Email
Print

A two-day professional development workshop to introduce teachers to the foundations of the Strategic Instructional Model® (SIM) and prepare them to implement the Fundamentals in the Theme Writing Strategy will be presented by the University of Georgia’s College of Education Sept 27-28.

This research-based intervention helps students acquire strategies for writing and editing a theme by using a basic structure and framework to plan and write effectively. With incremental instruction (including learning sheets to accompany instruction) students are taught how to gather information, organize it using a diagram, and write a theme with a structure that includes an introduction, body, conclusion and connecting paragraphs with appropriate transitions.

This strategy is designed and found to be most appropriate for students in grades 6 through 12 (although some have taught the strategy successfully to 4th graders). Students who can write complete sentences and well-organized paragraphs respond most successfully to instruction in Theme Writing Strategy.

The workshop will be held from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at Rivers Crossing, 850 College Station Road, Athens. Registration deadline is Sept. 19. SIM® Professional Developer Kathy Boyle-Gast, of the UGA College of Education’s department of communication sciences and special education, will be the instructor.

Professional Learning Units can be earned through the workshops, contingent upon approval by individual school district administration.

Participants in this workshop ideally would have already received professional development in the SIM® Paragraph Writing Strategy.

Developed through the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning from on-going research for over 30 years, SIM® is an evidence-based model of instruction that provides Learning Strategies and Content Enhancement Routines geared especially towards students who are struggling to learn in the classroom, including those with specific learning difficulties.

The SIM® workshops require instruction by a University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning-approved Professional Developer. Cost for each two-day workshop is $250. For more information on these and other workshops or to register online, visit the UGA College of Education’s Office of Outreach & Engagement: www.coe.uga.edu/events/