School Districts and School-Wide Professional Development Workshops

 

 

  

The BRIT SEED School can provide your school district or school with half-day, full-day, or after-school/weekend professional development workshops emphasizing outdoor inquiry, place-based education, culturally responsive teaching, and deep science content.  These workshops can occur at your school/district or at the BRIT facility. We are a Texas Education Agency-certified provider of CPE credits, and we have over ten years of experience providing professional development to educators in Texas. To schedule a professional development workshop for your campus or district, please contact Tracy Friday at tfriday@brit.org or 817.546.8693.

 

Workshop Topics

 

Past, Present and Future: A Guide to Sustainability

 

"The knowledge of your past guides you throught the present so that you can create a better future."

 

In this professional development, educators will be introduced to the BRIT sustainability model to assist them in making connections to national and state standards while engaging their students in project-based learning that promotes ways to help sustain our planet.  Participants will:

  • Gain a better understanding of the geological history of DFW and how that history impacts the soil of today
  • Reflect on the impact they have as individuals including opportunities for their students to reflect on their personal choices
  • Utilize the national and state standards to build a system model of earth's resources and discuss input to the system if the resources are removed from the system
  • explore ways in which they can utilize school resources to learn and reflect on the past, present and future of their community
  • Begin to develop a project-based lesson at each grade level that connects sustainability and our community

 


 

Catching the Science STAAR with Outdoor Inquiry

 
 
Prepare your students to shine on STAAR and connect the standards with outdoor inquiry. Engage in TEKS reinforced activities that will demonstrate a connection with the standards and nature.
 
Participants will:
 
• Make connections with properties of matter and energy and their interactions with nature.
• Demonstrate the day/night cycle.
• Observe how organisms live and survive in their ecosystem by interacting with living and nonliving elements.
• Participate in activities that reinforce energy flow from the sun throughout nature.
• Learn how characteristics of different organisms help them live and survive in their environment.
• Compare life cycles of different organisms.
• Use scientific investigation and reasoning skills in outdoor inquiry.
 
 


Good to Great Journals

 

The nature journal (also referred to as an interactive notebook) is a flexible teaching tool that can be used in a variety of disciplines—inspiring children and their teachers to connect with their immediate environment through writing and sketching their observations and hypotheses. During this training, educators will practice sketching and observation techniques with a local artist, identify various types of age-appropriate journals, and explore ways in which journals can be created and utilized to assess learning outcomes.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tools for Schoolyard Inquiry

 

Join us in the BRIT prairies and wetlands or on your campus to utilize tools needed for outdoor inquiry. In this professional development workshop, you will learn outdoor classroom management techniques and inquiry-based activities to engage students in a world of wonder in their own schoolyard. You will also practice using equipment required by the TEKS for outdoor learning. This workshop is perfect if you are eager to go outdoors but need a refresher on using outdoor science equipment.

Participants will:

• Learn to use a trundle wheel correctly for mapping the schoolyard.
• Practice proper loupe technique.
• Take soil samples and learn to test for soil properties.
• Learn how to use equipment needed to collect metadata.
• Practice testing water samples.
• Practice using collecting nets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place-Based Education: An Experiential and Interdisciplinary Approach
to Learn about Our Prairie

 

Place-based education deepens one's knowledge of a subject by incorporating multiple disciplines into an experiential learning process. This workshop models effective use of place-based education techniques to learn about Texas prairies.

Participants will:

• Learn the philosophy and benefits of place-based education.
• Explore BRIT's prairie for biotic and abiotic factors.
• Engage in plant identification and critically reflect on the significance of plants in our ecosystem.
• Practice field journaling techniques.
• Immerse yourself in the history of our prairie and understand how that history has shaped our lives today both as people and as individuals.
• Predict the future of our prairies by connecting past and present.
• Read and learn about local literary pieces emphasizing our Texas prairies.

This workshop can also be designed to focus on basic place-based education techniques that can be applied to the curriculum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mapping Your Sense of Place

 

Most people use maps only to help them get to a destination, but maps are also powerful tools for understanding the characteristics that make every place on Earth unique. A sense of place map is a bird's eye view of a place showing its shape and context in relation to its surroundings. Not only is this type of map geographically accurate, but it also tells the story of a place from the point of view of the mapmaker(s). A sense of place map depicts how its physical setting influences it. Elements of setting include geography, topography, geology (soils and bedrock), hydrology (lakes, streams, and groundwater), weather and climate, forms of life, and historical events both cultural and natural.

The purpose of this workshop is to deepen the knowledge and broaden the opportunities for teachers to engage students in place-based outdoor inquiry in the environments around their schools while addressing science Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).  Participants will be introduced to a teaching/learning format that employs part of the community around their school (one square kilometer in size) as an outdoor laboratory for inquiry into natural and cultural history.

 

 

Our Great Trees

 

Using a variety of trees found on your school campus, educators will engage in activities that reinforce the TEKS and create age-appropriate investigations for their students. Through inquiry-based activities and exploring the historical and cultural significance of these trees, educators will discover how to reach desired student outcomes in science, math, social studies, and the language arts.
 

 

Seeds of Inquiry

In this professional development workshop, you will make connections with seeds in the curriculum through outdoor inquiry-based investigations, indoor learning stations, and a vocabulary garden. All activities are aligned to support ELPS, the TEKS, and STAAR standards.

Participants will:

• Use hands-on activities to reinforce learning for all students.
• Examine seed structure and its role in the plant life cycle.
• Understand how adaptations of seeds allow for dispersal.
• Create an age-appropriate investigation based on activities from the workshop.
• Make interdisciplinary connections using seeds in math, art, social studies, and language arts.
 

 

Creating a Sense of Place through Culturally Responsive Teaching

This half-day, full-day, or two-day institute will utilize identity development theory and research-based pedagogies to identify practical teaching strategies that create safe, welcoming, supporting, and challenging environments for all students.

Participants will:

• Identify various personal identities and reflect on how those identities can impact their learning environments.
• Utilize identity development theories to guide personal reflections.
• Examine the multicultural messages expressed by architecture, artwork, graffiti, and signage, and relate this experience to their teaching.
• Integrate research-based best practices of culturally responsive teaching techniques into their teaching strategies.
• Identify techniques to help them learn about students’ sense of place and how to integrate that knowledge into the learning environment.
 

 


Home on the Range

Join the BRIT staff in a day of plant identification adventures. Educators will be introduced to plants in our herbarium and prairie, working side-by-side with BRIT staff members to gain a greater knowledge of native and introduced plants found in Texas. This workshop will benefit teachers and sponsors of students who compete in range competitions.

Participants will:

• Learn strategies to recognize specific plants and their botanical characteristics.
• Incorporate higher-level thinking skills in the classroom to reinforce information learned in the field.
 

 

Reducing the Gender Gap in Science Testing: Techniques for Inspiring Girls to Actively Participate in Science

 

Recent test scores in Texas indicate that girls are not performing as well as boys in science. This workshop is designed to support educators as they encourage girls to be actively engaged in and excited about science. Educators will learn practical techniques to help girls become scientists.

Participants will learn:

  • About local, national, and international female scientists from both our history and present.
  • Methods for integrating women as scientists in their lesson plans.
  • Specific techniques to encourage girls to be engaged inscience.
  • How to critically review books and articles to identify both negative and positive gender stereotypes, and how to address those stereotypes.
     

 

The Watershed and You

Educators will take part in outdoor investigations, which will show evidence of how human activity impacts a watershed and its environment. These activities will allow educators to create an outdoor experience to encourage students in developing a greater understanding of the role they can play in making a difference in their own community.

Participants will:

• Have a greater understanding of the Trinity River Watershed and its impact on the environment.
• Identify and gain knowledge of the affect populations have on the quality of water in a local watershed.
• Practice taking water samples and recognizing how everyone plays a role in maintaining water quality.
• Design an outdoor activity.
 

 

Beeology and Botany

 

By exploring pollination and the interdependence of plants and animals, early childhood educators learn the tools and techniques to lead young children in discovering and making connections with their world through science. The outdoor classroom serves as a vehicle for discovery and offers opportunities to nurture important developmental skills of young scientists. Educators also learn effective ways to bridge outdoor exploration and discovery with the indoor learning center so that the walls between the inside and outside classrooms disappear, creating an even more dynamic learning environment.