Habits of Mind: Depth and Design

Over 4 days, you will move beyond simplistic classroom strategies and "using" the Habits of Mind and uncover what it means for the skillful teacher to develop more mature Habits of Mind in their students. The first two days of this workshop are run on 19th and 20th of April.

The first two days of this course will equip you with a deep understanding of the Habits of Mind that goes well beyond "naming" and "using". You will come away from these days with a wide range of practical and successful classroom approaches for introducing the Habits of Mind and infusing them into your day to day practice. Importantly you will acquire an understanding of what it means to get better at the Habits of Mind - something that has only been full described and understood in the last 12 months by Anderson, Costa and Kallick. Armed with this understanding of how the Habits of Mind develop over time, teachers can begin to ask questions about what they need to do in their classroom and in their curriculum design to ensure this development takes place.

The second two days of this workshop applies the Backward Design process (Wiggins and McTighe) to infuse the process of developing the Habits of Mind into your curriculum writing. By applying this process you will write your own units of work for your classroom that not only enhance your learning outcomes, but also extend those outcomes to include the development of the Habits of Mind. Teachers who have begun combining the power of the Backward Design process with an understanding of development have been amazed at the improvements they see in their students, both in terms of their content learning outcomes, as well as their development of the Habits of Mind.

Teachers will be provided with a wide range of support throughout the 4 days of workshops, and beyond. All teachers registering for this module will receive free access to the Habits of Mind Resource Library for 12 months. This library contains well over 300 teacher generated classroom resources (activities, lesson plans, unit designs, powerpoints etc) to support your work with Habits of Mind in classrooms. this library includes examples of units designed using the Backward Design process.

All participants will also receive registration to the Habits of Mind Teachers Network. This gives teachers access to many further learning opportunities and resources. Also at the Habits of Mind Teachers Network are a series of online courses designed to complement and enhance the workshop materail. See www.habitsofmind.org for more about the Habits of Mind Teachers Network.

This course is fully endorsed by the Institute for Habits of Mind. All participants will receive a certificate of completion from the Institute for Habits of Mind.

This event is lead by James Anderson, Associate Director for the Institute for Habits of Mind, Convener of the Habits of Mind Teachers Network (www.habitsofmind.org) and Director of Mindful by Design (www.MindfulByDesign.com). Registrations are taken through the Learning Network New Zealand, please visit www.learningnetwork.co.nz/