing collaborative problem-solving, creating an environment where students learn from each other.
- Critical Thinking: Hone analytical thinking skills as students engage in meaningful dialogue, deepening their understanding, comprehension, and analysis of concepts.
- Creativity: Cultivate an environment where innovative ideas flourish through interactive discourse, sparking creativity in problem-solving.
- Citizenship: Foster a community of engaged learners, where students contribute to respectful discourse that nurtures respect, empathy, and inclusive participation.
Science Inquiry and Sensemaking
Sensemaking is actively trying to figure out how the world works. Students do science and engineering through the science and engineering practices (SEPs).Â
Inquiry and Sensemaking provides teachers with practical strategies for using the phenomena and the SEPs to design a student-centered classroom. Inquiry and Sensemaking includes discourse, small groups/stations, constructing and using models, and interpreting and analyzing data. Inquiry and Sensemaking is a great kickstarter for a student-centered teaching and learning.
Science Thinking Routines
Science Thinking Routines are structured activities that are used to create a learning community, increase student discussion, enhance instruction, and develop concepts and big ideas. These routines can be used to initiate new learning or continue learning by activating prior knowledge and focusing attention through teacher facilitation.
They help to build a classroom culture that values evidence and encourages students to explain and justify their thinking.
Science Thinking Routines will provide a fresh look at warm ups and engage your students in a more productive way.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence
Critical thinking skills are important in every discipline, at and beyond school. Engaging in Argument from Evidence provides students with an opportunity to students to be prepared to take in, synthesize, and act on new evidence to justify their thinking.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence highlights reasoning skills, which is another key component of critical thinking, involving the abilities to think logically, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and analyze arguments.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence provides teachers strategies to create student-centered opportunities to think critically.Â
Investigating the 5E Model
Investigating the 5E Model will equip teachers with an understanding and experience with this research-based model. Teachers and administrators will experience a model 5E lesson to experience the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and conceptual development using this research-based model.Â
Literacy Across the Curriculum
Whether you are a math or science educator, literacy should be a part of your instruction. Literacy strategies can and should be incorporated across the curriculum and will benefit students in math, science, and literacy. We provide practical literacy strategies that can be effectively embedded in lessons and units.
Evidence-Based Specially Designed Instruction (SDI)
Project Management
What We Do
Our CTLG consultants meet with you to collaboratively develop a professional learning plan that is tailored to your school division’s needs. We want to share our knowledge and expertise and provide ongoing support to ensure success.
All of our professional learning options are focused on increasing student learning and closing learning gaps. Here are some of the services that we can provide:
Increasing Student Engagement in Order to Impact Student Achievement
What can we do to foster positive student engagement in the classroom? We will model proven strategies that teachers and school leaders can implement to enhance student motivation and achievement.
Building Thinking Classrooms
The goal of thinking classrooms is to build engaged students that are willing to think about any task. As Peter Liljedahl says, thinking is a necessary precursor to learning, and if students are not thinking, they are not learning. Let’s explore the 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning and start implementing them tomorrow!
Instructional Best Practices & Content Alignment
Successful teaching and learning begins with the alignment of the Written, Taught, and Tested curriculum. We provide services that build the capacity of your teachers, schools, and district by supporting the use of effective, research-based instructional practices to engage and motivate all learners. Whether it is curriculum design, pedagogy, or instructional best practices, we tailor our professional development to meet your specific needs and goals.
This session combines many of the topics listed here – Reasoning Routines, Discourse and Questioning, Small Groups and Stations, Tasks, etc.
Standards Revisions and Implementation Training
Change is hard! We are dedicated to helping teachers adjust to changes in content standards by having in-depth discussions about the standards, developing instructional resources that are aligned, and discussing strategies for implementing them into classroom instruction.
Empowering Learning through Performance Tasks
Move away from multiple choice and bring balanced assessment into your classroom! Performance tasks are an effective instructional tool to get insight into what students really know. We will discuss how to deliver the Task and Share routine using the 5 Practices for Orchestrating a Math Discussion. In doing so, your students have opportunities to engage in a task promoting critical thinking, problem solving, communication, reasoning, connections, and representations.
Building Classroom Communities with Reasoning Routines
Explore how to cultivate a supportive and engaging learning environment by integrating effective reasoning routines that promote critical thinking and inclusive discussions. Instructional best practices will be modeled to help you deliver these effectively. Walk away with a plethora of routines to implement that foster deeper student connections and meaningful learning experiences.
Math Workshop
How can we ‘change the story’ for students who have unfinished learning and math anxiety? Math workshop allows teachers to differentiate and creates an environment where students feel less anxious, take risks, and engage in discourse. Let’s explore how moving to a workshop model is best for everyone by changing what math classrooms look like.
Small Groups and Stations
Elevate your teaching practice in our specialized professional learning session. Explore the power of stations and small groups to personalize instruction, boost student engagement, and cultivate communication and collaborative problem-solving. Unlock strategies for creating a dynamic, student-centered classroom that fosters deeper understanding and confidence.
Discourse and Questioning
How do we ensure our students are doing most of the thinking? Discourse and questioning strategies ensure we elicit the levels of student thinking that are aligned to the curriculum. We will engage and demonstrate teachers in these strategies using examples in your curriculum.
Join our content-focused professional learning, delving into the art of student discourse while embracing the educational 5 C’s:
- Communication: Explore strategies to ignite vibrant discussions, fostering articulation of reasoning and perspectives.
- Collaboration: Elevate your classroom by nurturing collaborative problem-solving, creating an environment where students learn from each other.
- Critical Thinking: Hone analytical thinking skills as students engage in meaningful dialogue, deepening their understanding, comprehension, and analysis of concepts.
- Creativity: Cultivate an environment where innovative ideas flourish through interactive discourse, sparking creativity in problem-solving.
- Citizenship: Foster a community of engaged learners, where students contribute to respectful discourse that nurtures respect, empathy, and inclusive participation.
Science Inquiry and Sensemaking
Sensemaking is actively trying to figure out how the world works. Students do science and engineering through the science and engineering practices (SEPs).Â
Inquiry and Sensemaking provides teachers with practical strategies for using the phenomena and the SEPs to design a student-centered classroom. Inquiry and Sensemaking includes discourse, small groups/stations, constructing and using models, and interpreting and analyzing data. Inquiry and Sensemaking is a great kickstarter for a student-centered teaching and learning.
Science Thinking Routines
Science Thinking Routines are structured activities that are used to create a learning community, increase student discussion, enhance instruction, and develop concepts and big ideas. These routines can be used to initiate new learning or continue learning by activating prior knowledge and focusing attention through teacher facilitation.
They help to build a classroom culture that values evidence and encourages students to explain and justify their thinking.
Science Thinking Routines will provide a fresh look at warm ups and engage your students in a more productive way.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence
Critical thinking skills are important in every discipline, at and beyond school. Engaging in Argument from Evidence provides students with an opportunity to students to be prepared to take in, synthesize, and act on new evidence to justify their thinking.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence highlights reasoning skills, which is another key component of critical thinking, involving the abilities to think logically, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and analyze arguments.
Engaging in Argument from Evidence provides teachers strategies to create student-centered opportunities to think critically.Â
Investigating the 5E Model
Investigating the 5E Model will equip teachers with an understanding and experience with this research-based model. Teachers and administrators will experience a model 5E lesson to experience the science and engineering practices (SEPs) and conceptual development using this research-based model.Â
Literacy Across the Curriculum
Whether you are a math or science educator, literacy should be a part of your instruction. Literacy strategies can and should be incorporated across the curriculum and will benefit students in math, science, and literacy. We provide practical literacy strategies that can be effectively embedded in lessons and units.