Types Of Workshops And How You Can Use Them

Invitational Workshop

Popularized by Lucy Calkin, the invitational is one of the simplest types of workshops. It includes an instructor hosting a mini-lesson that meets the needs of most of the students.

After creating the mini-lesson, the students are invited and asked to use the strategies and skills in the mini-lesson in the workshop. The students can work in small groups or independently.

Generally, the tasks are clear, and the students can participate in sessions. During the workshop, the educator can engage with students and get some feedback.

Unfortunately, this type of workshop has several drawbacks. For instance, the mini-lessons are didactic, which can’t meet our needs as entrepreneurs. It may work with children, but when dealing with adults, you may have to pick another method that lets everyone contribute.

Constructive Workshop

The didactic approach can work with discussion and direct instruction kind of workshops. But if you want to include self-questioning and solve a few problems, then you need to try a constructive workshop. With this type of workshop, students get a problem or provocation to deal with.

The instructor may read closely and even use images, but they will leave the action and interpretation to the students. This is the best option for mathematics workshops; after all, calculations are all about problem-solving. So, they’ll solve the calculations using what they’ve learned.

This leaves the student with room to personalize the workshops. After all, they are the ones who need to pick the right strategy or method for solving the problem. But most importantly, students will have to converge and compare their ideas before coming up with a solution.

Reflection Workshop

Generally, formative evaluation, feedback, and self-reported grades can have a crucial effect on your learning. Therefore, it’s crucial that we have a workshop that’s devoted to reflections since it’s different from teaching. It also emphasizes the importance of setting your lessons aside for this type of workshop.

The reflection workshop is didactic as the instructor thinks aloud and creates a method for interpreting the feedback. On the other hand, it is problem-influenced since kids can use it for goal-setting and problem-solving.

The reflection workshop resembles the invitational workshop in structure. It starts with a mini-lesson and a few tips on the language used. Next, the educator and student converge around the mini-lesson before going to work on it alone.

Once finished, they converge again for a discussion session on their reflections. This teaches them to be transparent while focusing on their goals and highlighting the objectives of the class.

Conferencing Workshop

We all believe that teaching requires giving instructions, and we always feel like we haven’t done our jobs if we haven’t given the students instructions. But the most meaningful thing comes when we listen to them.

We cannot achieve our goals if we don’t take the time to listen; therefore, we have to try conferencing. If it’s a task that we have been tackling for a couple of days, as an instructor, we can sit with some students and get feedback while they’re doing their tasks.

One-on-one time is mandatory, and it can leave everyone satisfied.

Choice Workshop

Unlike the other types of workshops, the choice workshop is a student-driven and play-time session. Basically, during these sessions, the students can be guided by their passions while they interact with their peers. As an instructor, you can also take time aside and observe the class and listen to their needs.

Remember, our job is more than just teaching the students; we are there to also observe and do our own research. This workshop can provide us with the necessary information to help us meet their needs.