Monday is coming! Every Sunday afternoon that familiar anxious feeling arrives along with thoughts of how you should have woken up early on Saturday or Sunday morning and dedicated two hours to lesson planning as you intended. Or perhaps you should have forgone time spent with family or simply enjoying “me” time in order to plan for class. Your life from September to June is filled with anxious moments wondering if you are as prepared as you should be for the next teaching day.
We at the SABES ELA Professional Development (PD) Center are here to make your life easier by providing you with the PD and resources to deliver high-quality, engaging learning experiences for your students. Take for example the ELA Unit, Take Action! Civic Engagement, available in the ELA Curriculum Hub section of the SABES website. Here you’ll find a complete social studies unit with three fully-developed lesson plans, a project checklist, a model note-taker, and a template for the formal final letter. Students will learn about the fundamentals and limitations of the municipal, state, and federal levels of government, and apply this knowledge by writing about an issue of importance to them in a formal letter to an elected official. All the hard work has been done for you and all you need to do is review the lessons and, if needed, add to or modify them to fit the needs of your students.
Need more help developing your own lessons? We’ve got you covered. You may have a topic you’d like to teach, but are unsure about how you will cover all the essentials, such as addressing the ELA standards, differentiation, scaffolding, integration of digital skills, culturally responsive teaching, and so forth. It can all feel overwhelming. In the ELA Curriculum Hub, you will find unit and lesson planning templates along with review guides to ensure that you are meeting all of these requirements. There are additional resources on the SABES website that will help you address all of the essentials needed for effective lessons.
You can also start or continue your professional development journey with your colleagues by taking one of our many PD offerings taught by ELA experts. There are many ELA topics from which to choose and many types of PD, including self-paced courses, webinars, in-person PD events, and customized, program-based PD. Be sure to sign up for SABES Calendar notifications so that you don’t miss any upcoming events. Each of the sessions provides great resources to make your life easier as a teacher and improve your teaching practice.
Another way the ELA PD Center can support you in delivering high-quality instruction is through instructional or curriculum coaching. Coaching is available for individual teachers or program teams, and is a great way to get direct support from experienced practitioners in Massachusetts. The ELA Coaches can help you take your curriculum and instruction to the next level! Please contact the ELA Center for additional information.
Imagine being able to meet the needs of all of your students, and the accomplishment and satisfaction you and your students experience when they hit critical benchmarks in their academic development. Imagine a Sunday evening spent in freedom knowing that you are ready to deliver the kind of academic experience that you dreamed of, with students learning, growing, and thriving in your classroom and being engaged in the kind of productive academic struggle that will prepare them for life outside of the classroom and in their careers. We’ve got you!
