Dr. Catlin Tucker

Explore how online discussions, choice boards, and hyperdocs can foster collaboration and give students more control over their learning in a blended classroom. Participants will explore these strategies and the technology tools needed to design their own online discussion topics, choice boards, and hyperdocs! Participants will leave this hands-on workshop with lessons they can use with students.

*Full Day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session

*Note: This can be broken up into three 90-minute sessions

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning

Leading the Shift to Blended Learning: The Why, How, and What The transition from traditional teacher-led learning to student-centered blended learning is daunting for all stakeholders in a school community, so leaders must have a clear vision. This session will explore the why, how, and what of blended learning so leaders can clearly communicate the value of this shift to teachers, students, and parents. Why: Articulate the why, or value, of blended learning How: Explore the blended learning models to understand how they work and what teaching/learning will look like in classrooms What: Identify the “pillars of learning” that can be used to create a blended learning rubric that allows leaders and coaches to provide uniform feedback about progress toward teaching and learning goals

*Half-Day or Full Day

*Audience: School Leaders

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: Power Up Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

Explore how blended learning models–Station Rotation and the Flipped Classroom–can help teachers reimagine learning in the classroom. Blended learning models create more opportunities for individualized scaffolding and support, differentiated instruction, and self-paced learning. During this hands-on workshop, participants will experience a Station Rotation lesson then create a lesson they can use with students immediately. They will also learn how to design a flipped lesson that effectively blends in-class and online learning.

*Full Day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

Lecture alone is ineffective, whether it is live or online. So, the challenge with the flipped classroom model is to engage students around the video content in a dynamic way. This session will review tips for creating effective video instruction and explore strategies teachers can use to design a complete learning experience around video content. Leveraging video content to shift some explanations, instruction, and models online can free the teacher to work directly with students to facilitate learning.

*Half-day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

It's impossible to meet the needs of diverse learners if you move lockstep through curriculum and activities as a whole class. Explore how the Station Rotation Model can help you create more opportunities to work directly with small groups of students, individualize scaffolding and support, differentiate instruction, move feedback into the classroom, and allow students to control the pace of their learning. During this hands-on, practice-based session, Catlin Tucker will highlight strategies for designing dynamic lessons, provide tips for making the most of your teacher-led station, review grouping strategies, and encourage you to move feedback and assessment into the classroom.

*Half-day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

The playlist model shifts control over the pace of learning to students and frees the teacher to spend time supporting individual students as they progress through the playlist. Playlists can be differentiated and/or personalized if teachers build conferencing into their playlists. A playlist can span a few days or a couple of weeks depending on the scope. This workshop is designed to help teachers use backward design to construct a personalized playlist. Participants will identify a focus for their playlist, explore the elements of a playlist, and work collaboratively in grade-level or subject-area teams to create an outline they can use to create their playlists. *Half-Day or Full Day Note: Half-day will focus on creating an outline for the playlist. The full day will allow teachers time to begin creating their playlists.

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

Too often professional learning is an event, not a process. Districts spend money on technology but do not invest equally in building a professional learning infrastructure to ensure that technology has a transformative impact on both teaching and learning. Catlin Tucker will provide an overview of a blended learning coaching cycle designed to support teachers from goal setting to implementation to reflection. She will also highlight the value of grouping teachers in professional learning communities that use coaching strategies in combination with an ongoing inquiry and action cycle to continue learning together. If schools are going to meet the rapidly changing needs of their students, it's crucial that the entire school community has a professional learning strategy that works.

*Full Day

*Audience: Coaches

*Book pairing: Power Up Blended Learning or UDL and Blended Learning

As educational landscapes evolve, educators need to embrace a mindset, skill set, and tool set that allows them to thrive in class, online, or a blend of the two! It’s time to design and facilitate learning experiences that free teachers from their role as the expert at the front of the room and place students at the center of learning. Teachers who universally design learning using blended learning models to remove barriers, give students agency, develop dynamic learning communities, and cultivate expert learners will thrive in any teaching and learning landscape. Join educator and best-selling author Dr. Catlin Tucker to explore universally designing learning using blended learning models.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning

Lack of time and energy are barriers to innovation. Too many teachers are exhausted because they are doing the lion's share of the work. To achieve balance, teachers must shift their mindset, develop their skill set, and build a useful toolset. Teachers who partner with students can share the responsibility of learning to create dynamic learning environments both online and offline. Join educator and best-selling author Dr. Catlin Tucker to reimagine your role, rethink your workflow, and reclaim your life.

*Book pairing: Balance with Blended Learning

As learning moves online, many teachers are unsure how to navigate this new learning landscape. The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework can support teachers in understanding their roles in a blended or online course, helping students to develop their social presence online, and engaging students in the construction of knowledge as part of an online learning community. Teaching is an art form that encompasses more than simply disseminating and collecting assignments. Join educator and best-selling author Dr. Catlin Tucker to explore teaching and learning online!

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning

*Course pairing: Getting Started with Blended and Online Learning

The choose your own adventure concept can be used to design learning experiences that effectively remove barriers, prioritize student agency, and increase engagement. Instead of a single learning path that all students must follow, a choose your own learning path adventure provides meaningful choices throughout the learning experience. Students have opportunities to decide how they want to acquire new information from a range of options designed to give them more control over the experience. They select strategies for making meaning individually, with a partner, or collaboratively as part of a group. Finally, they transfer their learning to demonstrate a deep understanding via a performance task which offers them a degree of agency over how they communicate their learning. As students move through a choose your learning path adventure, the teachers are freed to provide individualized support, host real-time feedback sessions, and/or conference with students about their progress. We’ll incorporate Universal Design for Learning principles and use a backward design approach to construct these choose-your-adventure experiences to ensure they are grounded in standards that align clearly with the performance task.

*Half-day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning

Teachers must partner with their students to create learning environments that maximize the available technology and encourage students to take a lead role in monitoring, assessing, and reflecting on their learning. Too many teachers are exhausted and disillusioned with this profession because they are doing the lion’s share of the work in classrooms. It’s time to rethink our workflow, embrace new teaching and learning models that leverage technology, and shift ownership of learning over to students. This workshop will explore a partnership model and dive into strategies teachers can use to encourage metacognitive skill-building, provide more meaningful feedback, and reimagine grading and assessment.

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: Balance with Blended Learning

Teachers are burning out at record levels. They’re drowning in unrealistic expectations and doing the lion’s share of the work in classrooms. It’s time to shift from time-consuming, teacher-led, and often frustratingly ineffective workflows to sustainable student-led workflows that position learners at the center of the learning experience. Grounding these student-led workflows in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and leveraging blended learning models to shift control to students can help all students develop into expert learners capable of acquiring information and making meaning. These reimagined workflows also free teachers from the front of the room to spend more time working alongside individual and small groups of learners.

Deeper learning demands that students transfer or apply their learning. To achieve deeper learning, teachers must strive to architect learning experiences that position students at the center of the learning process to develop their cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies, which are critical to deeper learning. Leveraging a combination of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), blended learning, and the CASEL Framework for social-emotional learning can arm teachers with beliefs, instructional models, and routines necessary to drive deeper learning.

The pandemic taught educators several lessons:

Learning can happen anywhere, any time.

Human connection and participation in a learning community make learning rich and engaging.

Students are more likely to be motivated if they enjoy autonomy and agency.
So, how can teachers move forward in the face of so much change to design and facilitate dynamic student-centered learning experiences? Instead of relying on one model for every lesson, teachers need a robust toolbelt full of instructional models and engagement strategies they use to design learning experiences that give students agency, differentiate effectively, build community, and drive inquiry! Blended learning provides a sustainable path forward that frees teachers from the front of the room, allowing them to work directly with small groups and individual learners. This shift makes it possible for teachers to spend their precious class time on the aspects of this work that are most engaging and rewarding. Join Dr. Catlin Tucker as she shares highlights from her new book, The Complete Guide to Blended Learning.

The last two years have been mentally and emotionally exhausting for teachers and students. The pandemic and its impact on education have left many teachers feeling tired and disillusioned. Yet, teacher engagement is critical to achieving high levels of student engagement and improving learning outcomes. Understanding the aspects of this work that are cognitively, emotionally, and socially engaging is critical if we want to reignite our teachers’ passion for this profession. In an era when many feel burnt out or question the sustainability of this work, we must leverage a strategic blend of online and offline learning that allows teachers to invest time and energy in the human side of teaching. Join Dr. Catlin Tucker to explore how teachers can leverage blended learning to spend more time on the aspects of this work that positively impact their engagement and, in turn, increase student engagement.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning *Audience: Teachers, Coaches, or School Leaders

The 5Es instructional model positions the students to engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. This model blends online and offline learning strategically to encourage students to explore an essential question related to the curriculum. The goal is to help students construct knowledge and make meaning through both individual and collaborative processes. In this workshop, teachers will learn how to use the 5Es instructional model and explore a range of online tools and resources that teachers can use to engage students in the various parts of this student-led inquiry. We’ll incorporate Universal Design for Learning principles and use a backward design approach to construct our 5Es inquiry cycle.

*Half-day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning

This workshop explores how teachers can leverage technology and blended learning models to help learners develop their reading, vocabulary, writing, and speaking/listening skills. In this workshop, participants will collaborate in grade-level teams to create student-centered learning activities they can use with students immediately.

Half-Day or Full Day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or Creatively Teach the Common Core Literacy Standards

The concurrent classroom presents several challenges. It’s tough to meet the needs of students in class and online simultaneously. Often, there is an inequality of teacher attention, students struggle to stay engaged, and learning experiences do not maximize face-to-face and online learning affordances. When teachers rely exclusively on a whole group, teacher-led model, these challenges are exacerbated. Teachers can combat the challenges associated with the concurrent classroom by using blended learning models to prioritize differentiated small group and personalized 1:1 instruction, give students agency, and shift control over the pace of learning to students. This workshop will explore how teachers can use the station rotation model, flipped learning model, and playlist model to successfully engage students in a concurrent classroom.

*Half-Day or Full Day

*Audience: Teachers and Coaches

*UDL focus can be applied to this session.

*Book pairing: UDL and Blended Learning or The Complete Guide to Blended Learning

Goal: Provide teachers with personalized support as design and facilitate student-centered universally designed blended learning experiences.

Coaching sessions are available in person or online via Zoom.

Coaching works best one-on-one or with small teaching teams.

Coaching sessions run 90 min-2 hours in length with each teacher or team.

Coaching follows a specific cycle but can be customized depending on the number of coaching days in a contract and/or needs of the teachers.

Teachers work directly with Catlin to set clear goals and design a blended lesson that also incorporates Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Teachers implement the lesson with support and coaching from Catlin. Catlin may co-teach, model parts of the lesson, and provide feedback in video, writing, or a follow-up debrief conversation, depending on time and the teacher’s preference.

Instructional coaches on campus are welcome to shadow all coaching sessions to ensure they can replicate the process to provide continued support.