Courses

From classroom management to advanced learning techniques, ETFO Credit Courses offer you a range of choices that will help you to upgrade your teaching skills, make a difference in the lives of your students and experience success in your own career.

Click on one of the courses below to see more information about it, or scroll down the page to see all the course descriptions.

Achieving Student Outcomes Through Co-Operative Learning®
Behavioral, Academic, and Social Interventions for the Classroom™
Brain-Based Ways We Think and Learn®
Building Communication and Teamwork in the Classroom®
Classroom Management: Orchestrating a Community of Learners®
Collaborative Inquiry for Students: Preparing Minds for the Future™
Designing Motivation for All Learners (formerly Keys to Motivation)®
Differentiated Instruction for Today’s Classroom®
Meaningful Activities to Generate Interesting Classrooms®
Merging Educational Goals and Interactive Multimedia Projects®
Purposeful Learning Through Multiple Intelligences®
Reading Across the Curriculum™
Student Engagement and Standards-Based Learning™
Successful Teaching for Acceptance of Responsibility®
Teaching Through Learning Channels®
Terms of Registration

Course Descriptions

Achieving Student Outcomes Through Co-Operative Learning®

Learn how to set up, monitor, and debrief group learning while teaching students interpersonal skills. Develop cooperative learning starters that immediately involve students in specific learning tasks to achieve subject matter mastery while troubleshooting problems of group learning. Explore the achievement of long-term success through collaborative problem solving, teamwork, shared decision-making, self-evaluation, and effective communication.

  • Create meaningful cooperative activities.
  • Interact positively with student groups.
  • Trouble shoot common group problems.

“No more chaos! My students get right to work in their groups.”

Behavioral, Academic, and Social Interventions for the Classroom™

Implement the Solution Seeking Cycle and the Intervention Pyramid to design effective universal and targeted interventions for the classroom. Learn how to foster a climate of respect and responsibility that supports student resiliency with an emphasis on strengths-based learning, creating learning alliances, and designing REACH lessons. The strategies offered in this course will help you meet the expectations of a Response to Intervention (RTI) classroom. Each participant receives You Can Handle Them All by R. L. DeBruyn and J. L. Larson, published by The Master Teacher.

“This class gave me an excellent foundation for developing, refining, implementing, and evaluating interventions in my classroom. “

Brain-Based Ways We Think and Learn®

Explore the four basic thinking skills of induction, deduction, analysis, and synthesis. Experience, model, and internalize specific techniques of brain-based teaching and learning. Apply the cognitive processes to your lesson planning and instructional practices in a way that enhances the benefits of brain-compatible learning and further increases student comprehension and achievement.

  • Learn how the brain processes information.
  • Enrich your lessons with brain-compatible strategies.
  • Integrate thinking processes into real-life applications.

“I have the tools I need to involve my students in critical thinking and problem solving.”

Building Communication and Teamwork in the Classroom®

(Formerly titled Project TEACH)
How can you reach a new level of positive communication with your students? Discover strategies to foster an emotionally-engaging classroom where students are connected to school, learning, and one another. You’ll learn about specific strategies in the following areas: teacher leadership, communication and listening, positive thinking and support, and team building.

  • Master effective communication skills.
  • Establish a positive learning community.
  • Avert teacher-student confrontations.

“The communication skills apply to so many different situations. I use them both at home and school.”

Please note that this course is a revision of the Project TEACH course. If you have taken Project TEACH for credit, you may not take this course.

Classroom Management: Orchestrating a Community of Learners®

When you empower your students to take responsibility for their own learning experiences, you are freed from constantly dealing with behavioral and organizational issues. Discover and practice skills for orchestrating classroom life and learning so that instruction flows smoothly, student misbehavior is minimized, and learning potential is maximized. Create an Action Plan of practical strategies to implement immediately in your classroom.

  • Structure a positive learning environment.
  • Increase student willingness and cooperation.
  • Stop misbehavior and prevent it from recurring.

“The course gave me so many great ideas that I can easily carry over to my classroom without doing extra ‘work’ to develop the idea.”

Collaborative Inquiry for Students: Preparing Minds for the Future™

Design collaborative inquiry experiences for students that encourage depth of knowledge, promote critical thinking, and incorporate the skills students need now and in the future. Discover strategies for teaching collaboration, teamwork, and decision making based on the TEAM model of collaborative inquiry. Learn how to design essential questions and apply the appreciative inquiry model of “discover, dream, design, and deliver” to implement and construct five different models of collaborative inquiry.

  • Design essential questions
  • Use the appreciative inquiry model of “discover, dream, design, and deliver” to facilitate collaborative inquiry
  • Explore the various models of collaborative inquiry: problem-based learning, hypothesis-based learning, project-based learning, appreciative inquiry, and performance-based learning

Designing Motivation for All Learners (formerly Keys to Motivation)®

Discover a framework for creating motivational classroom experiences for all learners, especially those of Generation Me. Learn how purposeful work and goal achievement can support all types of learners. By studying and practicing instructional strategies and communication skills designed to support and enhance student motivation, you can positively impact your students’ achievement potential and develop confident, self-directed, engaged learners.

  • Learn key factors in student motivation.
  • Create lessons that support all types of learners.
  • Master specific verbal skills.

“I’ve gained so many insights into different types of learners! I’ve been able to motivate students that I didn’t know how to reach before.”

Please note that this course is a revision of the Keys to Motivation course. If you have taken Keys to Motivation for credit, you cannot take this course.

Differentiated Instruction for Today’s Classroom®

Acquire key knowledge and skills to implement differentiated instruction successfully in your classroom. After gaining expertise making practical and flexible instructional decisions based on your diverse students’ learning needs, you will create a standards-based learning environment where all students can thrive and achieve.

  • Discover practical responses to diverse learning needs in today’s mixed-ability classrooms
  • Increase student achievement in a standards-driven learning environment
  • Create powerful learning experiences that engage and motivate students
  • Make DI come alive in your own classroom

Meaningful Activities to Generate Interesting Classrooms®

You’ll learn new and interesting activities that unlock the creative minds of students and teachers alike in this first-hand, face-to-face course experience. Discover dozens of interactive and engaging learning activities along with methods to assess their value. You can apply course strategies to all grade levels and teaching blocks.

  • Unlock your creativity.
  • Actively draw students into learning.
  • Use activities for maximum impact.

“The activities in this course make it easy for me to go beyond the usual textbook approach to learning.”

Merging Educational Goals and Interactive Multimedia Projects®

Explore ways to incorporate multimedia projects into your classroom. Engage students in activities that they find relevant and exciting. Find out how to empower students to move beyond rote learning into problem solving, collaboration, researching, designing, testing, and communicating. Participants should have a basic understanding of PowerPoint before enrolling in this course.

Purposeful Learning Through Multiple Intelligences®

Acquire an understanding of Howard Gardner’s intelligences. Experience the intelligences personally and create lesson plans that can be used immediately. Learn to implement current school-wide reforms that serve to complement the intelligences.

  • Discover your multiple intelligences profile.
  • Explore all eight intelligences.
  • Enrich your lessons with multiple intelligences strategies.

“The strategies suggested in this course have made teaching to the intelligences easier than I ever imagined.”

Reading Across the Curriculum™

Explore metacognitive reading strategies that will help you to plan lessons in your content areas. Apply best practices related to types of text, reading assessments, fluency, motivation, vocabulary, and note taking. Develop reading plans, plan cooperative learning, create reading lessons, explore best reading practices, and develop rubrics. Each participant receives Differentiated Instructional Strategies for Reading in the Content Areas by C. Chapman and R. King, published by Corwin.

“All students need to be successful readers. This course provided me the tools to support my students.”

*Coming Fall 2010*

Student Engagement and Standards-Based Learning™

Optimize student engagement and improve student achievement. Develop high-yield learning activities aligned to curriculum expectationss and process skills. Align standards-based teaching, assessments, and scoring guides for essential activities and curriculum requirements. Design standards-based activities that foster 21st-century skills, differentiate instruction, and engage all learners. Experience a variety of standards-based lessons and activities for use in your classroom.

  • Experience a variety of standards-based learning activities for use in your classroom.
  • Evaluate and develop standards-based learning activities, assessments, and scoring guides using the design components you will learn in this course.
  • Discover how to maximize student learning by modifying or expanding a standards-based learning activity.
  • Engage students academically, behaviorally, and emotionally through standards-based learning activities that match curriculum expectations.

Successful Teaching for Acceptance of Responsibility®

Gain new techniques to eliminate irresponsible student behavior. Learn how to empower students to achieve personal power and responsibility in a classroom that models and invites self-responsible behaviors. Empower educators in their personal lives through strategies that increase their own sense of power.

  • Create classrooms that support responsibility.
  • Prevent power struggles with students.
  • Increase your personal power.

“Now my kids realize they own their learning and their problems. I’ve been teaching for seven years and wonder how I made it that long without these tools.”

Teaching Through Learning Channels®

Explore learning preferences and develop brain-compatible strategies to address them through multisensory teaching. Discover how to incorporate a variety of brain-compatible techniques that address students’ basic motivational needs.

  • Understand the five needs all students have.
  • Discover the excitement of multisensory teaching.
  • Learn how to teach for concept mastery.

“I wish I would have known this information years ago. It’s changed my teaching.”

Terms of Registration

1. All registrations require a $50 nonrefundable deposit for each enrollment.
2. All required materials and course texts are included with the course fee.
3. ETFO reserves the right to cancel courses due to insufficient registration. Participants will receive a full refund if a course is cancelled by ETFO.
4. ETFO is not responsible in the event that a member completes a credit course that does not result in the participant’s desired grid improvement.
5. To withdraw from a course, you must notify ETFO in writing or by e-mail. Please contact Melanie McClelland. Refunds will be based on when the withdrawal is received:
- Withdrawal prior to course start: $425 refund ($300 if course is not taken for credit)
- Withdrawal within the first two course sessions: $200 refund ($150 if not taken for credit)
- Withdrawal after the first two sessions the course have taken place: $0 refund