This practical course provides the background knowledge needed to teach all the components of beginning writing instruction. The instructional practices are developmentally appropriate for children in grades pre-K-3. They are designed to easily transfer to classroom lessons and can be integrated with any writing curriculum or published writing program. The course is tightly aligned with state literacy standards.

The course covers these topics:

• Writing Basics


• Engage a Community of Writers


• Writing Process


• Structure for the Three Types of Writing


• First Steps: Drawing, Labels, Lists


• Syntax, Sentences


• Paragraph Writing


• Writing from Sources

This webinar will identify elements of differentiation and explore differentiation strategies such as questioning, grouping, and choice. Use these strategies to meet both support and challenge needs of your diverse students.

Led by a mental health professional and educator, this webinar will cover key facts about children's mental health, early warning signs of mental health disorders, and signs and symptoms of childhood suicide. Discussion will include strategies for how to respond and how to access help for students.

This training focuses on why and how our body and brain respond to stress/crisis and how that affects our work, wellness, and interactions. Explore Social-Emotional Learning strategies to recognize dysregulation in yourself and others, as well as strategies to regain and retain regulation. These strategies apply to interactions with students, colleagues, and caregivers.

Multilingual learners in our classrooms are a huge asset. Not every educator may feel confident in how to best support and include these students. This webinar offers insights to support educators in creating optimal learning environments and instructional strategies for each learner.

Explore components of effective reading instruction, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and motivation and engagement. Within each component, participants will learn what it is, why we teach it, and how we teach it.

Learn with us as we explore the 2022 Minnesota data science anchor standard with Jessica Strom to see how we can incorporate data science into your Building Thinking Classroom. Grade 6 teachers, choose which session might be the best fit for you. The BTC content will be similar in both sessions.  This session will include more examples for middle and high school classrooms.

This workshop will offer you ways for your students to be thinkers beyond rote memorization and repetitive calculations. Jessica Strom, mathematics educator in a small rural Minnesota school, will introduce you to 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning, engagement, and discourse in your math classroom. Learn how to apply these practices to engage your students in learning mathematics.

Join your fellow SchooLinks users in Minnesota to collaborate on new features, learn strategies, and more.

This professional learning day is designed for AVID Site Teams across Region 5, Minnesota to celebrate successes, strengthen collaboration, and deepen understanding of effective AVID implementation.

Participants will engage in learning across AVID systems, distributed leadership, and the characteristics of effective site teams. Teams will explore implementation instruments and data collection practices that support monitoring and strengthening AVID implementation.  Structured collaboration time will allow principals, site coordinators, and teachers to connect both with similar roles and across content areas.

The day intentionally prioritizes extended site team planning time, allowing teams to apply their learning, refine their site team plans, clarify responsibilities, and identify next steps to amplify AVID implementation within their schools.

Learn to support students in combining intrinsic ingredients into personalized flow-based projects by doing it yourself.  Meaning, you'll be the learner and we'll support you in creating your own one-of-a-kind project.

In this one-day workshop participants will learn how to establish and sustain comprehensive school safety efforts that attend to both physical and psychological safety. The workshop addresses critical components needed to develop, exercise, and evaluate safety and crisis teams and plans and conduct building vulnerability assessments. The model also integrates school personnel and comunity provider roles in providing school-based crisis preparedness and response activities. Additional topics addressed also include media/social media, communication, reunification, students with special needs, culture, and memorials. After this workshop, participants will be better prepared to improve their school’s climate, student resilience, and crisis response capabilities of school personnel. With updated research and strategies, this workshop makes a clear connection between ongoing crisis prevention, mitigation, protection, response, and recovery. 

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Join our inaugural book club over the summer. Education professionals often don’t find time to read for themselves. This offering takes this reality into account, and we seek a community of readers looking to refresh over the summer. We have selected, JOY!, by Timothy Kanold, a reflective and practical guide for educators seeking to cultivate lasting joy in their personal and professional lives.  The group will meet in June, July, and August to discuss the book and its personal and professional impact. Registration is required by May 15 to ensure timely delivery of the book.

Language is ever evolving and changing. Sometimes knowing which terms or descriptions to use can be difficult and sometimes we don’t even know we are using outdated or harmful language. This webinar is focused on promoting positive language around topics such as race, gender, and common school-based labels and language.

The Social Studies Standards Workshop is a two-day workshop series designed to equip K–8 teachers and school leaders with the knowledge and tools needed to successfully implement the new social studies standards by the 2026–27 school year. Participants will engage in a guided exploration of the revised standards, including analysis of major content shifts, vertical alignment across grade levels, and implications for curriculum planning.

Throughout the workshop, teams will connect the updated standards to the C3 Framework, deepening their understanding of high-quality instructional practices and identifying necessary instructional shifts to support student learning. Time will be provided for participants to apply their learning to their own curriculum (with a focus on inquiry and interdisciplinary skills).

The STAR Autism Program teaches children with autism the critical skills identified by the 2001 National Research Council. The ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) instructional methods of discrete trial training, pivotal response training, and functional routines form the instructional base of this comprehensive program for children with autism. 

This extensive two-day workshop provides participants with detailed examples and practice activities on how to implement the evidence-based practices. Participants will learn how to implement these strategies through structured lesson plans and a curriculum scope and sequence. The workshop will include extensive data collection systems and participants will learn to collect and use data for instructional decision making.

The STAR Autism Program teaches children with autism the critical skills identified by the 2001 National Research Council. The ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) instructional methods of discrete trial training, pivotal response training, and functional routines form the instructional base of this comprehensive program for children with autism. 

This extensive two-day workshop provides participants with detailed examples and practice activities on how to implement the evidence-based practices. Participants will learn how to implement these strategies through structured lesson plans and a curriculum scope and sequence. The workshop will include extensive data collection systems and participants will learn to collect and use data for instructional decision making.

It is more important than ever that we embrace practices known to insulate young people from the impact of traumatic events. These practices support students who are experiencing adversity, allowing them to remain/become ready to learn, connect, and thrive. Participants will examine the trauma responsiveness of current practices and pedagogy, then use scenarios to apply trauma responsive practices and interventions. This training focuses on strategies and interventions that are trauma responsive, trauma protective, and also academically sound pedagogical practices. The course will provide and use the text, Trauma Responsive Educational Practices: Helping Students Cope and Learn.

To better support students impacted by trauma, educators must first understand the various types of traumas (beyond ACES) and how trauma affects the brain and behavior in both students and adults. This equity-infused training is embedded with trauma-informed practices that support resilience and address its insulating factors of relationship, regulation, and responsibility. The topic of trauma is approached with care and consideration for people with a wide range of lived experience.

Minnesota’s 2020 ELA standards elevate student self-selection and choice, diverse texts and perspectives, and authentic literacy experiences that honor student identity and voice. In this hands-on session, grades 5–12 ELA teachers will learn how to build purposeful text sets and literature circles that support a genuine exchange of ideas. Learn engaging routines and management practices that make small-groups engaging and sustainable as an alternative to the whole-class novel.