Instructional Solutions Group

Restorative Practices and Student Accountability

Student behavior has always been a challenge to varying degrees, but it currently is one of the most frustrating things that discourages educators. This workshop will focus on how to support students, hold them accountable for disruptive behaviors, while making them part of the solution. Strategies will be shared that are practical and easily implemented.

Raising the Bar: Rigor, Reading, Relationships and Resilience

Strategies for Helping Students Understand & Remember What They Read

Most agree that educator accountability is a necessary tool for school improvement. As expectations related to evaluation increase, all should be prepared to respond with strategies that support student engagement, facilitate formative assessment, teach to the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, and ultimately result in college and career readiness. This interactive workshop will provide instructors, administrators, and instructional coaches easy to implement ways to meet the highest teaching standards.

These Kids Can't Read the Textbook

Strategies for Helping Students Understand & Remember What They Read

Teaching reading to students can be an intimidating experience if teachers have not been provided adequate professional development on this topic. This workshop will provide information to elementary and secondary school staff in how to effectively and efficiently improve the reading comprehension skills of all students through the use of very practical and easy to follow reading techniques.

Adolescent Literacy We've All Got 'Skin' in this Game

This workshop will target specific strategies that engage, interest, and motivate adolescents in the 21st century as they read difficult and complex material. Attendees will receive instruction in how to provide attention-grabbing lessons that differentiate instruction and support all secondary students, while preparing them for post-secondary instruction.

Engage Teachers, Engage Students: Where One Goes the Other Will Follow

Higher Order Thinking Skills & Differentiated Instruction: Making It All Work Together

The students of the 21st Century present a unique challenge to all educators.  Traditional instruction is not always effective and teachers often find themselves frustrated and seeking better methodologies to reach all types of learners.   This workshop will provide easy to implement classroom strategies that will help motivate, engage and differentiate instruction for all students.

Differentiated Literacy Strategies

21st Century Instruction for the 21^st Century Student

Teachers are facing a generation of students that want to 'delete' when things become difficult. Rather than reject how these students want to learn, let's modify instruction in a manner that enhances individual strengths and makes the most of learning and academic achievement. This hands-on workshop will provide a framework for differentiation that can be used when designing lessons involving reading difficult text – electronic or otherwise.

Classroom Management

Practical Strategies for All Types of Learners

The successful teacher must possess a variety of professional and personal skills, and no skill is as important as the ability to manage students within the classroom. This workshop will focus on identification of student misbehavior, as well as appropriate teacher actions to significantly reduce and/or eliminate anti-social and non-productive behaviors. Additionally, teachers will receive instruction related to organizing the classroom to minimize or eliminate inappropriate classroom conduct.

Bullying, Harassment, and Intimidation

Liabilities, Strategies, and Answers

Regardless of socio economic level, educational achievement, or community awareness, bullying persists to varying degrees in all schools. This problem may go unchecked due to the fact some students tend not to report these types of incidents to those in authority. The educational research is clear; when bullying occurs, school climate and academic achievement are negatively impacted. This workshop will provide school staff with the knowledge, educational resources, and methodologies to significantly reduce and/or eliminate these types of anti-social behaviors.

Teaching on the Block

Keep Them Thinking, Moving, & Learning

While block scheduling may decrease hallway passing time, decrease teacher time related to attendance and ‘housekeeping’ details, and increase time for instruction during a class period, it is not without its challenges related to student engagement. This workshop will provide teachers with practical, easy-to-implement teaching strategies that will help structure time in a manner that is academically beneficial to all students.

Teaching in Rural Communities: What Works?

Teaching in rural America is rewarding, but it requires educators committed to the community, to the parents, and to the students. Low expectations for children, poor school funding, poverty, and limited expectations for the community itself can be problematic but not insurmountable. This workshop will address the unique characteristics of rural school communities and provide educators with specific strategies designed to raise educational expectations and academic achievement.

Safe & Secure Schools:  A Balanced Approach

Recent acts of extreme violence around the country both at schools and other public facilities have school administrators revisiting school safety plans and prevention and response strategies. This workshop will address best practices in developing meaningful drills, helping substitute staff with response strategies, planning for special and extra curricular events, using tabletop exercises as a training tool, implementing classroom safety audits, and enhancing emergency management plans including active shooter/lethal assailant procedures.

Bullying & Harassment: What Works?  What's Legal?

Legal issues related to bullying and harassment are complex and complicated. Bullying, harassment and intimidation can be a problem for students of all ages, and it's an equal opportunity problem in rural, suburban, and urban communities. This workshop will provide educators information related to the ever-changing legal parameters as well as when and how school personnel may intervene.

Student Searches: Be Aware, Be Safe, Be Legal

Searching a student can be a difficult and stressful situation for students, staff, and parents. Consequently, decisions related to when, how, and who to search must be fair, consistent, and legally sound. This workshop will provide information that enables educators to recognize some of the pitfalls associated with student searches as well as recommendations that are practical, safe, and easily implemented in a school setting.