INTRODUCING:
Tier 1 Spotlight PD Kits
Four ready-to-lead
Tier 1 PD sessions.
Already planned for you.
Choose a focused professional learning
series on Checks for Understanding
or Academic Discourse.
Each $39 kit gives you four planned
sessions with facilitator agendas, ready-to-
use presentation slides, classroom
examples, learning resources, and built-in
time for teachers to decide how they’ll
use the learning in their own classrooms.
You review the materials, add
your campus context, and lead.
Instant Digital Access
Instant Digital Access
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You know what your staff needs, but building the PD is the part you just don't have time for.
Whether your next focus is checks for understanding or academic discourse, knowing the instructional priority is only step one.
Then comes the part nobody magically puts on your calendar.
Find the research. Choose the examples. Build the slides. Plan the activities. Figure out the timing. Make it useful for elementary and secondary teachers. And somehow make sure everyone leaves knowing what they’re actually going to try in class.
The Tier 1 Spotlight PD Kits give you the full four-session sequence so you can spend your prep time getting ready to lead the learning instead of inventing it from a blank screen.
What’s Inside Each
Tier 1 Spotlight PD Kit?
Choose the instructional focus your staff needs next, then see exactly what you’ll have ready to lead.
Option 1
CHECKS FOR UNDERSTANDING
Help teachers move from “Does everyone get it?”
to evidence they can actually use.
Checking for understanding can look like it’s happening all day without giving teachers enough information to make a good instructional decision.
A few raised hands, a thumbs-up, or “Any questions?” might tell you students are participating.
They don’t necessarily tell you what students understand.
Across four focused sessions, teachers learn how to make more student thinking visible, choose checks that give them useful evidence, and decide what to do with that evidence next.
Session 1:
From “Any Questions?” to Evidence of Understanding
Teachers identify places in their own lessons where they need better information before moving on and begin replacing low-information checks with strategies that make more student thinking visible.
They leave with a clearer answer to: “How will I know what more than the same few students understand?”
Session 2:
Making Checks for Understanding More Informative
Teachers look closely at the parts of an effective check: the prompt or task, how students respond, who participates, and what evidence the teacher actually gets.
Then they strengthen a check they can use in an upcoming lesson.
Session 3:
Expanding the Checks-for-Understanding Toolkit
There are plenty of CFU strategies out there. The harder part is knowing which one makes sense for what you need to learn from students.
Teachers compare different approaches, experience strategies themselves, and choose one that fits an upcoming learning objective.
Session 4:
From Checking to Responding
Collecting evidence isn’t the finish line.
Teachers examine how student responses can help them decide whether to continue, clarify, reteach, regroup, or gather more information.
Then they build a response plan for an upcoming lesson so the check actually changes what happens next.
By the end of the series, the conversation has moved from:
“Did I check for understanding?”
to
“What did I learn from students, and what should I do next?”
Everything you need to lead all four sessions is already included:
-
The complete Checks for Understanding Edu-Toolkit, with curated articles, videos, examples, and additional resources
-
4 fully planned 60-minute professional learning sessions
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A detailed facilitator agenda for every session
-
Ready-to-use presentation slide decks
-
Classroom examples and staff discussion prompts
-
Activities that help teachers examine and strengthen current practice
-
Built-in planning time so teachers leave each session knowing what they’ll try next
You review the materials, add your campus context, and lead.
Instant Digital Access
Option 2
ACADEMIC DISCOURSE
Help teachers create classrooms where students do more of the thinking, explaining, listening, and responding.
More student talk doesn’t automatically mean more student thinking.
A turn-and-talk can still be carried by the same confident students, stay at surface-level responses, or depend on the teacher to keep the entire conversation moving.
Across four focused sessions, teachers learn how to design discussions with a clear academic purpose, prepare more students to participate, and gradually give students greater responsibility for the thinking and conversation.
Session 1:
From Teacher Talk to Student Talk
Teachers examine who is doing the intellectual work during classroom discussions and which teacher moves create more meaningful student-to-student interaction.
Then they redesign one part of an upcoming lesson so students take on more of the thinking, speaking, listening, and responding.
Session 2:
Making Turn-and-Talk More Purposeful
Turn-and-talk is familiar. That doesn’t mean it’s always doing much.
Teachers examine the prompts, preparation, routines, accountability, and follow-up that make partner talk academically useful.
Then they choose one refinement to use in an upcoming lesson.
Session 3:
Choosing the Right Discussion Structure for the Thinking You Want
Instead of collecting random discussion strategies, teachers compare structures based on the kind of thinking and participation each one supports.
They experience protocols themselves, then choose one that fits the purpose of an upcoming lesson.
Session 4:
From Checking to Responding
Student-led discussion doesn’t mean the teacher disappears.
Teachers identify the discussion responsibilities students need to learn, decide which responsibility their students are ready to take on next, and plan how they’ll model, practice, and gradually transfer it.
The goal is not less teacher support. It’s students becoming increasingly capable of carrying the academic conversation themselves.
Across the series, teachers move from asking:
“How do I get students talking more?”
to
“How do I help students do more of the intellectual work?”
Everything you need to lead all four sessions is already included:
-
The complete Academic Discourse Edu-Toolkit, with curated articles, videos, protocols, and additional resources
-
4 fully planned professional learning sessions ranging from 60–90 minutes
-
A detailed facilitator agenda for every session
-
Ready-to-use presentation slide decks
-
Classroom examples and staff discussion prompts
-
Opportunities for teachers to experience and analyze discussion strategies themselves
-
Built-in planning time so teachers leave knowing what they want to try next
You do not have to squeeze all four sessions into one giant PD day.
Please don’t.
These were designed to help you keep one instructional priority going long enough for teachers to actually use it.
Use one session during a staff development day.
Bring the next into a faculty meeting.
Give teachers time to try the learning in their classrooms.
Then return to the topic several weeks later ready to refine it.
You can build the learning across the year instead of introducing a priority once and hoping it sticks.
Teachers leave with something to try,
not just another page of notes.
Every Tier 1 Spotlight session is built around application.
Teachers don’t only hear about the practice. They work with it.
1
EXAMINE
Look closely at classroom examples and current practice.
3
DISCUSS
Figure out what makes the practice useful and where
it tends to break down.
2
EXPERIENCE
Participate in strategies instead of only hearing them explained.
4
PLAN
Decide exactly how the learning will show up in an upcoming lesson.
The conversation keeps coming back to one question:
What will this look like with our students?
Which Tier 1 focus does your staff need right now?
Checks for Understanding
Choose this if teachers are getting participation from students, but not enough evidence to know who understands, what they understand, or what needs to happen next.
Instant Access - $39
Academic Discourse
Choose this if students are talking, but discussions still depend heavily on the teacher, stay surface-level, or don’t give enough students meaningful responsibility for the thinking.
Instant Access - $39
Start with the problem your staff is running into most often right now.
What makes this different?
Planned for you.
Still yours to lead.
It stays close to classroom practice.
The sessions focus on instructional decisions teachers make every day, not broad ideas that sound great in a training room and get fuzzy once students walk in.
Teachers participate in the learning.
They sort, analyze, discuss, experience strategies, examine examples, troubleshoot, and make decisions.
Implementation is part of the session.
Teachers repeatedly apply the learning to an upcoming lesson or classroom situation instead of being expected to figure that part out later.
The learning builds across multiple sessions.
Each set takes one important area of Tier 1 instruction and develops it over four focused conversations rather than trying to cover everything at once.
You get your planning time back.
The research has been gathered.
The sequence has been planned.
The slides have been created.
The facilitator notes are ready.
You can focus on your staff and the instructional work in front of you.
Frequently Asked Questions
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WHY TRUST THIS RESOURCE?
Jodie Villemaire
Founder, Principal Leadership Solutions
I’m a veteran principal and school leader with 27 years in public education, followed by five years as a certified executive coach supporting principals and schools across the country.
I’ve spent decades observing classrooms, coaching teachers, leading professional learning, and helping leadership teams turn instructional priorities into things teachers can actually use.
I also know what it feels like to have a very clear idea of what my staff needs to work on and absolutely no extra hours in my schedule to build four PD sessions about it.
That’s what these kits are designed to solve.
Each Tier 1 Spotlight series brings together focused professional learning, classroom examples, teacher participation, implementation planning, and curated learning resources so you can spend less time constructing the PD and more time leading the instructional work with your staff.
Your next Tier 1 PD does not have to start with a blank slide deck.
Choose the instructional focus your staff needs next. The session sequence, facilitator guidance, presentation materials, activities, and teacher application time are already planned.
Instant digital access after purchase.
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