Managing the Online Classroom: Virtual Tools for Teachers 

VIRTUAL INSTRUCTIONAL SESSIONS

Young Audiences of Houston 

Explore tools and ideas for engaging students virtually in any subject. Learn how to build connections with students and creatively enhance the virtual delivery of your programs in K-12 settings. Customize a specific area of focus or select options to explore more in-depth uses of virtual platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Zoom, Schoology, and more!

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*Financial Assistance Available 

Learning through Movement

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Becky Valls

Picture a science class on insects where students act out the roles of honeybees or a lesson on the body’s circulatory system where students shape their bodies into a beating heart and a breathing lung. These are examples of children learning through their kinesthetic, visual, and music intelligence. The teacher is using movement to teach TEKS-based lessons in science. Learning Through Movement is a workshop for elementary teachers, K-5th*. The workshop is divided into three sections. First, teachers gain knowledge of the Elements of Dance (movement terminology). Second, Valls models lessons that use movement and music as teaching tools for instruction in science, math, literature, and social studies. Third, teachers create their own movement lesson for their grade level. The workshop culminates with teachers sharing and demonstrating their movement lesson plans. Other related issues addressed are time and space limitations in the classroom, the use of props and music, and behavior management. With a Master of Fine Arts in choreography from the Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Becky Valls has been active for more than 20 years as a choreographer for numerous dance companies, series, and universities. She has extensive experience as a teaching artist and as a performer in schools. Currently she is on the dance faculty at the University of Houston, and the director and choreographer of Becky Valls and Company.

Synergized Learning: Literacy Through World Rhythm

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Dan Egger-Belandria

Percussionist Dan Egger-Belandria offers a unique professional development workshop that supports the fundamentals of early childhood development in a fun, exciting format. Dan brings a wealth of experience to each class as a seasoned performance and workshop artist who has opened children’s eyes, ears, and hearts to the beauty of rhythm for more than a decade. He also is bilingual and trained to accommodate teaching techniques for working with disabled students. Your young students will explore learning concepts through singing, movement, reading, listening, and of course, making music!

The Telltale Tale of Telling Tales

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Dan Gordon

This dynamic workshop encourages educators to develop creative communication skills by practicing techniques of pantomime, voice fluctuation, gesture, eye contact, body language, and timing, bringing the art of teaching to a new level of creative expression. The activities in this workshop offer new insights that connect any content area of TEKS to storytelling. Dan Gordon is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in Drama and Creative Writing. As a professional storyteller, he has presented his character to audiences of all ages throughout the United States, Israel, and Australia.

The Power of Puppetry

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Greg Ruhe

Capture your student’s attention with the power of puppetry. This hands-on professional development workshop shares creative ideas for adding the excitement of several styles of puppetry into any lesson plan. Explore the ancient world of shadow puppetry, a fast, easy, fun and affordable way to create endless puppetry possibilities. Also, learn techniques for making and teaching with puppets using recycled and found objects. Turn trash into treasure and help save the planet! Greg Ruhe is the director of Puppet Pizzazz, a company dedicated to providing quality educational puppet performances and workshops around the world.

Just Add Drama

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Hope Shiver

Hope Shiver helps teachers discover simple ways to give a dramatic twist to math, language arts, social studies, and science. She shows that any lesson can use drama to address topics such as phonics, analysis, vocabulary, sequencing, physical landforms, culture, problem solving, computation, physical and chemical properties, systems and the food chain. Hope Shiver has a Master of Music Degree from the University of Oregon, and is a winner of the Madame Rose Vocal Competition and George Hawkins Playwriting Award. She enjoys a diverse career performing as an opera a musical theatre singer, actress, writer and music educator.

The Moving Classroom

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Jalia Movement Arts 

Does your institution strive to decrease your failure rate? Are you struggling to reach all learners? Are your classes full of wiggle worms who have a hard time getting focused?  Moving Classrooms, a documented system to engage elementary and middle school students by using movement to stimulate learning, is the answer you seek! Teachers meet in a large group and then break out into smaller PLCs. Virtual Option available, 1-3 hours.

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Moving classrooms professional development program that is designed to:  

• Increase academic success 

• Reach all learners 

• Touch on all learning styles 

• Differentiate instruction  

• Increase student engagement 

• Build self-esteem

Learning Comes Alive with Puppets

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Jean Kuecher

The art of puppetry can be used across the curriculum to nurture creative thinking, motivate readers, introduce science and math concepts, and heighten visualization, critical thinking, listening, communication and fluency skills. Participants actively learn techniques for creating their own puppets and how to incorporate them into their classroom curriculum.

This Sounds Like Fine Art

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Jean Donatto

Participants experience using music, fine art and literary forms to enliven curriculum and make learning more meaningful to students. Learn specific strategies for connecting language arts, music and fine art. Utilizing a variety of music styles, participants will discern mood words that best define what they are hearing or feeling. Thus begins a vocabulary list that is then added to one derived from the viewing of one or more pieces of art in varying media. Working in small teams, participants choose one or more literary forms to create using the generated vocabulary. Jean Donatto bridges the world of modern singers and classical composers and visual artists by showing that both, in the past and the present, live exciting and varied lives while contributing positively to world culture. Add meaning to curriculum through the music and art of your student’s generation and find the connection between classical and modern artists.

Utilizing Setting to Harvest Creative Vocabulary

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Jean Donatto

With the understanding that school districts are strongly addressing the literacy deficit possibly brought about by the grammatical shortcuts almost demanded by electronic media, (IMHO), this workshop provides a method of gleaning creative writing using setting as the subject. The workshop uses familiar young people’s stories or commonly recognized characters in unorthodox settings to discover verbs, adverbs, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and motivation in composition. Participants will be provided the opportunity to act out scenes from stories that adhere to the storyline but use characteristics of the alternative place. Vocabulary is then discovered through audience observation. For instance: If Red Riding Hood were on the Moon, would she skip through the trees to Grandmother’s house or bounce buoyantly over craters to Grandmother’s module? This is just one example of where the fine art of theatre joins the art of language instruction to promote better understanding of literacy and grammar.

Dancing Through the Classroom

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Open Dance Project

Open Dance Project is a contemporary dance theater company whose highly stylized performance experiences break down conventional barriers between artist and audience to make dance more accessible and meaningful for both. Professional development workshops, led by ODP Artistic Director Annie Arnoult, explores the boundaries of dance education to deepening the learning process through integration dance across the curriculum. Topics include STEAM dance, Building Transitions in the classroom, Exploring Creative Dance Education, and more.