workshops
In her workshops, Marcia models the instructional strategies outlined in her books as she engages the brains of her participants.
Contact us for more details or to schedule your workshop.
Dr. Tate’s Workshop Offerings:
Engaging the Brain: 20 Unforgettable Strategies for Growing Dendrites and Accelerating Learning
Have you ever wondered why some students cannot understand or recall important content after a 24-hour period? If your students are not learning the way you are teaching them, then you must teach them the way they learn! Based on brain research, learning style theory, and the 4th edition of the bestseller Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites, this workshop enables you to experience 20 instructional strategies that maximize memory and minimize forgetting. Increase learning for all students when strategies like drawing, metaphor, movement, music, and storytelling are used to teach curriculum objectives and meet international standards. Explore research that shows why these strategies are preferable to others. Ensure that brains retain key concepts, not only for tests but for life! This workshop has been called both professionally and personally life-changing and lots of fun!
Healthy Teachers, Happy Classrooms: Twelve Brain-based Principles to Avoid Burnout, Increase Optimism, and Support Physical Well-Being
Many teachers are simply and understandably burning out! The fire and passion that once sparked for teaching are simply becoming extinguished. In this highly engaging workshop, based on the book by the same title, educators will not only learn how to restore their passion for teaching and create a classroom where students look forward to coming to class, but they will also explore 12 specific ways to look five to ten years younger, become and remain healthier, and live a longer life! Divided into four parts, the session enables participants to create a soothing environment, maintain a healthy physiology, generate positive emotions, and live a meaningful existence. It has been called both personally and professionally life-changing!
Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones
Have you ever noticed that the louder some teachers get when reprimanding students, the louder those students also become? Learn techniques for managing an active, brain-compatible classroom without ever raising your voice. Experience five techniques that proactive classroom managers use to avoid problems in the first place. Learn to 1) develop a relationship with each student; 2) Create a physical classroom environment that is conducive to optimal learning; 3) Deliver engaging lessons with the use of brain-friendly strategies; 4) Develop a proactive management plan; and 5) tackle the most challenging 10% of students by using techniques which appear to work with such chronic behavior disorders as attention-deficit, conduct, or oppositional disorder.
“Sit & Get” Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Professional Learning Strategies that Engage the Adult Brain
Visualize the worst presentation that you have ever been a part of as an adult learner. Now, visualize the best one. No doubt, there is a considerable difference between the two. This workshop is designed for administrators, staff developers, teacher leaders, instructional coaches and coordinators, college and university professors, business and community leaders, and anyone who teaches the adult brain. In fact, many presenters to adult audiences do not realize that having participants sit and get information is not the most effective way to ensure that the information will be understood and remembered. Adults don’t retain information simply by sitting and viewing multiple PowerPoint slides and being read what is contained on them. Participants in this workshop are engaged the entire time while they learn the answers to the following three basic questions: (1) What are the techniques that appear to result in sustained adult behavior change? (2) What are six principles of adult learning theory? and (3) What are 20 strategies that I must use to make the professional learning experience unforgettable for my adult learners?
Formative Assessment In A Brain-compatible Classroom: How Do We Really Know They’re Learning?
If you wait until you have planned your lesson to decide how you will assess it, you have actually waited too late! Once you have decided what you want students to know and be able to do, the second question becomes, how will you know when they can do it? Whether they are called multiple intelligences or gifts, students come to class with many different ways of learning. This highly engaging workshop will deal with both traditional and more authentic forms for assessing those ways (i.e., higher-order questioning). Both forms should be included in a student’s portfolio and enable students to become either college- or career-ready. Leave this session with over 50 products and performances that enable you to know if students are learning and methods for assessing them. This workshop has been called practical, informative, and a great deal of fun!
Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA)
Over 50 years of research have taught us that you get what you expect. If you don’t expect much from your students, you won’t get much from them! In fact, students tend to live up or down to the expectations afforded them by the important people in their lives! During this highly engaging workshop, experience 15 interactions that teachers should use to convey their high expectations to all students. These interactions include calling on and asking higher-order questions of all students, taking a personal interest in their lives, standing in close proximity to them, praising their academic work, and complimenting their personal characteristics, as well as remaining cool and calm when correcting misbehavior. When these interactions are used, academic achievement and attendance increase, and behavior problems are reduced.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey has been on the New York Times bestseller list since the 1980s because the content contained in this book is just as valuable today as it ever was! This workshop is based on that book and acquaints participants with seven principles that effective people attempt to practice daily in both their personal and professional lives. While actively engaged in the workshop the entire time, you will learn to be proactive, not reactive; to identify and prioritize your life with the things that really make the most difference; to improve your ability to understand where others are coming from so that you might help them to achieve mutually beneficial goals and to work for mental, spiritual, physical, emotional, and social balance in your life. You will leave this workshop a person changed for the better!
True Colors: Team Building by Understanding Personality and Temperament Types
Have you ever questioned why some people in your workplace are more difficult to get along with than others? Have you ever wondered why your spouse or significant other is different from you in ways that sometimes drive you crazy? Have you considered whether your children are really yours or whether they were switched at birth? Regardless of race, religion, or national origin, people come in four personality types. Hippocrates called them Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholic, and Sanguine. Don Lowry called them Gold, Blue, Green, and Orange. The more you comprehend the differences in human temperament, the easier it becomes to understand and get along with the important people in your world. The workshop is excellent for building an effective team in the workplace and not perceiving differences as deficits. Discover your personal preferences and the preferences or strengths of others as well!
The Power of Positive Thinking
Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right! People don’t realize how they severely limit their brain’s potential with negative thinking. It is amazing how confidence in one’s ability to accomplish a task positively impacts one’s success at actually achieving it. When people approach situations with a confident attitude and a positive belief system, life-changing things can occur! Based on a combination of brain research and the book The Power of Positive Thinking in Business by Scott Ventrella, this workshop explores the detrimental effects of stress on your life and how it is the number one cause of aging and a major contributor to illness. You will learn how to lengthen your life by determining your purpose, reducing damaging stress, and creating an optimistic daily outlook. You will also learn the importance of laughter. After all, consider how long many of our major comedians live.
Preparing Your Child for Success in School and Life: 20 Ways to Increase Children’s Brain Power
Since the most rapid period of growth for brain cells is zero to four years of age, that would make a parent a child’s first and best teacher! Yet, few manuals are given to parents to show them exactly how to perform this all-important job successfully. Participants in this workshop will learn techniques that can help them get their children off to a healthy start, build relationships with them throughout their lives, equip them with the necessary structure for healthy brain development, and assist them in increasing their academic achievement. Instructional strategies that parents can use to address the visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic modalities of their children will be modeled throughout. Many parents have stated that this workshop and the accompanying book should be a required experience for everyone who calls themselves a parent.
100 Brain-friendly Lessons for Unforgettable Teaching and Learning (K-8, 9-12)
According to brain research and learning-style theory, there are 20 instructional strategies for delivering content and making it memorable. In the book by the same name, content experts nationwide have developed 100 cross-curricular lessons incorporating these 20 strategies. During this workshop, participants will be introduced to the lesson plan template these teachers used and will experience ready-made cross-curricular lessons in the areas of language arts/English, math, science, and social studies, whether teaching kindergarten or calculus. Learn to determine what students should know or be able to do, assess when they can do it, gain their undivided attention, divide the lesson into meaningful segments or chunks, and incorporate appropriate strategies. Leave this session having completed multiple lesson plans.
Reading and Language Arts Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Literacy Strategies that Engage the Brain
According to experts in the field, reading and language arts skills and abilities are best acquired when students are actively engaged in their own learning! This practical, highly engaging workshop will show you how to do just that – actively engage students in learning to read at the lower grades and reading to learn at the upper grades. The content is structured around the standards for teaching reading/English and language arts. The methodology for teaching those standards comes from the 20 strategies that take advantage of how all brains learn best. By the time the workshop is over, you will have experienced learning vocabulary by drawing it, role-playing it, singing it, and comprehension skills through the use of graphic organizers, visualization, and storytelling. This is not one to miss!
Mathematics Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Numeracy Strategies That Engage the Brain
M-A-T-H is known to be the shortened form of the word Mathematics. However, did you know that it is also a mnemonic device that stands for Math Ain’t That Hard? This acrostic rings true when brain-compatible strategies are used to teach mathematics. Compare the Singapore model for math instruction with that of the U.S. Learn to separate your math content into chunks and experience how easy it can be to teach those chunks when your students are role-playing, drawing out or visualizing a word problem, dancing the number line by doing the Number Line Hustle, or creating an original mnemonic device or story to remember the steps in long division. Whether one is singing the multiplication facts or the quadratic equation, teaching math while using 20 brain-compatible strategies makes the content understandable, memorable, and so much fun!
Science Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain
If there was ever content that should be taught using hands-on, relevant activities, it is in the area of science. This workshop is taught by one of the best science teachers in the world, Warren Phillips. Warren was named the 2004 Disney Teacher of the Year and one of the 2007 USA Today Top Teachers and has turned countless students on to science in Plymouth, Massachusetts, during an illustrious teaching career. He is also the author of SingAlong Science, a three-CD set of original songs designed to teach science concepts to a variety of familiar tunes, and the co-author of Science Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites. During this workshop, you will learn to teach selected content standards using 20 brain-compatible instructional strategies. You will sing the States of Matter, hear the story of the Amber Rock to help students understand the discovery of electricity, and witness countless experiments that can be replicated in the classroom. This workshop always leaves participants wanting more!
Social Studies Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain
Have you ever crammed for a social studies exam? If you have, then you know that as soon as the test is over, so is the information remembered for the purpose of passing the test. My social studies classes consisted of round-robin orally reading the chapters and answering the questions at the end of them! What if your teacher had told you unforgettable stories about historical people and places? What if you had formed a living timeline to help you remember events chronologically? What if you had created a song or completed a project that helped you compare and contrast landforms or types of government? In this highly interactive workshop, you will experience just that - 20 brain-compatible strategies for teaching the social studies standards in ways that are truly unforgettable! Participants refer to this workshop as informative, engaging, and so much fun!