Description
This bundle includes tickets for Teaching with Clarity: Understanding by Design in Everyday Planning and Reading with Purpose: Designing ELA Units for Deeper Understanding.
Teaching with Clarity: Understanding by Design in Everyday Planning
Price: $ 120
Date: Thursday, October 16th, 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. ET
Instructors: Joan McGettigan, EdD
Grades: K – 8
Why This Workshop:
Even the most thoughtfully developed curriculum can fall short if students don’t understand the “why” behind what they’re learning. This workshop introduces a practical approach to using Understanding by Design (UbD) principles to bring more clarity, focus, and intentionality to classroom planning (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Participants will learn how to anchor instruction in big ideas and essential questions that promote deeper thinking, support long-term retention, and encourage transfer across content areas. Participants will discover how to break down unit planning into manageable steps, use time-saving templates, and ensure alignment between instruction and learning objectives.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Learn how to identify and use big ideas and essential questions to frame instruction that deepens understanding and promotes knowledge transfer
- Use backward design strategies to clarify learning goals and align them with daily lessons and formative assessments
- Apply practical planning tools to streamline instructional decision-making and highlight what matters most in a unit
- Strengthen the connection between learning objectives, student tasks, and assessment, making learning more purposeful and transparent for students
Reading with Purpose: Designing ELA Units for Deeper Understanding
Price: $ 120
Date: Tuesday, December 2nd from 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. ET, In Person/Virtual
Instructors: Alison Leveque, PhD. And Danielle Ngo, MA
Grades: 2-8
Why this Workshop:
Transform your ELA instruction by learning to design purposeful, engaging units built around the principles of Understanding by Design (UbD)(Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). This workshop equips educators to craft meaningful, goal-oriented units—whether centered on a novel, text set, book series, or thematic topic—using backward design strategies that prioritize depth and transfer of learning. Participants will explore how to anchor units in essential questions that spark curiosity, regardless of the curriculum materials at hand. You’ll leave with ready-to-use strategies for integrating authentic writing tasks, rich discussions, and multimedia texts to promote critical thinking and deepen student learning.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Use backward design to develop focused, flexible ELA units aligned to essential understandings and learning goals
- Apply strategies to build background knowledge, scaffold comprehension, and promote deeper analysis of literature and informational text
- Integrate writing, multimedia, and collaborative discussions to enrich learning and support diverse learners
- Leave with a practical UbD-aligned unit planning guide to immediately apply to your next unit
