Phyllis MacDonald's Topics

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   Session Descriptions

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   Building and Managing a Student Centered Gifted Program                                            Grades K-12

 This workshop will assist a school or district to employ sound educational practices matching the characteristics and needs of its gifted students with the statutes and standards governing your school.  Participants will:

• review possibilities for identification of gifted students
• consider a variety of service models,
• examine appropriate curriculum models create a scope and sequence for learning

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   Problem Solving in the Curriculum:

Grades K – 12

Adapting the tools for problem solving employed by the Future Problem Solving Program, with a focus on the challenges encountered in the local school or community, participants will experience the problem solving process first hand.  The process adds relevance and excitement to learning from the primary grades through high school.  Problem solving combines a variety of creative and critical thinking skills:

• fluency through generation of ideas
• flexibility by categorizing
• inductive and deductive thinking
• criteria development and implementation
• elaboration of ideas
• clarity of expression
• evaluation of learning

A problem-based curriculum provides a framework for approaching the demands of a rapidly increasing body of knowledge facing today's students.  It offers a model for decision making as students examine the possibilities of the world of work.

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   Twisted Thinking: Strategies that Challenge

Grades K – 12

 The teacher working with gifted students in a special program or a regular classroom faces individuals with diverse strengths, who learn at different rates, and who have a variety of interests or passions.   Workshop participants will experience a variety of out-of-the ordinary activities to use in math, science, social studies, and language arts. Learn to introduce new ideas, enhance creative and productive thinking, and encourage innovative problem solving, and build a gifted environment by tapping into the power of thought provoking quotations, perplexing problems, and mind jiggling one-liners.

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   Let Them Show What They Know - Assessment beyond the Test

A responsible educator must recognize what and how well students know, understand and are able to do what we are charged to teach them.  This session will allow teachers to examine alternative ways to assess student learning.  The workshop will include establishing criteria for success, peer assessment, and self-assessment. 

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   Questioning:  Getting Students to Think

Pick up some quick tips to enhance student understanding, retention, and achievement through effective questioning. Test scores will improve when kids are encouraged to think about, not just memorize, the content they are expected to learn.

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