Dr. Polleck will want to learn more about your school in order to tailor a training or coaching cycle to best meet your needs. Below are some examples of PD workshops that Jodi has recently offered in schools:

Becoming Students of our Students: Culturally Responsive Classroom Management and Facilitation Strategies for Diverse Student Populations
Nationally, our classrooms are becoming more and more diverse, which can be quite a challenge when trying to meet the various interests and needs of our students. This workshop will first provide hands-on, practical strategies so that teachers can get to know their families and communities. Additional tools will be provided on routines and structures for the classroom and direct ways to work with a variety of management issues that may arise in the classroom.

Creating Literacy Spaces Outside the Classroom: Writing and Book Clubs to Support Student Learning
Not all learning must occur inside of our classrooms; in fact, some of the most rewarding and effective learning experiences happen afterschool, in our communities, and in our students’ homes. This workshop will provide step-by-step procedures for creating learning forums outside of the classroom, that can occur at lunch, after school, and on the weekends. We will discuss how to recruit students and their families and community members and then how to create and sustain a variety of extracurricular literacy clubs to enhance students’ learning and experiences with reading and writing.

Claim, Evidence, Conclusions, Oh My! Differentiated Methods for Teaching the Argument
Discover engaging and differentiated resources and instructional methods for teaching the argumentative paragraph across the content areas. Jody reflects on how the standards have changed how we think and teach writing. In this session, learn how to teach your students to articulate an argument and support it with relevant and compelling details and evidence.

Creating Student-Led Discussion Structures within Secondary Content Area Classrooms
Getting students communicating and engaging with each other can be quite difficult sometimes!  Jody will provide several different kinds of discussion structures from think pair share to fishbowl to Socratic seminar. Activities will be provided to scaffold and differentiate these processes along overviews of various formative and summative assessments.

Culturally Responsive Instruction: Meeting the Diverse Needs of All of our Students
Because our classrooms are culturally and linguistically diverse, we as educators need to adjust our classroom content, instruction, and assessments so that they are more reflective our students, and more relevant to their identities and communities. This workshop will focus on research in culturally responsive instruction and its effectiveness in a variety of classrooms. We will then discuss several practical, hands-on instructional strategies that can be used so that we are meeting the needs of all of the students in our classroom.

Differentiating Instruction for Every Classroom
Because we have classrooms filled with diverse students with varying abilities, it is necessary that we plan our lessons and assess our students in a variety of ways. This workshop will focus on several theories of differentiated instruction including the kinds of learners we have in our classrooms and the characteristics that create an effective learning community for every student. We will also talk about the multiple ways we can differentiate our classroom through students’ learning profiles, readiness, and interest levels. How we differentiate our instruction will also be explained through the lenses of content, process, and product

Extending the Classroom to the Community: Students and Teachers Making a Difference
Educators have the responsibility to not only teach students to read and write, but to see how education can make a difference. Character building through community projects inspires students and allows them to help others so they might see how they are woven into the diverse fabric of our society. Engaging in such activities allows students to realize the importance of their contributions to the community now and in the future. The purpose of this workshop is to provide teachers with resources and strategies to connect their classrooms to the community through social justice activities and projects. Content-area teachers, including English, science, math, foreign language, and social studies, will learn how they can empower students by helping them to see they can make a difference in other people’s lives. This hands-on workshop will explore a variety of community projects in which students can participate in order to make a difference. Through exploring such issues as the environment, homelessness, and child abuse, we will discuss how these and other concerns can be integrated within our curricula, where students can reap the benefits of a meaningful and authentic education.

Informal, Daily Writing across all the Content Areas
Your students need to write a lot to improve their writing fluency and become confident, effective writers. Jody focuses on how to provide informal writing structures across all disciplines which allow students to refine their writing skills within a safe and nurturing context. Learn ways to use informal writing to not only improve students’ writing and motivation, but also to enhance their understanding of disciplinary content. Leave with hands-on activities grounded in current research to help you infuse informal writing throughout your day.

Literature Circles and Book Clubs for All Content Areas
Literature circles and book clubs are effective and interactive ways to get students talking about books and a wide variety of genres and texts including fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. During this workshop, we will discuss the basics of starting and sustaining literature circles and book clubs in your classroom.

Comprehensive Approaches for Reading Instruction
This workshop will outline the components of comprehensive reading instruction, providing both a foundation for theory and research along with practical applications for the classroom. Teachers will understand the various approaches to teaching reading including read alouds, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading. We will also discuss how to integrate vocabulary instruction into the classroom in authentic and purposeful ways. Finally, teachers will learn various reading strategies to aid their students’ comprehension and interpretation of both fiction and nonfiction texts and how we can connect writing to all the elements of our reading instruction.

Managing the Paperload and Providing Effective Feedback on Students' Writing
Overwhelmed with hefty rosters, high writing expectations, and TOO MUCH paperwork? Good news—helps is on the way! Jody offers great tips to help you get through all the papers and the grades and still provide the meaningful and effective feedback your students need to become better, more effective writers.

Reading Across the Content Areas
This workshop will look at ways to explicitly address the reading process in all content-area classrooms. We will discuss essential reading strategies and how to teach and use them in the classroom, specifically with those tougher nonfiction texts. This will be accomplished through the lenses of the pre, during, and post reading structures.

Understanding by Design: Using Backwards Planning to Design Our Curricula
Created by Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design is a unique and comprehensive framework for planning our lessons, units, and year-long curricula. This hands-on workshop will help teachers to develop a design process that focuses on students’ understanding of both the content and skills required by your school, region, and state. The planning process will be discussed in three stages: prioritizing and creating the necessary content and skill goals, developing authentic assessments (both informal and formal), and planning for engaging and meaningful activities. Teachers will develop a comprehensive unit plan that infuses literacy skills that are both culturally responsive and differentiated for special needs students and English language learners.

What’s in a Lexile? Using Data to Differentiate our Content Area Texts
Learn what Lexile measures are, how they fit in the framework of Reading Standards, and how to use them to differentiate content, materials, and your reading instruction. Jody shares how to find Lexile measures for fiction and nonfiction texts, including novels and shorter nonfiction excerpts across the content areas.

Writing Across the Content Areas
Delve into the how-to's of integrating writing in meaningful and authentic ways throughout your curriculum in all the content areas. Jody addresses how to teach students to write and how to use writing to reinforce, extend, and assess their understanding of content. Join her to review the components of a comprehensive writing program and the writing process. Explore numerous genres of writing, including informal, narrative, creative, expository, and persuasive. And, examine how to provide assessment, evaluation, and publishing opportunities for students.

Integrating Social Emotional Learning into our Classrooms
This workshop will provide teachers with research and theories for why SEL is so critical for our students. Jody will provide practical strategies for how to fold in social-emotional learning into our curriculum and instruction, in ways that are mindful of students’ cultural, neurological, and linguistic diversities.

Designing School Spaces that Maximize Student Support and Empowerment
This workshop will help teachers and administrators to redesign their communal school spaces and classrooms so as to maximize support for students in literacy while also empowering them through highlighting their work and their voices. Several strategies will be covered from word walls to wall charts. Participants will also have time to create visual supports and redesign their own school spaces.

Teaching Emergent and Striving Adolescent Readers, Grades 6-12
This workshop will cover several strategies to help secondary students who are struggling with reading and/or who may be reluctant to reading. All approaches to reading will be covered from teaching phonics to adolescents to fluency and comprehension work. Sample lessons will be modeled and provided.

Building and Deepening Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition in Secondary Classrooms across the Disciplines, Grades 4-12
Not having knowledge of key concepts and vocabulary words can impede our students’ reading comprehension and learning in our content area classrooms. This workshop will explore culturally responsive and sustaining theories, research, and frameworks behind meaningful and engaging vocabulary instruction, particularly for students with special needs and emergent bi- and multi-lingual language learners. Jody will offer a ton of practical activities as well to ensure that students not only learn the words in our content areas—but develop strategies for using context as well—as we ultimately want our students to be independent critical thinkers and readers.

Contact me to learn more about working with
​Dr. Jody Polleck!