There will be two days of wonderful professional development workshops and keynote talks at the JCC in Manhattan on August 29 and 30. I’ll be facilitating an all day workshop on August 30. Here’s the information:

A SUMMER LEARNING SERIES
FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS 

Join us for the third annual Come Learn with Us conference. This two-day event will feature full- and half-day learning opportunities for early childhood educators. The conference is timed to reinvigorate, inspire, and challenge educators just before they go back for the start of the school year. Each workshop will include hands-on interactive components and highlight clear, actionable takeaways. New this year, participants will have an opportunity for ongoing learning or midyear check-in to extend their learning well past the conference is over. Click the link under each session title below to register for individual workshops or use the group form to register multiple teachers together.

DETAILS

• Registration and workshop details will be available on this page in the spring
• Participants can register for full- or half-day workshops on either or both days
• Several workshops will be offered each day
• Full-day workshops are $100, half-day workshops $50
• Registration includes a kosher lunch from 1-2 pm both days
• Group registration will be available
• Discounts are available for schools sending their whole teaching staff, as well as for members of JECA
• New this year, we are committed to providing a limited amount of scholarships for teachers who do not receive registration reimbursement from their schools
• Please direct all questions to Aida Mehmeti at azaga@jccmanhattan.org

WED, AUG 29 +  THU, AUG 30, 10 AM-5 PM
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue @76th Street

HERE’S A DESCRIPTION OF MY WORKSHOP

Come Learn With: Renée Dinnerstein (10 am-5 pm) 
The Classroom Speaks: Transforming the Early Childhood Classroom into an Exciting Laboratory for Learning
REGISTER HERE

In this workshop, we will discuss how to transform a classroom into a place where children build things, conduct experiments, create innovative projects, read fascinating books, write original stories, use technology and texts to research for information, and feel free to try out possibilities. We will think carefully about how to create a space where children grow big ideas, make new friends, and dig deeply into exciting investigations. The workshop will address:

• Arranging the furniture and materials to make the best use of classroom space
• Considering the different centers that children will use at the beginning of the school year and creating dedicated areas that will be permanent throughout the year, as well as how to make trade-offs when space is limited
• Looking at what materials will be necessary at the start of the school year and how this will change over the course of the school year
• Creating a daily schedule that satisfies the demands of the administration yet doesn’t rush children through the day like a train keeping to a timetable
• How kindergarten and first-grade children can use their Choice Time journals to reflect on what they did at Choice Time and what might have challenged them

We will have opportunities to work on Choice Time planning templates and also work together on interpreting choice time observations and using these interpretations to plan next steps. There will be time for questions and answers.

Renée Dinnerstein has over 50 years’ experience as an early childhood educator. She has taught both in Italy and the US and has spent 18 years as an early childhood teacher at PS 321, one of New York City’s leading elementary schools. She was the teacher-director of the Children’s School early childhood inclusion annex and worked also as an early childhood staff developer in the New York City Department of Education, Division of Instructional Support, where she wrote curriculum, led study groups and summer institutes, and helped write the New York City Prekindergarten Standards. Renée, a past member of the Teachers’ College Reading and Writing Project Early Childhood Reading “think tank,” taught in the project’s summer institutes and presented calendar days for kindergarten and first-grade teachers. She received the Bank Street Early Childhood Educator of the Year Award in 1999. Her book, Choice Time, How to Deepen Learning Through Inquiry and Play (Prekindergarten–Second Grade) was published by Heinemann in August, 2016.