Maryland PBS TeacherLine Courses for Reading and Language Arts

Children's Authors on the Web: Online Sites that Motivate Students to Write For K-6 (2 MSDE CPD credits)
 
Connecting with authors often motivates students to do more reading and writing. By exploring websites dedicated to published authors, students begin to see authors as real people with both ordinary and amazing life experiences and writing as an exciting adventure as well as a structured process. This couse is designed to help teachers advance their student’s skills in reading, writing, and communicating in different forms.  Participants will explore and evaluate online author studies and the websites created by and for children’s authors. This fully facilitated, online course allows teachers to share ideas about children’s authors and have discussions about working online with elementary-aged students. Participants also create an author study related to their curriculum that is enhanced by the use of Internet resources.

Effective Writing Instruction Grades 1-3 (2 MSDE CPD credits)

Learn how to use Writing Workshops to teach the theory and practice of writing to your early elementary students. From setting up and maintaining a Writing Workshop to analyzing obstacles to good student writing, you'll have the opportunity to share insights with online colleagues. You'll also learn ways to help students learn to evaluate the credibility of their sources. You'll write a synthesis paper or design a class Web site to accompany a Writing Workshop program as your final project.

Integrating the Internet Into the K-2 Language Arts Curriculum  (2 MSDE CPD credits)
 
The Internet can be a fantastic tool to promote student learning at the primary level when teachers know how and when to integrate it effectively into their curriculum. In this fully facilitated, online course, participants review the National Educational Technology Standards in relation to the K-2 classroom. They have an opportunity to search for, evaluate and select appropriate Internet resources for their K-2 Language Arts classrooms. As the course proceeds, developing high-quality Language Arts lesson plans, technology integration, classroom management considerations for technology use, and online safety issues at the K-2 level are covered.

Teaching Writing Across the Content Areas Grades 6-12 (2 MSDE CPD credits)

You can bring writing into your classroom in all content areas with a practical plan developed through your work in this course. Covering the research basis for writing across the curriculum, the course will also help you teach students effective writing processes, including finding the time to write. You'll learn sound techniques for evaluating writing skills and discover proven ways to promote writing to students.