Educators often find professional development (PD) experiences to not meet their needs often because they have little choice about participating, the session is pitched through a one-size-fits-all lesson design, or active engagement that is intentional just isn’t a focus of the session. On the other hand, educators will say that when they have a choice in attending sessions seen as connected to their work, that differentiated learning, and actively engages them in experiences that are transferable back into their classrooms, the value of the PD is clear to them. The Virginia School Consortium for Learning staff and planning committee of steering team practitioners see the 2019-20 professional development workshops and conferences as offering a continuum of choices, definitely differentiated, and grounded in active engagement.Here are highlights of upcoming workshops that are being run by practitioners for practitioners. To learn more about the full range of opportunities and to register, click here

These three examples represent the work done by the PD Planning Committee this year to develop VaSCL focus areas including development of assessment literacy, lesson designs for  mathematical competencies, and infusing Social Emotional Learning throughout the school day.  You can register for these by clicking on the link.

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 CO-FACILITATORS “DEVELOPING HIGH-QUALITY PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS AS PART OF A BALANCED ASSESSMENT PLAN” (GRADES K-12) KELLEY AITKEN AND ANNIE EVANS

This session will familiarize participants with the fundamentals of performance assessment development by exploring how to unpack standards to craft high-quality learning goals, develop tasks that measure deep understanding and transfer of learning, create instructions that reflect learning goals and communicate clear expectations for student performance, and develop scoring rubrics that provide informative instructional feedback and align with the standards delineated by the VDOE Quality Criteria Tool.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 MATH LEARNING PROGRESSIONS #1: BUILDING PATHWAYS FOR MATHEMATICS UNDERSTANDING – NUMBER SYSTEMS & OPERATIONS (GRADES 3-8 )FACILITATORS DR. JENNIFER SUH, DR. KIMBERLY MORROW-LEONG, SARA BIRKHEAD, LARRY BURNER, DR. DEB CRAWFORD, AMANDA RICKARD

All children follow natural developmental progressions in learning. Curriculum research has revealed sequences of activities that are effective in guiding learners through these levels of thinking. These developmental paths are the basis for math learning trajectories. The three workshops will address the following questions: How do students learn a topic?; What do equitable teaching practices look like?; How can we teach with visual tools within a learning progression?; What does math modeling look like at my grade level?; and, How can we systematically use evidence from formative assessment to monitor progress and guide instruction? The goal of these workshops is to help educators teach the way in which students learn, which will ensure that their programs offer equitable mathematics instructional practices.

OCTOBER 3 AND NOVEMBER 21, 2019) INFUSING SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL LEARNING INTO ALL ASPECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE: PART I AND PART II (GRADES K-6) DR. CAROL DAVIS

This workshop is designed to support school-based teams of K-6 educators through a process for implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) throughout their entire elementary school. Schoolwide SEL is a systemic approach to infusing social and emotional learning into every part of students’ educational experience — across all classrooms, during all parts of the school day, and in partnership with families and communities. When SEL is developed as an integrated model across curriculum and all aspects of the school community, research shows that SEL becomes a bridge to academic development, resulting in achievement that is at least 11% higher than in schools that do not incorporate SEL.

We hope you can join us for one of more of the workshops offered for members and others with an interest in the topics for PD.

You can follow VaSCL on twitter @scl_Va and catch up with our work at our website https://www.vascl.org/ .