Zillio Playground - Professional Development Workshops

Choose from among these Professional Development Workshops and contact us at customerservice@zilliogames.com to schedule.

PD 101 Number Sense: Improve your number sense and instruction by learning how all math skills and concepts flow together.

Audience:Classroom teachers in 2nd through 8th grade, Title I teachers, math coaches, teacher leaders, supervisors, curriculum directors, resource teachers, principals, and pre-service teachers. The course is also appropriate for middle/high school intervention specialists, special education personnel and educational consultants/therapists when their students' level of ability lies within the typical K–8 range.

Duration:4 hours

PD 102 A Playground for Math: You won’t believe serious math could ever be this much fun. Games are excellent tools for expanding children’s problem solving and reasoning skills. You’ll learn what makes a good game, how to evaluate a game for its contribution to both fun and learning, and how to leverage children’s new found enthusiasm for math to develop even more advanced skills.

Duration:2 hours

PD 103 Using Centers to Teach Math: We teach literacy through small group instruction, why not the same for math? We will explore the advantages of small group instruction: differentiated instruction, child centered, mixed ability classrooms, exploratory learning. In the hands on part this workshop you’ll participate in teacher led activities and game centers to explore the range of activities that can be adapted to center based instruction.

Discussion topics include: group size, length of time at each center, how to assess when you are not watching everyone, how to assign students to centers, what do centers feel like for the teacher and the students?

Duration:Two 2-hour sessions

PD 201 Using Zillio to Develop Algebraic Thinking: A key to success in middle school math is the ability to use a variety of skills and concepts:

To represent and analyze problems,
To identify patterns and equivalence,
To use proportional deductive, and inductive reasoning,
To generalize
To manipulate formulas including variables to solve for unknowns.

This in depth exploration will use a combination of theory, group discussion, and hands on activities on Zillio to develop and expand algebraic thinking in grades 2 through 6.

This course is a especially appropriate for any educator who may not feel fully conversant in algebra and wants to develop a more in depth understanding, whether they presently teach algebra in a classroom or not.

Duration:4 hours