All of a sudden I have a zillion workshop questions! A few days ago I had a wonderful workshop experience, and it got me wondering… How many workshops do teachers attend in a normal school year? What do teachers enjoy most about workshops? Do they have favorite workshop topics? Do they have favorite types of workshops?
My very first teacher workshop was a “make-and-take” learning centers class. I still remember the location, the instructor, and the sense of accomplishment it gave me. It was my first year of teaching, and I was absolutely thrilled to have several centers ready to share with my students the following Monday.
| My most recent workshop was also a “make-and-take” affair. I brought a pair of garden gloves, a large container, and $20. By the end of the workshop I was grinning from ear to ear and marveling over my freshly planted container garden. I again felt a sense of accomplishment. And even though this workshop wasn’t teaching-related, I was reminded that a great workshop is led by a great presenter. |  |
Well, enough about my workshop experiences! I’d like to hear what you have to say about workshops. Bring on the chatter!
Diane
I have been going to and presenting workshops for over 20 years. I still love to go. A good workshop renews me for class on Monday. I was very lucky to attend a workshop presented by Thelma Harms who was one of the original author/researcher for the assesment tool that is used to rate preschools. It was very interesting and gave me a more positive view of how the tool was created and it’s use.
But I too still love the make and take.
My first workshop 25+ years ago was a make-it, take-it one. I loved it! I still remember the great creations I came home with and still use many of those ideas and techniques to this day. As teachers, I feel that we also enjoy when we can do “hands on” type workshops much more than a lecture or following a handout that someone is going to read to us……I am an educator so I do know how to read. Too many times workshops are set up for the mere purpose of counting as continuing education classes which is a nice way to keep our certification up to date but more useful “walk out the door with something you can use tomorrow” is more to my liking. With budget cuts and money so tight I would love to see workshops that do not have to be computer generated or test driven. I’m open of ideas if anyone has something to share.
I guess a lot of schools still go to “workshops” but professional development in our building is now on-going (at least once a week, embedded in the school day) and pertains directly to work we are doing every day. For instance, it might include bringing student work to the table and discussing it, or going to a teacher’s room and watching her teach with a debrief afterwards, or working together to write an assessment (and then giving it, bringing the results back to the table and rewriting it), or it might be hands-on in that we might all bring our laptops to learn how to blog or work on our collaborative grade level wiki or work on lessons we are writing on Google Docs, or maybe we are all reading the same book and come together for a book study. Rarely do we go out of our building anymore (except to a professional conference) for a “workshop.” I really like this type of collaborative work that we are doing now. Is anybody else doing this instead of workshops?
Dayle,
I love the ideas your school is using! I enjoy going to workshops sometimes, but they can be expensive and aren’t always worth the time. The collaboration that you have going on sounds wonderful!
Dayle,
That sounds great! Are they all co-worker presented or do you still have outside presenters come in?
I like the idea of a weekly collaboration but I think that I would miss having “new” information if it is all generated from the same co-workers that I work with everyday.
My favorite and most memerable workshop was a book-making make and take workshop. It was awesome! We all walked away with about 8 different ways to make a book with our students. Some were easy enough to make with preschoolers and others were more elaborate and artistic. I really enjoyed the day! All the participants couldn’t believe how much we enjoyed ourselves and how quickly the day passed!
Does anyone have some suggestions for a Literacy Workshop for Parents? I would love to have some ideas since I am working on one to be presented soon. My email is books4life2@yahoo.com if anyone would be kind enough to share their ideas. 🙂 Thanks!
Dear Debbie hi. I liked the idea of make it and take it. I am interested to know what kind of creations you made? Would you pl. share your creations and ideas more in detail. Also let me know some good websites on workshop ideas if you know. Thanks.
Hello nuzhat! The major workshop(s) that stick out the most from so many years ago were the Carson-Dellosa ones. I honestly don’t know if they still have them but at the time I was a new teacher and computers weren’t around then. Ditto sheets were ‘the bomb’ so to speak which we called ‘purple passion’ sheets. One quick tool that I am still using is as follows:
When needing to make a rather large drawing of something but don’t know how to draw very well try this – take a white sheet of tissue paper and lay it over the object (map, cartoon character, a friend’s poster they purchased, etc.) Use a pencil to outline what you see through the tissue paper. When you are ready to make the final posterboard type picture simply place the pencil marked tissue paper over your posterboard and use a dark Marks-A-Lot marker to trace over the pencil markings. This will bleed through the tissue paper and leave a not so perfect marking on the posterboard but you can then trace over those marks when you get ready to do your final outline before coloring with your favorite type of tool (crayons, markers, chalk, etc.) Cut out, laminate, and you have your own individualized and personalized poster or cutout for anything you can imagine. I use this to make door decorations/greetings, bulletin board ideas, classroom displays of students’ work, etc. I haven’t gone to a their website to see if they offer workshops but think it is something I should check into especially with the budget cuts we are under and will continue to face in the next few years. Hope this helps you be creative as it has me. Thanks for asking and good luck. Tissue paper is very cheap and poster board is on sale at times so one commercial poster costing $10+ could cost you less than $1.
The last work shop I went to was using puppets in literacy. We made quick plaster finger puppets. We also had to bring in a sock and we made sock puppets. There were so many different ones!
My fellow teacher and I were so excited to use them in class the next day. The children all wanted to use them so we got supplies to make 18 more–one for each student. They designed their own puppet. We had a puppet parade and had them sing songs to our preschool director and the students parents. That was one of the best make-it and take-it classes I’ve been to in a long time.