Evidence-Based Instruction: A Six-Module Professional Development Course

Give your next professional learning cycle a clear path from discussion to classroom practice.

This course helps educators examine an instructional challenge, improve an upcoming lesson, try the change, collect evidence, and decide what to adjust. Six connected modules give facilitators a sequence to follow and teachers practical tools to use between sessions.

For the team ready to work on instruction together

The course is designed for administrators, instructional coaches, teacher leaders, PLCs, and educators planning sustained professional learning. It can support a facilitated series, a coaching cycle, new-teacher learning, or individual study.

Choose it when you want participants to leave with a lesson or routine they will revisit in their classrooms. Plan time for discussion, application, and reviewing student work alongside the presentation.

Six modules with a practical instructional focus

• How Learning Happens: examine attention, memory, prior knowledge, and cognitive load while reviewing a lesson segment.
• Explicit Instruction That Preserves Student Thinking: work on modeling, concise think-alouds, guided practice, and checks for understanding.
• Retrieval, Spacing, and Practice: plan how important learning will return over time.
• Formative Assessment That Changes Instruction: develop questions that reveal thinking and plan responses to the evidence.
• Feedback Students Use: connect feedback to a revision, correction, explanation, or another attempt.
• From Guided Practice to Independent Learning: examine scaffolds and reduce support as students demonstrate readiness.

The materials to support the whole cycle

The package includes a course map and overview, a facilitator guide, a participant workbook, an implementation toolkit, a 19-page presentation deck, a completion-certificate template, and research references with source notes.

The facilitator guide provides module purposes, discussion prompts, suggested facilitation moves, and deliverables. The participant workbook supports notes, classroom application, evidence collection, and reflection.

Use the implementation toolkit to keep the work connected to actual lessons. It contains a Cognitive Load Review Checklist, Explicit Instruction Planner, Retrieval and Spacing Map, Hinge Question Builder, Feedback-to-Action Form, Scaffold Fading Ladder, 90-Day Implementation Tracker, and Learning Walk Look-Fors.

Build the schedule around application

You can organize the course as six sessions, three half-day workshops, a full-day introduction with follow-up, a PLC series, a coaching cycle, or self-paced study. The suggested learning time is approximately 12 hours, with additional time for classroom implementation and evidence review.

A practical starting point is to have each participant bring an upcoming lesson and a specific teaching challenge. Work through the relevant module, use its planning tool, and agree on what evidence to bring back. At the next meeting, discuss what happened and refine the lesson or routine.

What building a course from scratch asks of you

Creating a professional learning sequence involves more than assembling slides. Someone must choose the instructional focus, connect the sessions, write discussion prompts, prepare participant tasks, and build tools for follow-through.

This course supplies those planning materials so your preparation can focus on the team’s needs, examples, pacing, and application. It still takes facilitation and time in classrooms. If you only need a short idea for the staff room, the Potty PD newsletter collection may fit that purpose better.

Questions before you choose

What file formats are included?

The package includes PDFs and editable DOCX files. The DOCX files can be uploaded to Google Drive and opened in Google Docs. Fonts and spacing may need small adjustments after opening editable files in Google applications.

Is the completion certificate a promise of professional credit?

The package includes a certificate template. Check your employer’s or licensing body’s requirements before using the course toward any required professional learning credit.

Is this a set of student worksheets?

The materials are for educator learning and instructional planning. Participants apply the tools to their own lessons, students, and teaching context.

Can I share it with an entire school or district?

Review the current purchase license and any additional-license requirements on TPT before distributing materials to a team. Choose access that covers the people who will use the resource.

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