Professional Development

Mr. O’Corcorain
Elementary School

During this session teachers were introduced to the world of virtual reality using ClassVR headsets. They learned how to navigate the ClassVR online platform, upload content to the headsets, plan lessons based on the subject they are teaching and how to create their own content to personalize lessons. Teachers also learned about the world of augmented reality using the MergeEdu cube, which can be utilised to enhance  lessons and engage the students.

Mr. Harvey
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

All Marymount teachers have access to the excellent Formative app. This powerful addition to teachers’  arsenal of pedagogical implements allows one to adapt existing resources into online assessments using a range of question types. Teachers can quickly build a lesson consisting of content such as text, webpages, images, videos, etc. and can easily add questions to check for understanding at intervals throughout the lesson. Best of all, teachers can monitor their students inputting their responses live and give formative feedback as they work. It is a great way to leverage their existing teaching materials and is friendly to all subject areas, including Math and Science. The session will include an introduction to Formative for those new to the platform, as well as a chance to share best practice with some seasoned practitioners.

Ms. Downing
Elementary School

This workshop focuses on instilling a growth mindset into students, by allowing them to take an active role in their mathematics education. We will focus on what a math workshop looks like in an Elementary School classroom, through the daily warm ups, lessons, and menu/station time. We will also explore ways to help teach and live with a growth mindset, acknowledging struggle and perseverance with our students in mathematics. Students need to be active. Students need to be engaged. Students need “just right” challenges. Students love to work together if they are taught how to do so, so our job as teachers is to find these challenging, engaging, collaborative tasks to immerse our students in.

Mr. Kranwinkle
High School

Letters of recommendation are an important part of the college admissions process in the North American institutions and are frequently requested for candidates to private universities in Europe. In this workshop we will hear from a college admissions professional who reads recommendation letters about what makes letters effective. We will look at "outline style" recommendations - a recent trend in North American college admissions - and will read some sample letters.

Ms. O'Connor
EC2 - Grade 2

Useful and practical literacy tools and techniques for teaching students to read, from building phonemic awareness to comprehension. Some of the topics include: Phonemic Awareness and Sound Walls; The Return of the Decodable Book; Dialogic Questioning; Building Vocabulary to Increase Comprehension.

Ms. Ni-Riordain
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

Drawing on the work of Woodcock and Coffin, this session will illustrate how getting students to think more purposefully about the language they use to explain their understanding of why things happened in the past, helps them to take cognitive and conceptual leaps that even impress them! A real challenge for many students of history is resisting the temptation to tell ‘how’ things happened, when they are actually being asked to explain ‘why’.

The session aims to share key points from the academic research that informs an approach to analytical writing that releases students' latent conceptual understandings. We will examine some writing samples and lesson materials that help empower students' writing and their thinking, finishing with applying some of the ideas to your own classroom contexts.

Mr. Genziani
Middle School - High School

When it comes to students writing lab reports it can quickly become obvious that they often
have little understanding of scientific writing. They are taught how to write in English so why would writing in Science be any different? Here is a way (with appropriate resources which will be shared) to teach students the key points to writing scientifically from Grade 6 through to the IB. With the ultimate goal being we do not have to mark a lab report again which fails to meet the bare minimum standards, such as a testable hypothesis, a properly formatted graph, or lo and behold an evaluation which simply reads "we should have done more repeats".

The main focus will be on sharing and possibly developing new resources to help with teaching the students the key ideas to scientific writing in general. With additional resources in teaching specific sections of a lab report, which will aim to produce work which stand up to the IA rubric for IB sciences.

Ms. Guglielmi
Middle School - High School

This workshop is about how teachers can use knowledge of how the brain learns to create the most impactful lessons. The main goal of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is to optimize learning of iinformation by transforming scientific knowledge of how the memory works into guidelines for instructional design. In this workshop we will begin by discussing the main aspects of CLT, secondly, we will share practical ways in which teachers can deliberately free up working memory while cementing information in long-term memory. Lastly, we will look at the retrieval process as an integral part of instructional design based on CLT, sharing 5 practical ideas that can be used in any classroom. CLT is relevant for all subjects and age groups as it focuses on learning: teachers can take its principles and use them however they see fit.

Ms. Cameron
Elementary School - Middle School

More than just interactive books, Lightboxes are mini educational platforms dedicated to a topic. Accessed through the ES library; shareable with students, can be opened on any device, and used on your BenQ TV, each Lightbox contains grade appropriate information and visuals.

What makes them more than just an e-book are these features which we'll look at in more detail: Videos, links to Google Maps and curated child-safe web sites, slideshows, quizzes, text to speech, printable PDF activities that can be emailed and graded, keywords, curriculum links, and a relatable titles search in our library catalogue.

We have 67 Lightboxes ranging from Air to Pulleys to Wind; and Australia to Romans to the Waste Collector.

Ms. Canepa
Middle School - High School

The objective of this session is to present the online resources that are available through the Secondary School Library Platform. I will give you the information you need to navigate the resources and to personalise them so to use them with your students in the most effective way.

Particular focus will be given to Britannica Online, EBSCO, JSTOR, London Library, Newsademic and PressReader. Bring your computer - the objective is to make sure you can access all the resources.

Ms. Sayger
Middle School - High School

When we start the year in our classrooms, tone, routines and expectations are vital to a successful beginning. What are some strategies that we can utilise to help each of us get off to a strong start? This session will help those teachers who wish to explore different ways to establish a pathway for success. Our goal is to establish caring, thought-provoking, challenging and well-managed classroom environments so all students can achieve, year long.

Ms.  Di Ruscio
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

A fun, interactive approach to showcase student work and share class information and academic content or apps all in one place! This PD is designed for teachers who are looking for an engaging, user- friendly way to share content with students and parents and support learning and independence. We will explore a previously created Virtual Classroom to see how it can be used to increase student engagement in the classroom and encourage parent involvement and extension of learning at home. In a fun, collaborative learning space, teachers will create a template of their choice in Google Slides and add content that is relevant to their grade level or specific subject in a visually engaging way that is accessible to all learners. Let's see how a Virtual Classroom can help us stay organised, while also presenting academic content and class information in a dynamic, interactive way.

Mr. Gronland
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

Do you ever find yourself in the position where you think you've had great discussions in class, seen quality interactions throughout the semester and high levels of student engagement on multiple occasions, only to be disappointed by the quality of written assessments when the time comes at the end of a unit to take them in? If so, you are a teacher and you are like all of us, but you might also find the Hochman Method, as per The Writing Revolution, a useful tonic for this unique pedagogical malaise. The Hochman Method is a set of specific writing strategies that teachers use in every grade and in all subjects, including ELA, social studies, science, world languages and math. It is based upon 6 instructional principles:

1. Students need explicit instruction in writing, beginning in the early elementary grades.

2. Sentences are the building blocks of all writing.

3. When embedded in the content of the curriculum, writing instruction is a powerful

teaching tool.

4. The content of the curriculum drives the rigor of the writing activities.

5. Grammar is best taught in the context of student writing.

6. The two most important phases of the writing process are planning and revising.

Ms. Ferrarin
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

To many people the word Drama simply means acting but to a Drama teacher it means a whole lot more. The skills learned and practised in Drama, such as effective communication, collaboration, empathy, trust, and self-confidence help to support a modern education and directly impact a student's learning across all disciplines. As educators we are told time and time again that an essential part of learning is doing, putting the theory into practice and for those of us who have never “tread the boards” in the past or feel uncomfortable performing or speaking in front of an audience, Drama games and activities might seem like a pretty daunting teaching method, especially if it involves being in a role yourself. This workshop will aim to teach easy activities and tools you can use in your own classroom that put a focus on using the body and the voice in order to learn new ideas. I aim to demonstrate that you don’t need to be an actor or an extrovert in order to get your class involved with physical activities linked to your subject area. 

Ms. Fenneman
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

Marymount’s standards-based curriculum is inclusive, inquiry-based, student-centered, developmental, and differentiated. Our school-wide unit planner aligns with IB criteria and our units are designed using the Understanding By Design Framework. This offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its' two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum “backward” from those ends. In this workshop, we will focus on the backward planning aspect, making meaning of ideas, transferring learning, and how that learning can be meaningfully assessed.

Ms. Prenda
Middle School - High School

Technology, in its varying forms, exists in each of our classrooms, but how can it best be
leveraged as a tool to facilitate learning and empower students? Blended learning, a hybrid of traditional teaching practices supplemented with online platforms, can serve as this opportunity to transform tech from being a barrier to an asset. As a vehicle for personalization, the use of this teaching model will enable teachers to prepare effective materials for instruction and assessment while meeting the needs of each individual student. In addition to increased content mastery, blended learning methods have proven to boost student engagement, ownership, and independence. In this session, teachers will be introduced (or re-introduced) to different blended learning strategies, such as building playlists and utilizing stations, and will walk away with concrete resources for future use.

Ms. Crossan
Elementary School

At MMI, we follow the Commonsense Media curriculum in Digital Citizenship, which is aligned
with Common Core standards. In the Elementary School, students from Kindergarten to Grade
5 are taught the curriculum in STEM class. This session is designed to give an overview of the
areas covered, in order to allow everyone to help guide our students behavior online in the
same way that we do offline; it is important to know what your students have learnt about these
issues, so that we can all keep reinforcing the way that the core concepts tie into the Marymount
Learning Profile.

During this session, we will see what the students learn and how they learn it. There will be an opportunity to brainstorm ways of making meaningful emotional and behavioral connections for students across curricular areas when it comes to how they conduct themselves, and how they react to others' conduct online. I hope that by seeing what the students are learning at the beginning of the year in my lessons, you will be better supported by me if issues arise during the year. Our students use apps and online resources to enhance their learning in every aspect of the curriculum. The more they hear the same language from all of us around their digital behavior, the more valuable it is.

The Digital Citizenship curriculum is designed to be developmentally engaging and address topics in an age-appropriate way. Six core topics of digital citizenship, based on current research on children, media, and technology, are introduced and reinforced to the students over a period of time. It covers everything from recognizing that sometimes we need to disconnect, to dealing with cyberbullies, to understanding what plagiarism is, and why it matters.

Ms. Zilli
Elementary School - Middle School - High School

A new school year brings the excitement of a new beginning. There are ways to make it easier to plan teachers' lessons, assignments, and assessments to support multilingual learners. Using the WIDA Can Do Descriptors based on a student’s English proficiency level will make teaching more meaningful for the ELL students.

Using "Can Do Descriptors" to:

● Use an asset-based approach to build on what ELL learners already know and can do

● Better understand what students at different levels of language proficiency can do with language.

● Expand their understanding of what the process of language development looks like.

● Learn about scaffolding, students need to engage in content-area learning and develop language at the same time.

● Differentiate instruction and classroom assessment for language

This workshop will help build teachers' understanding of the WIDA proficiency scores, the Can Do

Descriptors, and the WIDA Standards to support  ELL students to succeed in all classes.