Pre-Conference Workshops

Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009 | 11:00 am–4:00 pm -- Registration is now open!

Pre-Conference Workshops are intensive sessions on specific topics with experts in the field of literacy learning. Choose one of the following workshops designed to improve and extend the quality of your teaching.

Pre-Conference Registration Fee: $165. Register for all three-days and save $45 with the 3-Day Package Deal!

K-6 Pre-Conference Workshops

PC-1 - Featured Speaker
Focus on the Literacy Coach: Improving Teaching and Learning in Guided Reading Lessons (Grades K-5)
Irene Fountas, Author and Professor, Lesley University, Mass.
Learn how to observe, analyze, and support your colleagues' teaching in Guided Reading lessons in one-on-one coaching sessions that include a pre-observation conference, observations, and post conference. This workshop will feature a live coaching session for your observation and analysis, as well as videotapes of Guided Reading lessons at a variety of grade levels for practice in analysis and coaching. Participants must bring a copy of The Continuum of Literacy Learning (K-8): Behaviors and Understandings to Notice, Teach, and Support (Heinemann, 2007) to this pre-conference session.

PC-2 - Featured Speaker
How to Succeed at Writing Tests While Having a Good Time (Grades 3-8)
Barry Lane, Author and Teaching, Discovering Writing, Vt.
How do we take the best of what we know about teaching writing and apply it to the boring, old state writing test? How do we establish the right attitude for the test to help students achieve high scores without compromising their sense of self or their ability to produce authentic writing? In this seminar, author and teacher Barry Lane will teach participants the four As of testing: Attitude, Audience, Animation and Artfulness.

PC-3
Using The Continuum of Literacy Learning to Assess, Teach, and Support Readers (Grades 1-6)
Kerry Crosby, Literacy Consultant, Amherst, Mass.
This interactive workshop will provide an overview of how to use Fountas and Pinnell's The Continuum of Literacy Learning (Heinemann, 2007) as a tool for assessment and planning to meet the needs of the readers in our classrooms. The Continuum provides detailed lists of the behaviors to notice, teach and support at each grade level and at each Guided Reading level (A to Z). We will explore how The Continuum can be used to deepen our understanding of how the reading process develops over time and to expand the ways we support students' thinking within, beyond and about text. With a particular focus on interactive read aloud and Guided Reading, the workshop will give participants the opportunity to use The Continuum to assess student work and plan lessons. Time will also be spent exploring shared and performance reading, as well as learning how to use The Continuum to assess and develop students' written response to reading. Participants are required to bring a copy of The Continuum of Literacy Learning (either K-8, K-2, or 3-8) to use in this session.

PC-4
When Literacy Learning is Difficult: Helping Students to Become Proficient Readers and Writers (Grades K-3)
Cindy Downend, Primary Literacy Collaborative Trainer, Lesley University, Mass.
Kathy Ha, Primary Literacy Collaborative Trainer, Lesley University, Mass.
This session is designed for all teachers who work with grade K-3 students who find literacy learning difficult. We will delve into specific and effective approaches for supporting students using the text When Readers Struggle: Teaching that Works (Heinemann, 2008) by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Many of the recommended techniques that will help students build a reading and writing process will be analyzed and explored. Participants are required bring a copy of the book to use during the session.

Middle School Pre-Conference Workshop

PC-5
Launching the Reading and Writing Workshops in Middle School: Beginning and Sustaining Teaching in the Workshop Model (Grades 6-8)
Toni Czekanski, Intermediate/Middle Literacy Collaborative Trainer, Lesley University, MA
Sarah Foleno, Middle School Literacy Coordinator, Cambridge, MA
During this session, we will consider the important elements when launching reading and writing workshops in grades six through eight. We will discuss: The importance of assessing students and getting to know them as readers and writers; planning our teaching of effective mini=lessons around what we know about learners as well as curriculum demands; setting up independent reading and writing in the workshops; conferring with individual students around their work; selecting texts and planning for interactive read-alouds; responding to reading with talk and writing; using writers' notebooks to gather ideas, work on the writer's craft and begin the writing process; and taking a piece of writing through the process to final draft.

Reading Recovery Pre-Conference Workshops

PC-6 - Featured Speaker
Contingent Teaching in Reading Recovery Lessons CANCELED
Mary K. Lose, Associate Professor, Department of Reading and Language Arts and Director of the Reading Recovery Center of Michigan, Oakland University, Mich.
 

NOTE: In place of Mary Lose's canceled pre-conference session (PC-6), Ann Ballantyne will present the following pre-conference workshop:

 

PC-6 - Featured Speaker
Searching Questions
Ann Ballantyne, Reading Recovery Trainer, New York University Reading Recovery Project
This session explores searching as a form of strategic activity initiated by the child to solve problems in reading and writing. We will investigate questions about searching using theoretical and observational ‘texts’ and samples of children’s reading and writing activity. We will also work with teaching procedures in Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals–looking for guidance on how to foster children’s active searching and problem solving.

 

PC-7 - Featured Speaker
Discontinuing Decisions and the Transition into the Classroom
Mary Rosser, Reading Recovery Trainer, University of Maine
This session provides participants with the opportunity to engage in in-depth explorations of the questions, issues and challenges of discontinuing decisions and the transition into the classroom at the end of a student's series of lessons in Reading Recovery. Video clips will support the discussion of ideas throughout this session.

Continue browsing the 2009 conference program:

Monday and Tuesday Sessions
updated 08/26/09 | 12:47 PM