Knowles Academy Courses
“We had teachers walk out saying it was the best professional development they had ever had.”
Physics for the Next Generation: The Patterns Approach
Through this Knowles Academy course, physics teachers will engage in an innovative approach to teaching physics that integrates project-based learning, modeling, and the science and engineering practices. The essential question that drives the approach is: “How do we find and use patterns in nature to predict the future and understand the past?”
“I really felt I got so much out of the workshop and am excited to implement ideas in my classroom next year. I felt I walked away with a deeper understanding of the engineering design process and much more confidence and skills in using the engineering design process in my science classroom.”
Engaging Math and Science Students in Engineering Design
Through this Knowles Academy course, teachers will learn to use engineering design to teach students math and/or science content, and inspire and equip them to solve real-world problems.
"Learning about how to incorporate high cognitive demand tasks that challenged my students but also allowed them to talk through their thinking was a powerful improvement in my classroom. Knowles showed me how to transition theory to action by providing the research and then strong examples of their use within a math classroom that was similar to mine."
Designing Instructional Tasks to Increase Student Engagement and Learning in Math
Through this Knowles Academy course, math teachers will work in small, collaborative groups as they learn to increase the cognitive demand of their lessons and provide more opportunities for students to talk about mathematics—tactics that lead to an increase in student engagement.
“Following my Knowles training on task design, I have kept the spirit of high cognitive demand in my tasks. I now have a better perspective on what makes a task cognitively demanding, and what kinds of scaffolds I need to get my students there.”
Designing Instructional Tasks to Increase Student Engagement and Learning in Science
Through this Knowles Academy course, science teachers will work in small, collaborative groups as they learn to increase the cognitive demand of their lessons and provide more opportunities for students to talk about science—tactics that lead to an increase in student engagement.
“The opportunity to learn about equity was incredibly valuable in supporting my thinking on a deeper level and giving me strategies to support and analyze equity/access in my classroom.”
Using Effective Group Work to Maximize Learning for All Students
Through this Knowles Academy course, teachers will be introduced to Complex Instruction, an instructional strategy that emerged from the field of mathematics education. Complex Instruction promotes an equitable classroom culture through the development of high cognitive demand tasks that allow students of all abilities to contribute, group work structures and teacher moves that disrupt traditional participation patterns, and techniques that help teachers develop classroom norms that promote participation and learning for all students.
“The Knowles Academy course on coaching inspired me to try coaching with a couple of teachers in my district, even though my position lacks the capacity to fully implement teacher coaching. I am also advocating for a way to increase teachers’ access to coaching within our district (e.g., by training more of our teacher leaders to be coaches).”
Implementing Teacher Coaching to Improve Classroom Practice and Student Learning
Through this Knowles Academy course, teachers and school leaders will learn about different coaching techniques and how to apply them to bring about meaningful growth.
“My students are engaging in the practices of science when they are actively building or applying scientific knowledge. In all cases, there is some concrete “artifact”—like a model, dataset or question—with which they are interacting. And in all cases, they are doing more cognitive work than me during the lesson.”
Designing Lesson Sequences to Increase Student Engagement in Science Practices
Through this Knowles Academy course, science teachers will work in small collaborative groups as they learn to increase student engagement in science practices. Teachers will learn how to sequence lessons and revise their current curriculum to provide opportunities for students to build disciplinary knowledge that is the target of instruction.