This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 199 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode we'll be looking at how you can offer more personalized instruction to

your students through small lessons we're calling seminars.

We've talked about a lot of different ways to differentiate and personalize instruction.

Methods for giving each student what they need when they need it, rather than planning

the exact same learning experiences for everyone every day.

The good news is that there are so many different ways to differentiate, and in today's

episode we'll focus on another strategy that we're calling seminars.

I say we're calling it that because I assume you're already familiar with the word seminar,

a short-term gathering of people for the purpose of learning about a given topic.

Typically adults attend seminars, university students attend seminars.

What we're talking about today is offering a version of that concept to students within

your own classroom, assuming that is a K through 12 classroom.

These seminars are many lessons given during class time, but the key is that most of the

time they are optional.

Students only sign up to attend if they have an interest in or need to learn more about

the topic.

And yes, they could just be called many lessons.

In fact, I heard about this same concept years ago from the high school teachers at the

Apollo School in episode 62, but something special is added when you call them seminars.

That's what today's guest calls them.

Melanie Mean is a Connecticut-based elementary writing and social studies coordinator who

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