Upcoming Professional Development
There are two STEM Challenge workshops offered this spring:
Workshop 1: Secrets to Successful STEM Challenges
Workshop 2: Four STEM Challenges: Planning, Start-to-Finish.
Following the workshop descriptions below, you’ll find testimonials, presenter bio, FAQ, and contact information.
Workshop 1:
Secrets to Successful STEM Challenges
How do you get all the academic & social benefits from STEM Challenges? How do you know if you're doing it "right"?
Learn the essential elements of successful, substantive STEM Challenges, including:
- How to differentiate for age/ability
- Dos & don’ts for facilitating challenges
- Finding cross-curricular extensions
- Assessment
- Troubleshooting (handling epic fails, disagreements, avoiding common mistakes)
- Much more! (Details below)
*6.5 STEM CLOCK HOURS AVAILABLE THROUGH CSTP.
We’ll cover:
Planning challenges
- Selecting quality challenges & differentiating the criteria & constraints for any age/ability
- Integrating your content area standards (within and beyond STEM) into the challenge itself & post-challenge extensions
- Managing materials: selection, storage, and distribution (plus tips on where to get the best deals on common materials)
Conducting challenges
- The facilitator’s role: What you say & do (and don’t say/do) is extremely impactful in conducting top-notch challenges! We’ll go through dos & don’ts to build your confidence & your tool box!
- Defining your academic and overall goals for STEM Challenges, including how they can be used to develop scientific thinking, growth mindset, and skills students need to succeed in STEM careers.
- Troubleshooting: turning epic fails into epic lessons, handling group disagreements, time management, avoiding common mistakes, etc.
Post challenge activities/lessons
- Post-challenge reflection & analysis activities & routines are critical! We’ll go through how to use the post challenge time most effectively.
- Multiple iterations – why kids need them and how to practically fit multiple iterations into your schedule
- Assessment: thoughtful forms of assessment that will support your goals rather than undermine them.
Cost:
Regular Registration: $150
Includes: a full day of training, ~$30 of Feel-Good Teaching STEM Challenge resources, and breakfast.
Schedule (topic order may shift):
8:30 – 9:00 — Check in & Complimentary Continental Breakfast
9:00 – 12:00 — Morning Session
- Overview: Elements of successful, substantive STEM Challenges
- Hands-on practice, start-to-finish
- Debriefing the facilitator’s role (what to say and do and what to avoid at all costs!)
- Post challenge reflection and analysis
- Developing growth mindset & scientific thinking
12:00 – 1:00 — Lunch (on your own)
1:00 – 4:30 — Afternoon session
- Multiple iterations – why & how
- Adjusting difficulty through criteria & constraints
- Finding cross-curricular content connections & extensions
- Assessment
- Troubleshooting
- Practical bits: managing materials, storing designs, etc.
March 9, 2019*
Independence Room
8402 S Hosmer St.
Tacoma, WA 98444
March 23, 2019*
Olympic A Room
1801 12th Ave. N.W.
Issaquah, WA 98027
*As sessions fill up, new dates/locations may be added. See the FAQ at the bottom of the page to request a session date/location.
Registration is closed.
Workshop 2:
Four STEM Challenges: Planning, Start-to-Finish
Ready to take a deep dive into planning your STEM Challenges so they're tailored to your students' needs?
We’ll take one STEM Challenge for each season and build out engaging, cross-curricular lesson plans for your class, start-to-finish.
Note: Challenges align with fall, winter, spring, and summer; they are not holiday-themed.
*6.5 STEM CLOCK HOURS AVAILABLE THROUGH CSTP.
We’ll start with a base lesson plan and then customize the challenge and extension plans to meet your students’ needs.
Regardless of your grade level, most any challenge can be adjusted to meet most any age/ability/content area when you know where to look.
Bring your content standards and an open mind, ready to be stretched!
Materials will be provided.
For each challenge:
- We’ll go through a basic Criteria & Constraints List
- Work through building/tinkering on our own to help generate ideas for differentiation, troubleshooting, materials, etc.
- We’ll build out extension and follow-up lesson plans to deepen student understanding of integrated STEM components and explore STEM careers.
- Share ideas across grade-level bands and determine how to get all the instructional bang for your buck!
The Challenges:
- Fall: Apples Aloft
- Winter: Sled & Slope
- Spring: Nice Nest
- Summer: Keep it Cool / Make it Melt
Cost:
Regular Registration: $150
Includes: breakfast, a full day of training/lesson planning, four Feel-Good Teaching STEM Challenge resources, and an additional $30 of Feel-Good Teaching STEM Challenge resources.
Schedule:
8:30 – 9:00 — Check in & Complimentary Continental Breakfast
9:00 – 12:00 — Morning Session
- Spring: Nice Nest
- Summer: Keep it Cool / Make it Melt
12:00 – 1:00 — Lunch (on your own)
1:00 – 4:30 — Afternoon session
- Fall: Apples Aloft
- Winter: Sled & Slope
April 13, 2019*
Independence Room
8402 S Hosmer St.
Tacoma, WA 98444
*As sessions fill up, new dates/locations may be added. See the FAQ at the bottom of the page to request a session date/location.
Registration is closed.
Testimonials
I LOVED LOVED LOVED this webinar!! 🙂 Thank you soo much!
This hour webinar has been more informative than the pd I sat in for 4 hours.
Kerry- thank you so much for taking the time to offer this class! You have been very comprehensive and gave great tips and tricks!
Thank you for your webinar..your thoughts on what research looks like in a STEM challenge really made me reconsider. I had been really stressing to my teachers to research for a short time before. I see why that might lead to replication.
Great ideas and ways to extend depth and thinking with my students!!
I appreciate your knowledge and expertise in STEM and your ideas to make it more purposeful. The live sessions are on point, full of information, and kept to around 30 minutes, which makes it very doable on busy days. I also appreciate the pictures of the challenges in regular classrooms. I have done a lot of STEM challenges with my gifted first and second graders but I appreciate the strategies you shared to add rigor and to integrate more subjects into the challenges. I really want them to think and not just build and I think your strategies will really help with that!
FAQ
Kerry Tracy has 10 years of classroom experience , primarily in Pasadena, California. Her master’s degree is in Design-Based Learning, which heavily informs her approach to STEM challenges.
Since 2015, she has focused her time on developing multi-grade level/differentiated STEM challenges with supporting videos and PD to help other teachers discover how dramatic using these types of cross-curricular, hands-on methods to deliver content can be in the classroom when done thoughtfully.
Do these trainings count toward clock hours for the STEM professional development requirement for certificate renewal?
Yes! 6.5 STEM Clock Hours are available for both workshops through CSTP. They charge a $10 processing fee for each session and issue transcripts (no additional fee) each August.
You can find them on the state approved providers list (position 8).
Attendance will be capped at around 36 attendees per session. As you know, class size matters!
Note: As sessions fill up, new dates/locations may be added. You can opt in to receive notifications and/or make requests using the form provided above.
In these sessions, we will be learning best practices for planning & conducting STEM Challenges that will apply to all grade levels.
Kerry typically designs her own challenges with modifications for grades 2 – 8, so many session examples will fall within that range. That said, Kerry frequently receives feedback from kindergarten through high school teachers who are using her resources with great success, due to the differentiation strategies/examples provided.
Contact Kerry: kerry at feelgoodteaching (dot) com.
If you are interested in having Kerry present at your site, please send an email to kerry at feelgoodteaching (dot) com with the following information:
- School or District Name
- Virtual or In-Person Training Requested (if in person, please include your site’s zip code)
- Training Head Count
- Length of Session Requested (e.g. 1 hour, half day, full day, multi-day)
There is no cost for parking.
Food will vary based on location. Registered attendees will receive an email with details about the included breakfast and options for lunch on your own based on location about a week prior to the event.
Early Bird registration is through February 15, 2019. Starting, February 16, regular registration begins.
Regular registration ends either when a session fills up, or 3 days prior to the event, whichever happens sooner.
Discounts are available for groups of four or more. Please contact [email protected] for special registration details.
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