Presentations for Parent-Teacher Associations, Community Groups, and Teachers
Workshops are available on a range of topics and will be customized to meet the needs of your audience. Workshops are offered in person and remotely for audiences of all sizes.
All workshops are:
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Engaging
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Interactive
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Professional
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Focused on practical applications of the latest research in child development and brain science
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Supplemented with packets of helpful and original materials for participants to take home
What you can expect from a workshop:
INTERACTIVE
All workshops will provide many opportunities for participants to reflect, explore, practice, and apply. Participants will leave with the tools to apply what they learn in real-life the very next day.
RESEARCH-BACKED
A unique feature of our workshops is the way they bridge theory with practice. Participants will learn the why as well as the how. Strategies are aligned with standards and backed by the most recent research on the brain, literacy, and learning.
CLASSROOM TESTED
Ms. Hawe draws from her experience as a classroom teacher and every strategy or tool presented is one she has used with her students. This allows her to anticipate issues teachers or parents might come across in their own classrooms or homes and proactively present possible solutions and modifications.
MULTIPLE STRATEGIES, APPROACHES, AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DIFFERENTIATION
We have all had the experience of leaving a workshop thinking, "Those ideas were great, but they would never work with my students/child." Each workshop models how teachers or parents can introduce strategies in multiple ways and differentiate as needed.
QUALITY MATERIALS
In addition to a customized slide presentation, Ms. Hawe will provide packets for duplication for workshop participants including examples, rubrics, graphic organizers, book lists, and other resources.
TEACHER AND PARENT FRIENDLY
Before becoming a consultant, Ms. Hawe was a middle school ELA classroom teacher, and many times over the course of those years was on the receiving end of professional development workshops. She is also a parent. She knows what makes a workshop useful and engaging and what doesn't.
Emily Hawe,
Founder of Mind Launchers
Emily combines her wide range of experience as a classroom teacher, college advisor, executive function coach, teacher developer, and parent coach to empower students to excel in the classroom and beyond. Prior to transitioning to consulting, she was a tenured 7th grade English teacher at Oyster Bay High School. She holds two Master's degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University in English Education and Higher Education Administration.
She has provided professional development workshops for districts throughout Long Island including Oyster Bay, Bellmore-Merrick, Sewanhanka, and Glen Cove, as well as independent schools and through Nassau BOCES.
LITERACY WORKSHOPS
Book Clubs
Launching book clubs is the single most effective and powerful way to transform your teaching and the way your students approach reading. This workshop will provide the nuts and bolts for preparing for, launching, and sustaining book clubs that lift the level of reading instruction for all students, hold students accountable, and create a classroom community of readers
The Socratic
Seminar
Take your students' close reading, argument, and discussion skills to the next level by incorporating the Socratic Seminar into your teacher toolbox. Experience a Socratic Seminar firsthand and learn how to select appropriate passages, formulate discussion questions, and create the structures that will help your students succeed with this activity. Workshop participants will receive a packet of classroom tested Socratic Seminar tools and handouts to use in their own classrooms.
Making Independent Reading Work
This workshop will guide participants in strategizing how to launch or improve an independent reading program at your school and create a school-wide culture of literacy. Learn tips and tricks for creating and maintaining a classroom library, holding students accountable, building excitement about reading, and using independent reading as a powerful opportunity to develop literacy skills.
Literacy Tools for Content Area Teachers
Why should English teachers have all the fun? The truth of the matter is that reading and writing skills need to be taught explicitly in the content areas, but many content area teachers don't know where to begin. This workshop will provide content area teachers with a literacy toolkit full of strategies they can easily incorporate whenever students are reading or writing in their classes. We will also explore ways to increase opportunities for reading and writing in the content area classroom.
Executive Function Skills and Literacy
When students struggle with reading, we examine their decoding abilities, their fluency, and their overall comprehension, but we often don't consider their executive function skills. Both reading and writing demand high levels of multiple executive function skills, and many students may need support in developing those skills. For example, reading requires task initiation, sustained attention, working memory, metacognition, and goal-directed persistence, to name only a few. Teachers will learn strategies they can use to help students with weak executive function skills excel in reading and writing.
Unit Planning with Standards and UBD
Learn how to unpack the standards into teaching points, student checklists, and assessment rubrics. Then plan a unit designed to guide all students in mastering the selected learning standard(s). Sample units, planning templates, and ideas for differentiation will be provided. Curriculum writing and curriculum development coaching packages are also available.
EXECUTIVE FUNCTION WORKSHOPS
What Teachers Need to Know About Executive Function Skills
Do your students struggle with organization, time management, and paying attention? Weak executive function skills are often the root cause behind many academic struggles. This workshop will explore what exactly executive function skills are, how they develop over time, and why they are important. We will explore classroom practices that promote their development and interventions to support students with executive function skill deficits. Teachers will have opportunities to apply and adapt ideas to their subject and grade level and set attainable goals for implementation.
Executive Function Skills and Literacy
When students struggle with reading, we examine their decoding abilities, their fluency, and their overall comprehension, but we often don't consider their executive function skills. Both reading and writing demand high levels of multiple executive function skills, and many students may need support in developing those skills. For example, reading requires task initiation, sustained attention, working memory, metacognition, and goal-directed persistence, to name only a few. We will explore how executive function skills can impact reading and writing and what strategies teachers can use to help students with weak executive function skills excel.
Growth Mindset and Motivation in the Classroom
The unmotivated student poses a particular challenge to even the most seasoned teacher. This workshop examines the neurological basis for motivation and gives teachers concrete tools they can use in the classroom to boost motivation through goal setting exercises, learning progressions, self-monitoring, and motivation enhancing grading practices. This workshop will also include demonstrations of how to introduce the idea of growth mindset to your students so they begin to understand that their brain is like a muscle that they must exercise.
Teaching Learning Strategies and Study Skills as a Part of the Curriculum
How does the brain actually learn new skills and information? How does knowing how the brain works change how we teach and how our students approach learning? We will explore learning strategies and study skills that compliment how the brain works. Instead of telling your students to study for a test, you will learn to teach them what it actually looks like to study effectively. Teachers will have opportunities to consider how they can explicitely teach those skills within the context of their curriculum to create strategy rich classrooms. Finally, we will conclude with a focus on metacognitive and self-monitoring strategies aimed at putting students in the driver’s seat of their own learning.
PARENT WORKSHOPS
What Parents Need to Know About Executive Function Skills
Today’s world of hectic schedules, information overload, and high expectations demands that our children be masters at time management, organization, planning, and flexibility. Recent research has shown just how crucial these executive function skills are to future academic, career, and life success. This workshop will present parents with an overview of executive function skills and explore strategies parents can use at home to support their development.
Homework without Tears
Is homework a nightly battle? Ever wondered how best to support your child without helicopter parenting, micromanaging, or doing the work yourself? Learn easy to implement systems and routines that will put an end to the nightly homework battle while at the same time developing your child’s confidence and independence. Common issues that will be addressed include heavy reliance on parental assistance, homework frustration and meltdowns, rushed and careless work, and homework avoidance and procrastination.
Helping the Wiggly Student Thrive
Does your child struggle to stay focused or have trouble sitting still? Learn how you can transform your child's wiggles into movement that boosts learning and brain power. We will explore how alternative seating, fidget toys, and brain breaks can help even the wiggliest of students focus on school work.
Partnering with Teachers
Establishing open lines of respectful and honest communication with your child's teachers is essential to your child's success in school, yet many parents are at a loss on how best to do this. Ms. Hawe brings her perspective as a former classroom teacher to help parents navigate this tricky area. Participants will explore how much involvement is too much or too little, the best ways to approach teachers about difficult issues, and ways to help our children become their own advocates.
Growing a Growth Mindset at Home
Simple shifts in how we praise our children can boost confidence and academic achievement while teaching resiliency in the face of challenges. Explore how Carol Dweck's research on motivation can fundamentally change how you talk to your children, and as a result, change how they see themselves. This interactive workshop will engage parents in exploring their own mindsets and practicing strategies that will help their children develop growth mindsets and the ability to learn from setbacks.
Finding a Balance with Technology Use
Technology seems to have infiltrated every aspect of our lives, but at what cost? This workshop will explore the most recent research on the positive and negative effects of technology on children. Participants will be challenged to consider how their own family values align or conflict with the technology use in their homes. Finally, we will explore simple ideas and procedures for implementing change regarding technology use that make our children partners in our efforts.
Encouraging Readers
This workshop will equip parents with an extensive toolkit to draw from to support their children's development as readers at home. Topics that will be covered include reading levels and selecting a "just right" book, encouraging reluctant readers, developing reading habits, strategies to use when helping struggling readers, carving out time for reading, how to talk to a child about a book you haven't read, and making reading a family tradition.
Coaching
Writers
Parents often complain about their child's lack of grammar or organization in written work, but how they respond varies widely in approach and effectiveness. Some parents cover the paper in red ink for the child to correct, others rewrite it themselves, and still others make a blanket statement about carelessness and leave it at that. We will discuss how parents can be most effective during the revision and editing process and practice strategies that don't include rewriting the assignment themselves. Parents will learn how to use graphic organizers and other strategies to support and motivate struggling writers. The workshop will conclude with ideas and resources for inviting writing outside of school, finding authentic audiences for children's writing, and improving grammar and vocabulary.
