Teacher Training By Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski

Seventy Seminole Tribe of Florida early childhood teachers attended a full-day hands-on science inquiry-based teacher training professional staff development workshop to learn how to teach science through children’s literature conducted by Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski. Teachers were actively engaged in exploring early childhood science concepts through hands-on explorations. Additionally, teachers were introduced to early childhood children’s literature that can be used to teach early childhood science concepts in the classroom and at home. Teachers conducted hands-on explorations to investigate:  the nature of matter, floating and sinking, plant and animal kingdom concepts, how rocks break down into smaller pieces, mathematical concepts including patterns, shapes, and sorting. The teacher training workshop was a great success. Participants left the workshop with increased content knowledge, motivated, confident, and ready to implement what they had learned in the teacher training workshop within their own classrooms. All of the children’s literature used during the teacher training workshop can be viewed and ordered from Amazon via this site at no extra charge (see book page).

I had the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm and knowledge of science with another great group of teachers yesterday. The director of a local VPK school arranged for me to come and present a three hour hands-on-minds-on teacher training workshop entitled “Connecting Science Across The Curriculum.” It’s beneficial when administration arranges for teacher training/ professional staff development during teacher pre-planning week. The teachers are refreshed after a long summer break, motivated, and looking for new ideas to implement within their classroom. As always my teacher training workshops are conducted in a format that blends science content with the “how to” implement within the classroom. Thus, teachers are expanding upon their existing science content knowledge as well as gaining new hands-on-minds-on explorations to implement within their classrooms. During the three hour workshop teachers were actively engaged in exploring science, mathematics, language arts, literacy, social studies, health, and the arts via an inquiry-based format. We started the morning off with a nature walk around the school campus. The emphasis was placed on nurturing the young child’s natural curiosity as well as developing observational skills in their students. It’s all about making observations and asking questions! Teachers explored life and environmental science concepts, physical and earth science concepts while being introduced to affective methods of connecting science across the curriculum. What a great workshop, and wonderful group of teachers.