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COURSE DESCRIPTIONS |
Catherine Leahy-Brine Educational Consultants, Inc.
P.O. Box 1060
Brockton, Ma 02303
Phone 781-331-8826 Fax 781-337-6152
Course DescriptionsAssessment Across the Curriculum
(EDUC7000)
This course is designed to provide the student with a solid foundation in the area of classroom assessment. The student will gain a deeper understanding of topics such as validity, reliability, and error of measurement. Various approaches to testing (e.g., norm/criterion-referenced assessment, formative/summative evaluation) will be covered, as well as specific types of assessment (standardized, teacher-constructed), and how each can be used to inform instruction. The student will understand different types of scores, and will become knowledgeable about assessments ranging from paper and pencil tests to performance tasks and rating scales. The course's focus will be on the applied aspects of assessment within the classroom. Issues of bias related to assessment of diverse student populations will also be included.Classroom Strategies for Character Education K-12/Save Our Youth
(EDUC 7000)
Why are American youth at such severe risk? It "it takes a village to raise a child," perhaps the answer lies in what has happened to our "village." This course will examine the current state of America's children, and the alarming increase in their violent and deviant behavior and their observed lack of basic human values. The causative factors of changing social, economic, family and work patterns will be examined as well as the classic research on the stages of moral reasoning. All stakeholders in America's youth will be represented in possible solutions to the problems of character education: family, school and community.
Creating and Managing Learning Centers in English Language Arts
(EDUC 7000)
This course is designed to provide teachers with the theoretical underpinnings of literacy centers as well as a thorough understanding of the components of effective literacy centers and their purposeful and strategic use. The course will further provide participants with a variety of ideas for differentiated classroom literacy centers. Ultimately, this course will assist teachers in helping to provide students opportunities to practice, extend, and apply strategies they have been taught and have seen modeled in guided literacy lessons.Creating Connections: Curriculum, Technology and Learning
This course will bring together online resources, curriculum frameworks and updated methodologies complimenting Internet resources with effective templates for seamlessly organizing and presenting learning activities that access the internet. Work achieved and projects developed in this course will be in the area of your curriculum. This course will provide evaluation tools for web sites and resources, a review or update of advanced searching strategies and enable participants to build an actual WebQuest for their grade and content focus and to build a rubric for evaluating their WebQuest activities.Creating Math Materials for Classroom Use
(EDUC7007)
Participants will explore the use of manipulatives and activity based hands-on learning relating to the K-8 Mathematics curriculum. The Mathematics Curriculum Frameworks will be reviewed as well as the NCTM Standards. Grade level objectives will be explored and lessons investigated during concrete examples to achieve mathematical learning. Manipulatives will include: Base Ten Blocks, Unifix Cubes, Pattern Blocks, color Tiles, Tangrams, Geoboards and others as time permits and the needs of participants are met. Additional classroom strategies will also be investigated.Differentiating Instruction Across the Content Areas
(EDUC7000)
This course is designed to assist teachers of all subject areas in matching their instructional approaches to the needs and interests of every student in their classrooms. Faced with the challenge of increasingly diverse classrooms, participants will explore field-tested and proven ideas for how to match instructional approaches to the readiness, interests and talents of all students. Included in this course are the fundamental principles that support differentiated instruction, a variety of instructional strategies that provide multiple learning paths for students, and suggestions for managing the differentiated classroom. Closely aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks Common Core of Learning Chapters, this course provides effective methods for differentiating curriculum content, student products and learning and assessment activities.Educational and Community Responses to The Deviant Student
(EDUC7000)
Participants will learn early warning signs, causes and intervention strategies for a myriad of anti-social behaviors common in today's society. Psychological and physiological consequences of such behaviors will be examined as well as legal challenges faced by criminal justice professionals.Family and Community Service Learning
(EDUC7000)
This course highlights how the home, school and community partnership enhances the academic success for all students in our community through various means of community service learning. An in-depth look at the National Standards for Parent Involvement will be discussed throughout the course, as it can be a segue for many programs and projects for Community Service Learning.Foundations of Reading Instruction
(EDUC7000)
This course is designed to provide analysis and discussion in five areas of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. Each session will define a skill, review the evidence from research, suggest implications for classroom instruction, describe proven strategies for teaching reading skills, and address frequently raised questions.Hook 'Em With a Poem: Integrating Poetry Across the Content Areas, K-8
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
This highly interactive course focuses on effective ways to use poetry across all curricula areas in the classroom. Throughout the course's entirety, participants are actively exposed to a vast array of American poets as well as to a wide variety of poetry. The connection between poetry, rhythm, and music, and enhanced memory lanes are stressed. In addition to accomplishing the primary goal of fostering a love and appreciation of poetry in students, the course also examines poetry as a literary genre to be studied in the context of standardized assessments, Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and the demands of MCAS. With these high stakes in mind, instructional methods for teaching the figurative and inferential meaning of poetry are an important course focus.Ignite the Fire: Putting Passion in the Classroom
This course will include a number of movies about passionate teachers who draw our attention to the power of passionate teaching. These movies about excellent teaching depict a pedagogical paradigm shift from one that focuses on what the teacher does in the classroom (an instructional paradigm) to one that focuses on whether and how students learn (a learning paradigm). The shift is not easy, but it is just as possible in real classrooms as it is in the movies. This course, therefore, will focus on creative and diverse ways for teachers to accomplish this paradigm shift in their own practice. The end result of this course will be teachers who are more passionate about their own learning (i. e. teacher knowledge of their content and of their pedagogy). In addition to film, varied educational journal articles, books and other respected research will be woven into the course.Linking the Talents Unlimited Thinking Skills Model to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks
The divergent thinking processes highlighted in Talents Unlimited Thinking Skills Model are similar to those included in the MCAS tests. This course provides in-depth, hands-on training in the Talents Unlimited model with specific emphasis on linking five skills of productive thinking to the strands and standards of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. Participants view concrete examples of students' products and develop effective lesson plans related to their own curricula. the course is highly interactive and results in lessons which enable all children to experience success as well as heightened self-esteem derived from authentic success. Talents Unlimited is based on the Multiple Talent Theory of Dr. Calvin Taylor which examines the many different ways of "being smart."Save our Youth: Classroom Strategies for Moral Education
Why are American youth at such severe risk? If "it takes a village to raise a child," perhaps the answer lies in what has happened to our "village." This course will examine the current state of America's children, the alarming increase in their violent and deviant behavior and their observed lack of basic human values. The causative factors of changing social, economic, family and work patterns will be examined as well as the classic research on the stages of moral reasoning. All stakeholders in America's youth will be represented in possible solutions to the problems of character education: family, school, community.Schools as Enablers of Students' Co-dependent Behavior K-12
Presenting an in-depth analysis of both functional and dysfunctional families, this course will focus on recurring and consistent models which exist in dysfunctional settings as they relate to birth order and other familial factors. Ways in which students then act out their "roles" in school settings will be analyzed. Schools today must provide new and successful models (several will be presented based on current research on co-dependent behavior) to overcome traditional responses to dysfunctional behavior.Teaching Responsible Behavior, K-12
(EDUC 7000 Topics: Fitchburg)
This course will examine psychological, social, emotional, and behavioral issues that affect the learning of children and adolescents in public schools. Participants will demonstrate an understanding of antisocial behavior and mental health diagnoses. Various science based curricula will be presented to address school issues such as bullying, conflict resolution, sexual harassment, pro social skills and strategies to counter antisocial skills demonstrated by students. Successful school and community models will be investigated.Teaching Science in the Elementary and Middle School
(EDUC 7025)
This course covers contemporary thinking, practices and research in the teaching of science to elementary and middle school students. Emphasis is on providing innovative hands-on experiences for students.Teaching Vocabulary Effectively Across the Content Areas
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
Vocabulary knowledge is critical to the act of comprehending what one is reading. This course will examine current and classic research on how individuals of all ages acquire language. Research-based teaching practices that have been proven to be effective in the teaching of vocabulary will also be presented, examined and practiced. Participants will use the knowledge gained in this course to incorporate these best teaching strategies in their instruction of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks across all content areas.Terror in the Name of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
This course will examine the growing alliance between religion and violence from a historical, political and sociological perspective. Religion seems to be connected with violence everywhere. The September 11 assaults were only the most spectacular of a series of bloody religious incidents. In recent years, for example, religious violence has erupted among right wing Christians in the United States, Angry Muslims and Jews in the Middle East and indigenous religious communities in Africa, Indonesia and in other parts of the world. Like the activists associated with Osama bin Laden, those involved in these events have relied on religion to provide political identities that give license to vengeful ideologies. This course will examine in depth this "unholy" alliance.Thinking Movies as a Potential Resource for the Humanities Curriculum
(EDUC 7000 Topics in Education)
These past few years the movie industry has provided the public with excellent in depth studies of the many social issues facing American society. Some of these movies include Crash, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, Kingdom of Heaven and others. This course will examine these movies for their potential as resources for Social Studies, English and Literature courses and will also be a hands on course in which curriculum units are developed.Twentieth Century Literature: A Sociological Perspective
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
This course examines key concerns in literature in a challenging conceptual framework. The course is designed to look at pressing contemporary issues in literacy scholarship. Lectures, as well as students' discussions and reflections will be focused on in-depth investigations of the authors' purpose with respect to social issues over the last century. Themes will include, but are not limited to, postmodernism, globalization, education, religious influences, violence and taboos, pop culture, consumerism, crime and the criminal, gangs, multiculturalism, socio-economic concerns, gender roles and stereo-types.Understanding Wellness and the Coordinated School Health Model
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
This course is designed to explore the six dimensions of wellness and how they relate to personal and professional goals. Participants will evaluate their own level of wellness and explore various teaching strategies that can be integrated into their everyday lessons to promote wellness for their students. The eight components of the Coordinated School Health Model will be examined as well as the current status of this initiative as it relates to academics. Participants will be given the opportunity to create action plans to increase their individual level of wellness as well as increasing wellness within their schools. Group discussions will solicit short term and long-term goals to achieve a Coordinated School Health Model.Violence Against Children
Children have long been the recipients of a variety of forms of abuse and neglect. Infanticide was referenced in some of the oldest written documents, and continues to occur today in many parts of the world. In the United States, child abuse was regarded as a normative behavior that did not require social intervention until the Progressive Movement of the early 1900s. It then declined in attention until the 1960s, when Kempe's Battered Child Syndrome hit the press. Since then, child abuse has gained in public attention including child neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse. This course will review the history of violence and abuse, and then bring it into discussing other forms of violence with which children and adolescents must deal in contemporary society. These other forms include witnessing domestic violence, witnessing social violence, bullying in schools, gang membership, and the routine socialization of children for violence. Understanding the impact of racism, sexism, classism and other forms of oppression including terrorism on children will also be examined.WebQuest for Educators
This on-line course is designed to provide teachers of all grade levels and in all content areas a means to integrate technology into their classrooms. By following the standards of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks participants will explore the concept of web quests, design their own web quest, and integrate them within their curriculum. Participants will be giving their students a diverse way to discover new ideas, think critically and share strategies to solve problems and answer questions.This course is non-synchronous, meaning you control the time and place. This course will be comprised of eight modules and have 37.5 contact hours. Participants will spend an average of 6 to 8 hours per week on the course through a combination of reading, interacting online with the instructor and other learners, and completing assignments.
Writing Across Content Areas
(EDUC7000, Fitchburg)
This course is designed to improve the teacher's ability to develop student critical thinking skills in all content areas through the writing process. Teachers will be involved in writing activities and projects to enhance learning in all content areas by choosing key thinking and writing skills for students and evaluating student writing to plan for strategic teaching. Writing Content to be covered includes: domains of writing, audience, form, writer's role, explicit assessment criteria, and prewriting procedures.
