2016 Literacy Workshop Descriptions
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Combining Literacy and Geography Using Google Earth (K-8)
Daniel Fernandez-Davilla, Wayland Public Schools
Teachers will learn how to combine literacy with geography in order to visualize where the action happens on the planet. Teachers will then have the time to learn basic google earth tools to convert any reading into a dynamic visual tour that follows the text
Grades (K-8)
Strengthen Middle School Literacy Engagement via Choice, Relevance, Authenticity, and Self-Efficacy (6-8)
Leslie Laud, ThinkSRSD, Kate Contini, Christy Nealon, Acton Public Schools
How can we best motivate our middle school students to write? Hear how teachers weave choice, relevance and authenticity into their writing instruction. Learn teaching strategies that build a sense of capability, the most important factor in motivating middle school students. Hear how to use the framework of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) in ways that can align with topics MS students care about deeply. For example, hear how students researched Malala then raised money to send girls to school in Afghanistan. Others wrote essays on Jackie Robinson, then blogged on what they might work to change in the world today. See examples of literature analyses students posted at Amazon. SRSD is an evidence-based practice for teaching writing, and every district using it has seen dramatic gains on state assessments. Combining powerful teaching strategies with authentic experiences can ignite your MS students’ passion for literacy as a tool to improve the world.
Grades (6-8)
Everybody Reading, Everyday: Creating a School-Wide Culture of Literacy (K-5)
Liz Garden, Groton-Dunstable Regional Schools
Learn about how to create a school-wide culture of literacy. Hear how a culture shift was accomplished in one elementary school. Participants will leave with lots of ideas and examples of ways to get everyone in the building reading and talking about books!
Grades (K-5)
Going Paperless in a 1:1 Environment: You Can Do it! (6-8)
Ed DeHoratius, Wayland Public Schools
For the last four or five years, I've been endeavoring to go paperless, administering and grading all assessments via the computer. The 1:1 at the high school facilitates this, but going paperless is perhaps easier than teachers think. This presentation will focus on assessing in a paperless environment, outlining the basics of using blogs to assess writing, how ItsLearning can be used (for the Middle School only, I believe) and how Word's Track Changes and GoogleDocs can facilitate this as well.
Grades (6-8)
Developing Students’ Writing Motivation (3-8)
Rebecca Louick, Boston College
Creating activities that motivate students to write, and maintaining that motivation through a whole assignment (or, for that matter, a whole unit or school year) can be challenging. Teachers have to balance finding topical subject matter that relates to curricular standards with teaching fundamentals such as grammar and sentence/paragraph structure, all the while differentiating instruction to meet the needs of students whose writing proficiency varies widely. In the midst of all of this, it’s easy to lose sight of the important role students’ level of motivation plays in how much they internalize about the writing process. In this session on ways to encourage student writing motivation in your Language Arts or Social Studies classroom, we’ll talk about motivation in terms of both the value students place on a given writing task, and whether or not they expect to succeed at it. You’ll leave with writing lesson materials that you’ll be able to adapt for your class.
Grades (3-8)
Composing Digital Stories (K-8)
Maureen Devlin, Wayland Public Schools
Composing digital stories is a rich, multi-sensory literacy activity that is easily scaffolded to meet the interests, needs, and skill levels of an entire class. In this session participants will learn about the rationale and process involved in digital story composition.
Grades (K-8)
Design Learning to Teach Children Well (K-8)
Maureen Devlin, Wayland Public Schools
To teach well, it's best for educators to collaboratively design learning with the needs, and interests of their students in mind. To employ the design process well, it is advantageous for educators to be well versed in district/state/national standards, available resources, current research, and available experts. This presentation will review the design process as well as the multiple tools and resources available to assist educators as they tailor learning design to meet the needs and interests of all learners.
Grades (K-8)
Murder, Mayhem, and Red Herrings: Using the Mystery Genre to Engage Upper Elementary Readers and Writers (3-5)
Kori Rogers, Wayland Public Schools
This mystery genre study effectively incorporates reading, writing, speaking and listening, and students love it! The wide range of mysteries available makes it easy to differentiate reading materials as well as writing and presentation assignments. Recommended resources, lesson plans, rubrics, and student work will be shared.
Grades (3-5)
Igniting the Passion: Critical Thinking and Literacy in the Middle School Classroom (6-8)
Katie Leahy, Tyngsborough Middle School
This workshop will examine the need for improving critical thinking across the curriculum in the middle school classroom. The goal of this workshop is to give you a lot of brand new tools and techniques that you can bring to your classroom and add to your repertoire! These strategies are ones that are definitely teacher tested and student approved!
Grades (6-8)
Writer's Notebooks (K-2)
Gretchen Knox, Miriam Morrison, Wayland Public Schools
In this workshop, we will show how K-2 teachers can use Writer’s Notebooks to meet the new Common Core standards. We are two former fifth grade teachers who are passionate about writing and committed to instilling this love in our second graders. Inspired by Aimee Buckner’s books Nonfiction Notebooks and Notebook Know-How, we have developed lessons for younger writers using notebooks, as research shows that notebooks are a powerful way to encourage students to write freely and take ownership of their writing. We will provide you with sample notebooks to take with you, as well as the lessons aligned with each topic. You will walk away with a design for your year-long scope and sequence of lessons for your writing curriculum.
Grades (K-2)
Readers Moving Into Chapter Books (K-5)
Barbara Lindsay, Westwood Public Schools, Candace DeBoer, Norwood Public Schools
This workshop will show you ways to support readers who are moving into longer chapter books that take more than one sitting to finish. We will outline the foundational skills that are especially important to transitional readers, and share ways to support those skills in your classroom. As a group, you will analyze texts at levels K-M for teaching possibilities around attending to important details, asking and answering questions, and summarizing across longer text. You’ll leave this day with a toolkit of tips, mini-lessons, shared reading lessons and strategies for small group work to help your transitional readers make big strides into more complex texts. (This workshop is based on the Reading Unit of Study, Bigger Books Means Amping Up Reading Power)
Grades (K-5)
Unpacking the Primary Comprehension Toolkit (K-2)
Sarah Sontag, Wayland Public Schools
Come and see what the Primary Comprehension Toolkit is all about. We will unpack the toolkit and see what resources it offers. There will be an overview of the six strategies used to understand and respond to nonfiction text. These strategies include monitoring comprehension, activating background knowledge, asking questions, inferring, determining importance as well as summarizing and synthesizing. We will learn how to use posters, articles and short text to delve deeply into informational text.
Grades (K-2)
Unpacking the Comprehension Toolkit (3-6)
Sarah Sontag, Wayland Public Schools
Come and see what the Comprehension Toolkit is all about. We will unpack the toolkit and see what resources it offers. There will be an overview of the six strategies used to understand and respond to nonfiction text. These strategies include monitoring comprehension, activating background knowledge, asking questions, inferring, determining importance as well as summarizing and synthesizing. We will learn how to use posters, articles and short text to delve deeply into informational text.
Grades (3-6)