Professional Development Opportunity Update

November 22-24 Learning How to Learn, Boston, MA

December 3 - Innovations in Early Childhood Workshop: Whole Body Math, Cambridge, MA

December 8 -Educator Enrichment: New Ideas, New Discoveries about Ancient Nubia, MFA Boston, MA

December 11 -Monumental Abstractions: Jackson Pollock and Katharina Grosse MFA Boston, MA

December 13&14 -Lighting the Way with Wind and Solar: Pathways to a Sustainable Energy Future, Topsfield, MA 

Dec. 14 & Jan. 20- Integrating Social-Emotional Learning in English Learner Instruction, Burlington, MA 

January 9 -A Mindful Approach to Teaching,  East Walpole, MA

Jan. 6- Feb. 10 -K-2 Math Workshop Make Over: Building Addition and Subtraction Fact Fluency through Targeted Games, East Walpole, MA

Jan. 6 - April 27 -RETELL (Rethinking Equity in the Teaching of English Language  Learners) SEI Teacher Endorsement, East Walpole, MA

Jan. 7-28 -Spark Innovation: Build your own Digital Toolkit, East Walpole, MA

Jan. 7- Feb. 4 -Mac tips and tricks: Become a more efficient Mac user, East Walpole, MA

Jan.7- Feb. 4- Best Practices in Physical Education, East Walpole, MA

January 14-17 - Future of Education Technology, Miami, FL

January 30-31 - LearnLaunch, Boston, MA

Feb. 6- Innovations in Early Childhood Workshop: Making Sense of Climate Change, Cambridge, MA

Feb. 8 - School Garden Symposium, Boston, MA

Feb. 24- April 13 -Small adjustments make a big impact: Supporting the Needs of All Learners, East Walpole, MA

Feb. 26-28 - NAIS Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA

Feb. 29 - Supporting Student Understanding of Natural Selection and Adaptation, Boston, MA 

March 2- April 6 -Drawing Outside of the Art Classroom, East Walpole, MA

March 6 - K-8: Exploring Character Through Play, Atlanta, Georgia 

March 14 - Five-Senses Science Early Childhood Education Workshop Boston, MA

March 21 - Modeling as Meaning-Making Teacher Workshop Boston, MA
April 2-4 - Personalization 2020, Providence, RI

April 2-5 - National Conference on Science Education, Boston, MA

April 6-10 - SITE, New Orleans

April 15 - STEM Summit, Worcester, MA 

April 16&17 - How Students Become Extraordinary Leaders, New York, NY

April 20 & 21- Educating Good Men for the 21st Century, Atlanta, Georgia

April 25 - Art and Engineering of Pop-Up Books with Robert Sabuda, Boston, MA 

April 30 - Innovations in Early Childhood Workshop: PreK Stories—Playing with Authorship and Integrating Curriculum, Cambridge, MA

May 4-7 - ADARA 2020 Breakout Conference Natick, MA

Summer 2020

June 2020 - Science at Sea, Alaska

June 23-25 - Serious Play, University of Central Florida

July 7-9 - Science in the Rockies, Colorado

July 7-10 The Neuroscience of Reading, Cambridge, MA

July 13-17 - A Teacher's Guide to the Learning Brain, Boston, MA

July 20-24 -The Power of Mindsets, Boston, MA

July 27-31 - Making Mindfulness Stick, Boston, MA

July 2020 -Building Learning Communities, Boston, MA 

Fall of 2020

October 25-27, 2020 - Literacy for All Conference, Providence, RI

Noisy Monitoring

Classroom Noise Monitor Apps to Help Calm the Class and You!

A room full of quiet students … for some teachers, that’s the perfect classroom. For others there's a time and place for students to be using a quiet voice.   There are thankfully lots of classroom noise monitor apps that are out there to help you manage the level of noise in your classroom. These are a few that create a clear visual for students to understand just how loud or quiet they are being and could work well as a clear barometer for whole class rewards.

Bouncy Balls
Bounce balls works with your device's built-in microphone! This is a fun and visual way to help manage classroom noise by creating a clear visual for students to observe. You can adjust the sensitivity level of your computer microphone and even change the total number of balls onscreen with a max of 200 balls. There are different ball themes to pick from, such as: plastic, emoji, bubbles, or eyeballs. When the classroom noise level gets louder and the balls jump high in the air, a warning, that can be turned off, will appear across the screen telling students to settle down.
Pros:
It's Free, it creates a clear visual that even younger kids can understand. It is easy to use.
Cons:
The balls are constantly jittering onscreen, this can be more distracting than helpful while you’re trying to teach. The silly nature adds some excitement to the classroom hopefully the novelty of seeing the balls tossing up and down will wear off after a few uses.

Too Noisy
Too Noisy offers both a free browser tool and mobile apps for $4. In this one, an arrow spins left and right on a dial, similar to a speed meter in a car.  When classroom volume is low, the arrow stays in the green and yellow range. But when students get louder, the arrow spikes into oranges and reds, warning students that they’ve hit the max. In addition behind the meter is a blue sky with clouds and a happy emoji. When students start to get loud, the sky turns orange, the clouds gray, and the emoji frowns. When the max is reached, the whole sky is dark gray and black, and the emoji becomes a crying face.
Pros:
There is a free version. This tool is not very distracting. The shifting colors and changing emojis are a good/clear visual cue that encourages students to stay in an acceptable range.
Cons:
The free version requires teachers to register first, which has several steps and screens and is bogged down by video messages that seem excessive given the simplicity of the tool. The cartoonish nature of the app may also seem “babyish” for some students.

Calmness Counter
Calmness Counter has an arrow and a gauge that shows when sounds are too loud. The arrow starts off in green, but moves to yellow and then red when the noise is too loud.
Pros:
It is free. You can adjust the sensitivity of the microphone which makes it fairly simple to use.
Cons:
With this website, you must turn off webcams and speakers and only have the microphone on. When I have tested the site I find it doesn't scroll properly nor did the arrows work to scroll, when I managed to get a scroll bar to appear and could grab and drag it to scroll down.

Zero Noise Classroom
Zero Noise Classroom is a Chrome Extension. This app allows you to show noise level and stopwatch at the same time. It advertises itself to be a tool for the collaborative classroom.
Pros:
It is free. You can set the timer for the amount of time you desire and you can adjust the sound sensitivity. Great quick and easy tool for quiet activities.

Cons:

It only works in the Chrome Browser. Might not be ideal below 2nd or 3rd grade.

Lesson Planning Ideas

Lesson Planning Sites List

For the days you don't have time to create lessons from scratch Common Sense has created a list of places you can turn to. "Teachers don't have enough time to create every lesson from scratch. Sometimes it's best to leverage the expertise of others who've perfected their lessons over time, and adapt and modify them as needed. Whether you're looking for step-by-step instructions or interactive activities, these sites curate some of the top lesson plans from experts in the field. Check out our list for websites that provide lesson plans for all subjects: ELA, math, science, social studies, art, social and emotional learning, and more. "