Thinking Strategies Institute
(Spring 2025)
April 22 - 25, 2025
$1899 Early Bird / $1999 General
April 22-25, 2025
SpringHill Suites by Marriott Denver Downtown
1190 Auraria Pkwy
Denver, CO 80204
$1899 Early Bird* / $1999 General
*Early Bird pricing ends March 22, 2025
$1799 Group Rate (groups of 6+)
Email events@pebc.org for more details
In what ways might we provide tools that increase learners’ agency, equity, and understanding? Thinking strategy instruction gives learners the power to fend off confusion and persevere. It takes them from helpless hand-raisers to agentic meaning-makers!
The “Thinking Strategies” are rooted in the proficient reader research and are proven to be effective when explicitly taught. Thinking strategy instruction involves each strand of the PEBC Teaching Framework; planning for lifeworthy learning, cultivating thinking oriented classrooms, crafting student centered workshops, engaging students in meaningful discourse, and assessing along the way to adjust instruction to meet students' needs. In this institute, educators will experience how the thinking strategies support understanding across grade levels and content areas with an emphasis on how to explicitly teach, support, and plan for student agency, equity, and understanding. Participants will visit PEBC Lab Classrooms where teachers and students utilize thinking strategies on a regular basis and where the PEBC Teaching Framework from Phenomenal Teaching by Wendy Ward Hoffer comes to life. Thinking to learn, and learning to think!
Includes
- Certificate of attendance for CDE credit
- Lunch each day
- Two lab classroom days
- Transportation to and from lab classroom schools
- One PEBC professional book of your choice
Facilitators
Annie Patterson
PEBC Senior Director of Lab Networks
Dana Sorensen
PEBC Senior Director Client and System Services
Michelle Morris Jones
PEBC Senior Director of Professional Development Design
Hotel Accommodations*
SpringHill Suites by Marriott Denver Downtown
1190 Auraria Pkwy
Denver, CO 80204
303-705-7300
Click here for the special PEBC rate
*Rate available until October 18th
Lab Classrooms
See the Thinking Strategies and elements of the PEBC Teaching Framework in action across grade levels and content areas! Two days in a PEBC lab classroom are included as part of the institute.
In each PEBC Lab classroom, participants will spend the morning observing the instruction and learning taking place in that classroom. With the lab classroom host and a PEBC staff developer, participants will spend time debriefing their observation, asking questions, and reflecting on the implications for their own classroom practice.
Leadership Lab Option
If you are a school or district leader, we now offer an option to spend the second Lab Classroom day in a Leadership Lab. You will spend the morning in a lab classroom at a school that has developed systemic practices across grade levels and has nurtured many lab classrooms over the last several years. You will learn with other leaders how to initiate, support, and sustain quality instruction in all classrooms.
PEBC Institutes fill quickly. Register today!
Learning Objectives
Thinking Strategies That Serve As Tools for Understanding
Experience the power of the Thinking Strategies, and learn to create and scaffold intentional and varied opportunities for all learners to authentically apply thinking strategies as tools for comprehension.
Community That Fosters Agency, Equity, & Understanding
Experience the synergy of being part of a community of learners, and learn how to plan for agency, equity, and understanding by gradually releasing responsibility of learning to all students and supporting them as independent thinkers and learners in culturally sustaining ways.
Lifeworthy Workshops That Prioritize Student Engagement
Experience the workshop model, and learn how to plan workshops that integrate lifeworthy learning so that students can engage with content that has meaning beyond the classroom and connects to their lives.
Classroom Discourse That Promotes Academic Conversations
Experience the impact of discourse, and learn how to create a classroom community of learners who engage in lively discussion where learners capitalize on the perspectives of their peers in service of understanding and language development.
Assessment That Supports Progress
Experience a variety of formative assessment strategies, and learn how to incorporate formative assessment techniques to gauge student understanding and adjust instruction.
Keynote Speakers
Cris Tovani is an internationally known consultant who focuses on issues of disciplinary reading and writing instruction. She was awarded the 2017 Thought Leader award from the International Literacy Association. Cris has been an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado and the University of Denver. She is the author of four books: No More Telling as Teaching: Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning, I Read it but I Don’t Get It, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? and So, What do They Really Know? Her new book with Stenhouse is Why do I Have to Read This?
For 34 years, Cris Tovani has taught students from grades one to twelve. She continues to study the “knowing-doing gap” by investigating how best practice research can be practically applied to a variety of settings. Cris’ Literacy Lab Project enables her to provide demonstration teaching lessons in districts around the country. Embracing a growth mindset, she loves sharing her successes and failures with colleagues as they work to serve students.
Register now
If you have a contract or would like to pay by purchase order, please contact events@pebc.org.
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