I will be facilitating a day-long workshop at the “Come Learn with Us” conference at the JCC in Manhattan on August 28th.

Here is a description of the workshop:

Come Learn With: Renee Dinnerstein
The Classroom Speaks: Transforming the Classroom into an Exciting Laboratory for Learning

Description:

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. We will see video clips of children in Choice Time centers and also powerpoints of child-directed inquiry projects.

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
*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 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
*Suggestions for 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.

My workshop will be capped at 25 participants.

Contact me if you need any more information.