TRAINING AT YOUR CAMPUS
We will inservice all of the teachers at your Campus so that vertical alignment can prevail. Every teacher plays a role, and together everyone creates a performance of a lifetime for each child. All students will benefit from the small chunking at each grade level, and will harbor a feeling of love for learning. Let us give each grade level team the WHY, the WHAT, and the HOW of effective vertical alignment for Reading and Writing.
Full Circle Language Arts
12 CPE Credit Hours
PK-8
The Full Circle Language Arts approach to mastering RLA is multifaceted. It focuses on teaching the child as well as having a vertically aligned, growth mindset vision. This FCLA vision begins with the use of sources which align to the science and social studies TEKS. It continues to grow the child through the use of ESSA’s four modes of learning: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All reading pieces, as well as questions and answer choices, provide a variety of options addressing all levels of DoK (Depth of Knowledge). To round out the accomplishments of FCLA, students will continually spiral back to reading comprehension, short answer responses, extended constructed responses, editing, and revising. The Full Circle approach comes alive every day and in every classroom as skills are taught together as opposed to isolating concepts into units which are addressed and then left unattended until they appear on a test. Be ready to be stress-free as everything you need to thrive is at your fingertips with FULL CIRCLE LANGUAGE ARTS presented by Teach BIG!
Tap and Think Reading
Tap and Think Reading 2.0 is available for Grades PK-8. Reading Inservices are Two-Day trainings and both days are required.
PK-2 Tap and Think Reading Day 1
6 CPE Credit Hours
In Day 1 of PK-2 Reading, participants will explore reading with realia in mind as they begin by asking questions, making predictions, and looking at the text to self, text to text, and text to world connection. Students will have a better understanding of author’s purpose, author’s perspective, text structure, text features, and point of view. At a grade-appropriate level, students will use concrete strategies for comprehending text like never before as they dive into visualizing what they have read, gathering textual evidence, and inferencing. Through the process of recognizing, verbalizing, and utilizing concepts with games and activities, teachers will leave with a wealth of knowledge in connecting reading and writing in a Teach BIG way!
PK-2 Tap and Think Reading Day 2
6 CPE Credit Hours
In Day 2 of PK-2 Reading, teachers will grow in higher level concepts like literary devices, character traits, literary elements, summarizing, and theme. Participants will look at question analysis and how to create a habit within their students of going back into the text to gather textual evidence. Furthermore, we will look at answer choice distractors and what makes an answer choice incorrect, and we will dive into real-life strategies for using all of the skills we have learned within reading passages. It will be an unforgettable, valuable training as participants “scroll” their way through reading and writing.
3-8/9-12 Tap and Think Reading- Day 1
6 CPE Credit Hours
Day 1 of our Tap and Think Reading features an incredible, brain-based method for comprehension and recalling reading selections. Participants will learn about CLOSE reading as they dive into concrete aspects of comprehension including author’s purpose, author’s perspective, text structure, genre, point of view, textual evidence, elements of literature, and literary devices. In addition, higher level, abstract concepts like emotional changes/growth, inferencing, summarizing, main idea, and theme will be thoroughly covered! Within each of these concepts, students will learn through the Claims/Domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing as they play tactile learning games that will help them remember forever the concepts taught in your classroom. Participants will see just how connected reading and writing truly are as we share our Reading WRITE concepts!
3-8/9-12 Tap and Think Reading Day 2
6 CPE Credit Hours
Day 2 of Tap and Think Reading will begin with in-depth vocabulary analysis. Teachers will experience new ways to develop quality dictionary skills and use context clues to determine the meaning of a word. Additionally, they will walk through poetry, drama, question, and answer choice terminology. Participants will analyze text features in a brain-based way that emphasizes the author’s purpose behind each text feature. They will become even more aware of this question-based terminology by applying strategies to simulate assessment passages. With such a firm knowledge base from Day 1, participants will analyze types of questions, look at answer choice distractors, and use answer choice strategies with ease. Reading comprehension application will be more tangible, interactive, and retainable than ever before when students are Reading WRITE!
Reading Passage Analysis (Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12)
6 CPE Credit Hours
The first course of our Tap and Think Reading features an incredible, brain-based method for comprehension and recalling reading selections. Participants will learn about CLOSE reading as they dive into concrete aspects of comprehension, including author’s purpose, author’s perspective, text structure, genre, point of view, textual evidence, elements of literature, and literary devices.
Reading Question Analysis (Grades 3-8, 9-12)
6 CPE Credit Hours
The second course of Tap and Think Reading (Question Analysis) will begin with in-depth vocabulary analysis. Teachers will experience new ways to develop quality dictionary skills and use context clues to determine meanings. Additionally, they will walk through poetry, drama, question, and answer choice terminology and strategies.
The Writing Academy
Bring The Writing Academy inservices to your campus this year! Each inservice below is a separate, 6-hour inservice day. All inservices are brain-based and focus on teaching curriculum through kinesthetic games and activities.
Editing & Revising
An In-Depth Look at How Reading Pieces are Upgraded through Editing and Revising Techniques
The difference between the types of sentences is the most important piece of the editing part of the circle. Understanding simple, compound, and complex sentence structures can be the difference between successful written communication and communication that confuses the reader. Learning parts of speech, grammar rules, and sentence structure is now among students’ favorite parts of their day! Believe me when I say that all of this can be accomplished through kinesthetic activities, chants to help retain information, and symbols that store the information in the brain for a lifetime! Rearrange? Exchange? Add? Delete? Decipher that, and the Revising journey will be successful. Once students know the difference between the types of revising questions, they can conquer the strategies needed to answer the questions. Buckle your seat belts for one of the most eye-opening pieces of the Language Arts circle! This seminar teaches the types of revising questions and the types of answer choices that accompany them. All of this is accomplished by learning how to use the provided writing pieces as a springboard.
Editing (Grade Levels: PK-2, 3-8, 9-12)
6 CPE Credit Hours
Tackle the objective section of assessments head-on! You will experience sentence structure and grammar rules being brought to life. Students will know what it means to SEE a sentence, and BE a sentence. Participants will explore tactile-kinesthetic games that help students learn and internalize the difference between simple, compound, and complex sentences. These learning games will be followed by how to apply this to the assessment tests and samples of how it will look on the tests. This seminar will address: nouns, pronouns, verbs (helping and linking), verb tense (simple, perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive), adjectives, prepositions, prepositional phrases, adverbs, punctuation, capitalization, and the all important comma! Classrooms will never be the same after this in-service!
Editing is a 1 day inservice for 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
Editing and revising is a combined 1-day inservice for pk-2
Revising (Grade Levels: Pk-2. 3-8, 9-12)
6 CPE Credit Hours
READ & ROCK your way through Revising. Learn how to differentiate between the different types of Revising questions (Rearrange, Exchange, Add, and Delete). Follow that with successful strategies to tackle a variety of answer choices such as R.O.C.K. (Repeats, Offs, Connections, and Knowledge). Add all of this greatness to a true understanding of sequence and you’ll have the most fun you’ve ever had teaching Revising!
