Tired of Feeling Overworked?
Book Melissa for your next Professional Development workshop and take back control of your lessons!
What You Can Expect Gain Achieve When Working With Melissa
- Experienced staff developer, teacher trainer, literacy coach, and life-long learner
- Dedicated to serving the needs of teachers, students, and their school's pursuits
- Humor and enthusiasm-filled presentations supporting Common Core and other state standards
Customized Workshops
The top 3 most requested trainings in each category are listed below, but all trainings are customized. Melissa also provides virtual or in-school trainings and follow-through coaching, observations, and walk-throughs to help your teachers become master teachers.
Contact Melissa for more topics and presentation ideas.
Differentiated Instruction
Double the speed of your student’s learning with this 4-step instructional cycle designed to provide high-quality, engaging instruction and differentiation. Each step offers brain-friendly teaching strategies that transform students into active learners and independent thinkers. The Instructional Cha-Cha is based on the synthesis of educational neuroscience, formative assessment, and differentiated instruction allowing teachers to gradually release learning to their students.
Everybody’s talking about differentiation. But how does a teacher begin to differentiate for the students in the classroom? Melissa defines differentiation and gives you 10 simple ways to move from “talking the talk” to “walking the walk.” By the time you leave, you’ll have 10 easy-to-implement ways to jump-start differentiation—and begin meeting the needs of ALL your students.
Say goodbye to boring, traditional teaching and adopt fresh, new ways to wake up your student’ brains and increase retention. Melissa introduces six innovative strategies you can use tomorrow. Planning multiple ways to address engagement, representation, action and expression in your room just got easier!
Literacy
Wondering how to improve literacy in your classroom? Join Melissa as she shares high-impact strategies to improve literacy skills before, during and after reading, You’ll walk away with engaging ideas to get your students reading, discussing, and writing.
Good writing doesn’t come naturally. It is a combination of skills that are taught and practiced and honed until the writing becomes purposeful and powerful. Join Melissa as she shares with you 3 recommendations to improve your students’ writing. In addition, for each recommendation, you’ll add some easy-to-implement strategies to your teacher toolkit to help your students write more effectively.
Are you still having your students look up vocabulary words in the dictionary, or using other ineffective methods of vocabulary instruction? In this session, Melissa will address the different ways that memory is stored in the brain and model a variety of ways to support your struggling readers and second language learners to build their vocabulary and become “Word Wizards!” Participants will leave with a plethora of ideas for introducing, comprehending, and recalling new vocabulary words. A fun, engaging session filled with easy to implement ideas and strategies.
Differentiated Instruction
Double the speed of your student’s learning with this 4-step instructional cycle designed to provide high-quality, engaging instruction and differentiation. Each step offers brain-friendly teaching strategies that transform students into active learners and independent thinkers. The Instructional Cha-Cha is based on the synthesis of educational neuroscience, formative assessment, and differentiated instruction allowing teachers to gradually release learning to their students.
Everybody’s talking about differentiation. But how does a teacher begin to differentiate for the students in the classroom? Melissa defines differentiation and gives you 10 simple ways to move from “talking the talk” to “walking the walk.” By the time you leave, you’ll have 10 easy-to-implement ways to jump-start differentiation—and begin meeting the needs of ALL your students.
Say goodbye to boring, traditional teaching and adopt fresh, new ways to wake up your student’ brains and increase retention. Melissa introduces six innovative strategies you can use tomorrow. Planning multiple ways to address engagement, representation, action and expression in your room just got easier!
Literacy
Wondering how to improve literacy in your classroom? Join Melissa as she shares high-impact strategies to improve literacy skills before, during and after reading, You’ll walk away with engaging ideas to get your students reading, discussing, and writing.
Good writing doesn’t come naturally. It is a combination of skills that are taught and practiced and honed until the writing becomes purposeful and powerful. Join Melissa as she shares with you 3 recommendations to improve your students’ writing. In addition, for each recommendation, you’ll add some easy-to-implement strategies to your teacher toolkit to help your students write more effectively.
Are you still having your students look up vocabulary words in the dictionary, or using other ineffective methods of vocabulary instruction? In this session, Melissa will address the different ways that memory is stored in the brain and model a variety of ways to support your struggling readers and second language learners to build their vocabulary and become “Word Wizards!” Participants will leave with a plethora of ideas for introducing, comprehending, and recalling new vocabulary words. A fun, engaging session filled with easy to implement ideas and strategies.
Classroom Management
In a differentiated classroom, students work in a variety of purposeful flexible groups. Explore the “what, why, and how” of flexible grouping and examine how to flexibly group students in multiple ways for a variety of purposes, including differentiating your instruction. Find out how to maximize student potential through purposeful, flexible grouping.
Research has found that cooperative learning benefits all types of learners and prepares them for college and careers. Join Melissa as she helps you view the difference between “cooperative learning” and “group work” and models structures to help make your class a cooperative one.
Breaking into cold sweat thinking about all those new faces on the first day of school? Realizing that you know a lot about lesson cycles, and your content area, but no one told you what to DO with the students? Relax; Melissa will give you teacher-tested, easy-to-implement ideas for classroom management that are fit for a queen (or king).
Small Group Instruction
Liven up your literacy stations (centers) with engaging and meaningful activities. Join Melissa as she shares fresh ideas for creating and managing stations that support and enhance your curriculum. Discover how to minimize the work, maximize the FUN, and reap the benefits of kid-friendly stations. Plus, come prepared to walk away with loads of ideas you can use the very next day!
Join Melissa and see how to integrate this amazing instructional strategy in your middle and high school classrooms. You’ll learn how to maintain rigor and differentiate while strengthening the students’ social skills and content area retention. You’ll walk away with ideas to immediately implement and eager to put this into play in your classroom.
We all know the importance of collaboration and cooperation in today’s classrooms, but how do we do this while ensuring accountability for all students. Join Melissa and leave with 5 strategies you can implement immediately with your students. Start this year successfully!
Classroom Management
In a differentiated classroom, students work in a variety of purposeful flexible groups. Explore the “what, why, and how” of flexible grouping and examine how to flexibly group students in multiple ways for a variety of purposes, including differentiating your instruction. Find out how to maximize student potential through purposeful, flexible grouping.
Research has found that cooperative learning benefits all types of learners and prepares them for college and careers. Join Melissa as she helps you view the difference between “cooperative learning” and “group work” and models structures to help make your class a cooperative one.
Breaking into cold sweat thinking about all those new faces on the first day of school? Realizing that you know a lot about lesson cycles, and your content area, but no one told you what to DO with the students? Relax; Melissa will give you teacher-tested, easy-to-implement ideas for classroom management that are fit for a queen (or king).
Small Group Instruction
Liven up your literacy stations (centers) with engaging and meaningful activities. Join Melissa as she shares fresh ideas for creating and managing stations that support and enhance your curriculum. Discover how to minimize the work, maximize the FUN, and reap the benefits of kid-friendly stations. Plus, come prepared to walk away with loads of ideas you can use the very next day!
Join Melissa and see how to integrate this amazing instructional strategy in your middle and high school classrooms. You’ll learn how to maintain rigor and differentiate while strengthening the students’ social skills and content area retention. You’ll walk away with ideas to immediately implement and eager to put this into play in your classroom.
We all know the importance of collaboration and cooperation in today’s classrooms, but how do we do this while ensuring accountability for all students. Join Melissa and leave with 5 strategies you can implement immediately with your students. Start this year successfully!
Assessment and Grading
We’ve all been told to “let data drive our decision-making,” but what does that really mean? Join Melissa in this interactive session to see how pre-assessments, formative assessments and summative assessments drive your instructional decisions. You’ll discover ways to use assessment data to guide form flexible groups, determine your students’ individual instructional needs, and show evidence of student mastery. Plus, you’ll leave with numerous teacher- and student-friendly tools to guide your instruction.
Explore techniques designed to make on‑going assessment and feedback simple and effective. Discover specific strategies for conducting informal assessment on a regular basis. Learn how to utilize those observations to inform your planning, grouping, and instruction. Explore how to give descriptive feedback and why it is critical to student success.
Join Melissa to understand what is meant by standards-based grading. Learn how to fairly assess and support student learning by changing ineffective and unethical grading procedures into valid, evidenced-based scores. You’ll leave with new insight into issues like averaging, zeroes on the 100‑point scale, re-do’s, formative vs. summative assessments, descriptive feedback, and more.
R. Cash
“Melissa’s Instructional Cha-Cha provides you with all the steps to respond to the variety of moves you need to keep your students dancing to success.”
“Melissa’s Instructional Cha-Cha provides you with all the steps to respond to the variety of moves you need to keep your students dancing to success.”
