Teaching and Learning CoLab 2024

Our schools and classrooms are in a constant state of change, particularly over the past few years. This session will discuss how to assess what students need from a social/emotional wellness perspective; how to ensure we provide supports for social/emotional learning for all students and will give some ideas for how we can redesign schools with a focus on building stronger relationships.

Your mind is naturally prone to Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs). Uncover the most persistent types of ANTs and acquire techniques to halt these troublesome patterns. ANTs wreak havoc in your life. This program empowers participants to enhance their self-awareness and communication skills, enabling them to overcome obstacles in work, school, and home. Are you prepared to break free from what's hindering your progress? Have negative beliefs and behaviors taken root? Everything begins with a thought. Align your thoughts, transform your life.

The most effective way to address the Mental Health crisis is through a proactive mental fitness program. Stay ahead by nurturing your mental well-being. And nurture enhanced communication within yourself and with others to positively impact the lives of one another and our students.

Educators have too much on our plates without something to help. If only we had a team of grading assistants, graphic artists, instructional designers, junior writers, assessment developers, and student tutors who could read, write, and generate images faster than the most effective team. Come to this workshop and you'll leave with that team in your pocket.

We'll review AI programs that are free or low-cost for educators, and will run on any internet-enabled device. These tools can help draft teaching materials, integrate formative assessments, provide feedback on student work, encourage student-self-assessment, and support family communication and engagement.

These tools can also help ease school administrators' duties, and help a district team streamline operational duties as well.

In short, you'll leave this session with tools to make being an educator more sustainable, and the confidence to use them.

In today's rapidly evolving society, St. Vrain Valley Schools are prioritizing AI in education to prepare students for a globalized world. Through the year-long "Exploration AI" professional development program, educators are equipped with the skills to use AI effectively, ethically, and critically. This program includes a Professional Learning Network (PLN) using social media and online platforms, blending asynchronous and synchronous learning, and gamified incentives. Monthly after-hours events feature an EdCamp/Unconference format, tailored to educators' interests. The biggest takeaway for participants is a comprehensive understanding and practical skillset in utilizing AI within educational contexts, aimed at deepening their grasp of AI's potential and ensuring that well-informed teachers can facilitate students' effective use of AI in learning.

As our students advance from grade level to grade level, the depth and complexity housed within the content, concepts, and skills of the standards increases. Therefore, the expectation to learn how to read, write, and communicate while simultaneously reading, writing, and communicating to learn requires students to deconstruct the parts of text to understand the whole, as well as the different techniques employed by writers. How can our students deconstruct a text without knowing and understanding the words of a text? In this session, we will honor and polish our current practices to make a difference through a disciplinary literacy approach that asks, "What things can we do universally in our classrooms that would make a difference with our Tier 1 students in terms of continuing to build, maintain, and expand their literacy proficiency?"

The Elementary Literacy and School Readiness office at CDE has developed a series of turnkey professional development options to support the implementation of evidence-based instructional practices. This session will focus on routines for building word recognition skills: Blending and Segmenting, Phoneme Grapheme Mapping, and Heart Words.