Virtual Learning Communities
What if you could bring back more than just good intentions from professional learning experiences?
Our Virtual Learning Communities are different than most online courses in that each VLC has a facilitator who guides the course, provides valuable feedback, and fosters a community of learners. At EdQuiddity, we believe professional learning should:
- Model innovative practices
- Provide new learning
- Have participants design materials to use in school immediately
We now offer an option beyond our in-person professional learning! Online engagement, 25 hours of self-paced engagement, in addition to continual feedback and assistance, and video conference sessions. Work at times convenient for you and have fun challenging your pedagogical thinking.
Only $595 per seat or $4,950 for a 10-pack of seats.
Click the images below for course descriptions.
Available VLC Schedule
In this course, participants will leverage choice and technology to provide students with the ultimate differentiated learning environment. They will develop differentiated digital activity lists rooted in rigorous instruction that offer multiple ways to learn and apply content. Participants will explore autonomy, purpose, and mastery as motivators in all learning environments. They will design differentiated digital activity lists to put students in charge of their own learning, creating a structure that allows students to make decisions within a structured framework. Making informed decisions is an essential life skill that teachers can support with intentional structures and strategies.
Syllabus:
- Exploring ends-based teaching as a foundation for differentiation
- Understanding the difference between the 5 types of instructional activities
- Connecting student choice and voice to empowerment and academic achievement
- Exploring cognitive levels and learning styles to develop 5 types of instructional activities for learning anywhere, anytime
- Building a differentiated digital activity list to provide students choice in how and when they engage in learning and practice activities
- Exploring the role of the teacher in an environment that empowers students to take more responsibility for their learning
- Exploring the role of technology to leverage opportunities for differentiation in differentiated digital activity lists
- Developing instructional videos and activities to support differentiation in digital activity lists
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book Reinventing the Classroom Experience as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC.
Equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices raise the level of rigor and maximize potential for all learners. In this course, you will explore the role of teacher as curator and facilitator to reflect on your learning environment that accepts, appreciates, and advocates for cultural differences and social justice. Participants will explore and brainstorm problems focused on instructional and social equity. They will navigate and design culturally responsive resources, structures, and facilitation practices to address bias in and beyond the classroom. This course will position participants to leverage students’ culture, language, and life experiences into rigorous academic achievement.
Syllabus:
- Establishing working definitions of equity, bias, and social justice in the classroom
- Developing strategies and structures for prioritizing a culturally responsive classroom through needs identification, resource-access, and tuned facilitation
- Developing learning activities through a culturally relevant lens to meet cognitive levels and learning styles
- Designing differentiated opportunities for students to learn in an environment that promotes executive function through structures and facilitation
- Exploring the role of facilitator and facilitation strategies to build and maintain relationships and trust with students
- Brainstorming problems to address social justice and equitable access and opportunity issues within the students’ neighborhood
- Empowering students to become active participants in the learning process
Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC.
Explore the power of the 6 Ps of PBL. Design a PBL task, a rubric to drive instruction, a scaffold of rich and diverse learning activities to implement with your students, and a plan for facilitating the learning.
Syllabus:
- Understanding how “Raising Academic Rigor,” “Engaging Students in Learning,” and “Building Student Responsibility for Learning” go hand-in-hand
- Exploring the 6 Ps of PBL: place, problem, project, profession, phenomena, and pursuit-based learning
- Developing authentic, open-ended, problem-based tasks that create a felt need to learn
- Designing analytic rubrics to offer clearly articulated expectations, a roadmap for all learners, and challenges for gifted learners
- Designing a scaffold for learning to develop differentiated learning and practice activities
- Developing one or more other structures to support the unit, e.g.:
- Formative Assessments to drive instructional planning
- Facilitation Questions to probe students’ thinking at higher cognitive levels
- Facilitation Grid to manage your ongoing student facilitation
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book Students Taking Charge as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC.
Participants will explore how executive function supports the critical life skills of conscious control, engagement, collaboration, empowerment, efficacy, and leadership. As you develop activities and strategies for your learning environment, your IDE consultant will guide you through the process of targeting your facilitation to improve students’ executive function. Throughout the course, participants will reflect upon and communicate their classroom experiences to receive virtual coaching from an IDE consultant.
Syllabus:
- Understanding the six levels of increasingly complex life skills that depend upon executive function
- Identifying activities and structures that build executive function focused around the critical six levels of life skills
- Understanding how teacher facilitation builds the executive function skills around the critical six levels of life skills
- Designing structures for the classroom to create a culture of executive function
- Developing tools for teacher facilitation to create a culture of executive function.
Participants in this course will use Dr. Nancy Sulla’s book Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement as a resource. The assigned book must be purchased in advance. Access to MyQPortal is included for all participants while enrolled in the VLC.
How can teachers help English Language Learners (ELLs) thrive in their classrooms? This VLC will offer strategies based on 7 Essential Elements for ELL Support: Physical Space, Scaffolding, Resources, Explicit Language Instruction, Facilitation, Emotional Wellness, and Social Engagement. Participants will learn actionable strategies to implement to help both students and teachers thrive. Strategies will be tailored to each participant’s grade level and subject area.
Syllabus:
- Understanding the “7 Essential Elements for ELL Support”
- Recognizing the role that students’ academic backgrounds have in implementing these elements
- Learning strategies for each of the 7 Elements
- Making assessment work for ELLs
- Eliciting feedback from your ELLs