CONCEPT-BASED CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION for the Thinking Classroom
INDIVIDUALIZED
COLLABORATION Your Way
Concept-Based Literacy is not for educators looking for a curriculum to implement or a program to follow, rather it appeals to one's intellect and expertise. As an experienced educator, you know that reading a text and answering questions does not inspire a life long love of literacy in our students. Our students deserve to have choice, to inquire, to engage their minds, and to be immersed in authentic contexts and compelling ideas.
Join me and the network of other literacy teachers pushing boundaries in our classrooms through Concept-Based learning. Together, we can refine our craft as we design high-quality, conceptual lessons that provoke thinking, facilitate inquiry, and ultimately, result in deep, transferable literacy learning for our students.
If you are an educator that is new to Concept-Based learning or an educator looking to deepen and refine current practice, you will gain a collection of actionable, time-saving strategies that will help you move student learning beyond skills to conceptual understanding and transfer in our literacy classrooms.
Whether you choose to host an in-person workshop to kick off your Concept-Based journey, plan a virtual learning series to spread learning over the course of the school year, enroll in an online course, or you choose to engage in ongoing personalized collaboration, I'll serve as your thought partner each step of the way.
Select one of the three workshop options below, or customize the professional learning to meet your unique needs. All workshops can be delivered in-person or through virtual meetings.
Or, check out the most current online course to learn from and collaborate with educators from around the world.
Experience inquiry-based professional learning that honors the expertise that each educator brings while furthering the goals of your school.
One day, two day, or multi-day school year collaboration.
- Tiffanee Brown
Workshop Option 1: CONCEPT-BASED CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION FOR LITERACY AND OTHER PROCESS-DRIVEN DISCIPLINES
What do students need to think, feel, and perform like capable readers, writers, speakers, listeners and viewers? How can we develop the conceptual minds of students so that we move from simply doing to understanding how and why we do what we do in literacy and other process-driven disciplines, such as world languages, visual arts, and theatre?
Designing a high-quality curriculum is one of the most important steps in promoting student thinking, differentiating instruction, ensuring that learning continuously improves, and creating systemic coherence. This hands-on inquiry based workshop guides teachers step-by-step through the design of Concept-Based units for literacy and other process-driven disciplines.
In this workshop, we will explore questions such as:
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What does Concept-Based Literacy learning feel like?
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How can I help students meet academic standards while embracing personal relevance, authentic contexts, and student choice?
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How can I help my students become autonomous learners who question, problem solve, and think critically, creatively, conceptually, and reflectively?
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What is deep understanding, and how can I design curriculum for higher order thinking and deeper understanding?
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How can I move student learning beyond strategies and skills to conceptual understanding and transfer?
This workshop is designed for teachers of literacy and other process-driven disciplines, such as world languages, visual arts, and theatre. K-12.
Agenda:
From experiencing a Concept-Based Literacy lesson first hand, to designing a unit of instruction, this hands-on inquiry based workshop engages teachers in two days of focused learning, collaboration, and reflection. Teachers will leave with an instructional unit in hand and a solid grounding in the what, why, and how of Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction for literacy and other process-driven disciplines.
Participants will receive a copy of Designing a Concept-Based Curriculum for English Language Arts: Meeting the Common Core with Intellectual Integrity (Lanning, 2013).
Workshop Option 2: CONCEPT-BASED LITERACY LESSONS: DESIGNING LEARNING TO IGNITE UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSFER
Learning experiences are what bring a Concept-Based Literary classroom to life and what engages the hearts and minds of students. Teaching to a conceptual level of understanding does not mean that all your “old” literacy learning experiences are no longer relevant or valued. Learn how to weave together current literacy practices with inductive inquiry to deliberately leverage students’ conceptual understanding of what it takes to be a capable reader, writer, viewer, speaker, listener, presenter, and researcher.
In this hands-on inquiry based workshop, participants will experience Concept-Based Literacy in action while also learning effective tools for designing learning experiences that cultivate a deep conceptual understanding. This includes guided time to design a Concept-Based lesson to be used in your own classroom.
In this workshop, we will explore questions such as:
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What does Concept-Based Literacy actually look and feel like?
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How can I help students meet academic standards while embracing personal relevance, authentic contexts, and student choice?
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How can I move from a written Concept-Based Curriculum Unit to what is actually taught in the classroom?
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How can I balance inductive inquiry with explicit skill instruction?
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What role do my familiar instructional techniques play in a Concept-Based Literacy classroom?
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How can I move student learning beyond strategies and skills to conceptual understanding and transfer?
This workshop is designed for teachers of literacy, K-12.
Agenda:
From experiencing a Concept-Based literacy lesson first hand, to designing a lesson for your own classroom, this hands-on inquiry based workshop engages teachers in two days filled with practical strategies, ideas, and tips for working with concepts in a literacy classroom. Teachers will leave with a lesson in hand and a toolbox full of strategies to bring Concept-Based Literacy instruction to life.
Participants will receive a copy of Concept-Based Literacy Lessons: Designing Learning to Ignite Understanding and Transfer (Lanning-Brown, 2019).
Workshop Option 3: CONCEPT-BASED CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION FOR THE THINKING CLASSROOM- All Content Areas
Educators often wonder, What is deep understanding, and how can I design teaching for higher order thinking and conceptual understanding? How can I develop students’ brain schema to facilitate the transfer of learning?
Designing a high-quality curriculum is one of the most important steps in promoting student thinking, differentiating instruction, ensuring that learning continuously improves, and creating systemic coherence. Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction is a three-dimensional model that utilizes facts, skills, and concepts to develop the intellect, deepen understanding, and facilitate the transfer of learning. This hands-on inquiry based workshop guides teachers step-by-step through the Concept-Based unit design process.
In this workshop, we will explore questions such as:
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How are knowledge and process structured and how can we utilize these structures to develop the intellect?
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How can we move to a three-dimensional curriculum and instruction model and teach knowledge, skills and concepts with greater depth and rigor?
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What is a conceptual lens and how can we use it to develop higher levels of thinking and increased motivation for learning?
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How do we write clear and powerful conceptual understandings (generalizations)?
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How can we design instruction to achieve a synergy between the lower and conceptual levels of thinking?
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How do we scaffold thinking to deeper levels?
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How do we develop different kinds of questions to guide student inquiry from the factual to the conceptual level of understanding?
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How do we assess for deep understanding?
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What does Concept-Based Instruction “look like” “sound like” in the classroom?
This workshop is designed for all subject areas, K-12.
Agenda:
From experiencing a Concept-Based inductive inquiry lesson first hand, to designing a unit of instruction, this hands-on inquiry based workshop engages teachers in two days of focused learning, collaboration, and reflection. Teachers will leave with an instructional unit in hand and a solid grounding in the what, why, and how of Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction.
Participants will receive a copy of Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom, 2nd Edition (Erickson, Lanning, and French, 2017).