Saturday Speakers
Keynote: Common Core State Standards Moving to Action
8:15–9:15
Penny Plavala, Consultant
Are you ready for the Common Core? Educators across the state are learning about the new standards for literacy and asking questions about the implications for their instruction. In this engaging and interactive session, Literacy Specialist Penny Plavala will provide an overview of the standards, review grade level expectations, and share resources to guide us as we take the next steps toward the Common Core State Standards.
Breakout Session Presenters
Session 1: 9:30 - 11:00
Barbara Swanson Sanders
Best New Books to Enrich Your Curriculum
Grades K-5
Barb Sanders will show you the best new books for the elementary grades, including picture books, novels, and nonfiction. All titles will be chosen with the goal of enriching your curriculum and providing the best examples of writing and storytelling that are available for your students today! You will have time to look at the books at the end of the session...and ask questions about how to adapt them to your individual needs.
Mary Palmer Nowland, Teacher and Consultant
Authentic Conversations about Writing
Grades K-6
Need a magic wand to wave over your class during writing time? It’s called your pen—all you need to do is write yourself and learn how to talk about writing. Your students will love knowing more about you and your modeling will lead the way for their own growth as writers. This workshop will guide you along the path of having authentic conversations with your students. In addition, we will discuss the value of writing in every nook and cranny of the day.
Mindy Larson, Ph.D., Linfield College and Donna Kalmbach, Ph.D., Pacific University
Effective Writing Conferences in the CCSS classroom: Acknowledging the Complexities of Teacher Language and Student Engagement
Grades 4 –8
Writing conferences are essential to an effective writing workshop. Drawing upon research on dynamic learning including the power of teacher language, we examine questions to guide students and teachers in writing conferences. Acknowledging the complexity of writing conferences, we will engage together in identifying, discussing and imagining new ways to approach writing conferences in the midst of the Common Core writing standards.
Sue Lenski, Ph.D., Portland State University
What RTI Means for Content Area Teachers
Grades 4-12
Response to Intervention (RTI) has the potential to have a positive impact on adolescent literacy by requiring content-area teachers to provide Tier I literacy instruction. To do this, content-area teachers should have a clear understanding of how literacy is used in their discipline and demonstrate those processes for their students.
Moreover, content-area teachers should 1) provide students with many opportunities to read grade-appropriate texts, 20 differentiate reading materials, and 3) assess literacy progress. This interactive session will provide information and examples that teachers can apply to their classrooms
Session 2: 12:30 - 2:00
Robert Young, Former Teacher, Writing Consultant, and Children's Author
Light the Fire With Nonfiction
Grades K-5
Nonfiction is the real thing. It’s the world around us, and it’s everything in it. Reading nonfiction addresses our questions and curiosities. Writing it allows us to share our wonder and passions. Along the way we connect to the world as well as learn about ourselves.
This interactive session for teachers in grades K through 5 will help you light the fire for learning in your classroom with the use of nonfiction. You will learn practical, research-based practices to support instruction as well as engaging strategies and activities to transform your classroom into a dynamic place of discovery and growth.
Carol Laritzen, Ph.D., Eastern Oregon University
Meet the CCSS Literacy Requirements in Science with Reading and Writing
Grades 2–8
With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, teachers will be incorporating information texts and literacy instruction in the content areas. Reading and writing can be a natural component of science inquiry and engineering projects. Participants in this session will experience a cycle of inquiry and engineering that will demonstrate how to teach students to read and write texts in science.
Barbara Swanson Sanders
Best New Books to Enrich Your Curriculum
Grades 6-12
Barb Sanders will show you the best new books for the upper grades, including appropriate picture books, novels and nonfiction. All titles will be chosen with the goal of enriching your curriculum and providing the best examples of writing and storytelling tha are available for your students today! You will have time to look at he books at the end of the session...and ask questions about how to adapt them to your individual needs.
Betty Shoemaker, Former Teacher, Language Arts Consultant
Read Like a Reader, Read Like a Writer: What’s the Difference?
Grades 6-12
What does it mean to “read like a writer?” How can it improve writing? Experts Katie Wood Ray, Ralph Fletcher, and others encourage teachers to help students learn to read like a writer in order to notice author craft and incorporate craft techniques in their own writing—in all content areas. Betty will show you how to teach this skill and other strategies by using Ray’s idea of ‘close study’ utilizing examples from literature. Attendees will receive literature examples they may use right away as well as blackline masters to use with their own literary selections. |
