This session will focus on the most up-to-date information about the redesigned STAAR English I and II assessments. The presenter will use the 2014 released tests, scoring guides, and sample student responses to discuss the level of performance required for success on STAAR. The presenter will share what our students’ 2014 English I and II performance revealed about the quality and coherence of our instruction. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.
This session will provide the latest news related to ELA/Reading education in Texas. Participants will receive up-to-date information about resources for students and teachers including an update about OnTRACK lessons for students and Write for Texas, the state’s professional development for secondary teachers.
This session will focus on the most up-to-date information about the STAAR writing Assessments at grades 4 and 7. The presenter will use the 2014 released tests, scoring guides, and sample student responses to discuss the level of performance required for success on STAAR. The presenter will share what our students’ 2014 writing performance revealed about the quality and coherence of our elementary and middle school instructional programs. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.
The presenters will define the Socratic seminar and the use of a reading journal as a companion to seminar as well as describe what seminars and journals look like in their classrooms. Handouts will give examples of student work and ideas for teaching and assessing seminars and journals.
There's a heightened focus on students’ ability to interact with complex texts and make connections across genres. This session will help teachers learn to build multi-genre text sets around a common theme or attribute at different levels of readiness in order to help students reach higher level thinking during reading.
The presenters will share several unique ways school literacy specialists might effectively support their teachers. Avenues explored will include publishing and presenting, disciplinary literacy, quality children's literature, social media, and assessment.
Read poetry? Maybe. Write poetry? You have got to be kidding! Come see how reluctant and sometimes struggling readers and writers discover poetry. English Language Learners dive into poetry with the teacher as poet. Soon students feel empowered to write their own poetry. Student and presenter samples will be provided. Read, write and analyze poetry with teacher and student poems.
Short answer response requires close reading to make critical decisions about complexities and relationships in multiple genres of texts. This session will show how visual support and critical conversations are used for close reading and recursive writing processes to annotate, plan, draft, and revise responses.
A selection of picture books, young adult novels, short stories, and poems forms the basis for literacy experiences designed to help teachers and students build empathy. Participants will receive an annotated list of texts and curricular ideas to use in “building confidence, courage, courtesy, compassion, and competence.
In this session, learn new ways to use a creative listing strategy known as the Quick List to engage students in literature response and in both narrative and expository writing. Give your students the COURAGE to write and write well with a focused purpose and audience.
Check out what’s trending in a classroom popping with pop culture. This interactive session will demonstrate fresh ways to infuse popular culture into the classroom. We will discuss #edupopculture ideas such as developing theme-focused memes, creating comic book action figures inspired by hero’s journey stories, and using Instagram to inspire descriptive writing. We also will discuss how to use Twitter, YouTube, and pop culture icons to build student engagement.
Digital natives use the Internet for communication, collaboration, and creation. New media usage advances these platforms through digital technologies. In the English classroom, new media provides outlets for reading, writing, and learning. Participants will define new media, view new media literature and compositions, and learn pedagogical strategies.
Math, science, and social studies preservice teachers are reluctant to recognize the merits of teaching content-specific vocabulary. This hands-on demonstration uses word sorts, cooperative learning, and Legos to emphasize the importance of creating opportunities for word engagement in context.
Patterned after haiku poetry, three-line poems offer students an enjoyable way to write poems while learning something about the structure of traditional poetry. The presenter will read some three-line poems he has written and then give attendees time to write and share three-line poems they have composed.
PreAP classrooms are alive with wonder, exploration, and global thinking. Investigate how to offer students opportunities to explore primary sources, compare and analyze literature, map out texts, and apply real-world texts and situations. Use inquiry stations to examine literature circles, children's book publishing, I-Search, Spoken Word Poetry, and more!
Stemology: the study of how STAAR question stems can enhance the rigor of questioning. Processes will be presented that will not only help teachers maintain appropriate questioning levels, but also give students opportunities to create their own questions. Participants will receive a Stemology toolbox for immediate incorporation into daily instruction.
Take your instruction to the next level and fall in love with your job! This laugh-out-loud session inspires and reminds teachers of the little things that make a huge difference. Exciting new ideas for management and relationships, planning instruction, personal growth, reigniting passion, and more! Door prizes and joy, guaranteed!
Learn by doing in this fast-paced session aimed at cross-curricular literacy, particularly in science and math, using near-wordless books and Notebook Foldables. With visual literacy being the primary 21st century literacy and tested heavily, you’ll impact your diverse literacy learners with fresh, ready-to-use applications that are research-based, kinesthetic, and integrative.
Through the study of illustrations, students learn crafting techniques that guide decisions they make when writing. In this session, participants will engage in inquiry-based lessons using illustration study to develop their students’ crafting skills. Explore how to use mentor texts and illustration techniques to ignite excitement in young authors!
Modeled after Document Based Questions from the AP History exam, DBQs in Literature can sharpen students’ critical thinking, reading, and evidence-based writing skills. This method allows students, grades 4 to 12, at all skill levels to excel in the sophisticated DBQ experience. Each teacher will receive a unit ready for classroom implementation.
Wouldn’t you rather read a juicy letter than a textbook? Primary sources like personal letters are a perfect addition to complement genre studies. They help students relate to events of the past and encourage them to seek out more information. Come learn how to use them in your class.
Teaching visual and audible writing technique through mentor texts can be the most effective part of your writer’s workshop! Come be inspired by widely loved literature that can help you empower young writers with replicable writing techniques used by popular children’s authors.
#thinkingtowrite. #personalliteracy. #writingtothinkcritically. This interactive session will focus on the inclusion of social media rhetoric in the college classroom to engage students and encourage student participation leading to the incorporation of PechaKucha presentations to create critical thinking skills.
Teachers want to get to know their students and use writing activities like “Where I’m From” to start. But what happens next? In this session, teachers will learn a variety of ways to pivot from get-to-know-you activities to other strategies that deepen students’ academic writing, particularly essays.
Instead of telling students how we want something done, we can work to have them become experts who identify the critical attributes of their own products and create and critique their own work, resulting in increased critical analysis and creativity in the English classroom.
Literacy stations in middle school? Is that even possible? Absolutely! Participants will learn how to remediate, differentiate, and accelerate their middle school students through the use of engaging literacy stations. Taking a thematic approach in a workshop format leads to passionate readers and writers begging for more!
Using resources such as Google Drive and free apps, we can teach students as they write more effectively and efficiently than ever before. When we teach them how to write better as they write rather than after they write, we see more authentic engagement.
This session will focus on how graphic novels can help reluctant readers increase reading motivation and engagement. Participants will explore why some readers are reluctant, why graphic novels are appealing to reluctant readers, and how to use graphic novels to build excitement about reading.
What are the seven key priorities for meeting requirements for new assessments? Learn about the synthesis standards, which grades are tested for independent reading at the highest levels, and which gaps need to be filled first to ensure that students are ready for the new SAT, ACT or GED.
This interactive session examines how our knowledge of best practices in providing feedback can be effectively applied in conferences with students in all grades during the writing workshop. Topics include saving time, record keeping, formative assessment, and accountability.
Learn how to use hip-hop song lyrics to develop students’ reading fluency and comprehension of informational texts. The presenters will model a literacy development lesson utilizing Tupac Shakur’s song “Changes,” including the activity’s theoretical framework. In addition, participants will engage in a critique and discussion of other hip-hop song lyrics.
Boys are falling behind in many measures of academic success, particularly when it comes to reading and writing. National and state data consistently rank boys behind girls in terms of class grades and standardized reading test scores. Reading and writing teachers are pivotal in turning the tides so that boys experience more success in the language arts classroom. Greater success means fewer negative behavior incidents, and this is a win for all. This presentation explores the literature about how boys learn, how they've fallen behind, and what specific strategies English teachers can use now to positively impact their male students.
Three novelists who focus on themes of war and social justice offer insights and methods to explore literature, to see the violence of war as personal, and to build awareness of being part of a global world. Attendees will receive suggestions for cross-disciplinary collaboration as well as writing prompts, study guides, and a reading list.
With an increased focus on close reading and complex texts, teachers will share the responsibility of reading instruction. The session will model the close reading of a historical document. Participants will leave with deep knowledge of a complex text as well as strategies they can immediately enact, including diffusing and Socratic seminar.
How do young writers decide what to revise? How do we shepherd them through this process of discovering, thinking, risking, and changing? Sentence combining using the DRAFT method mirrors the actions writers do and the decisions they make when they revise. Come explore new ideas and lessons from Jeff and Debbie's new book Revision Decisions (Stenhouse, 2014).
In March 2013, TASA (Texas Association of School Administrators) launched TASA on iTunes U®, to provide educators collections of interactive online content for high-priority, essential learning standards aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. TASA worked with teachers from several Texas school districts to compile digital resources for English I, II, III, and IV, middle school ELA, HS electives, as well as College Readiness courses to address new HB5 requirements. Now TASA is expanding their work to partner with TCTELA to showcase even more quality instruction! Come see how you can use these Course Resource Collections for transformative learning in your classroom, and learn how you can help influence the future of iTunes U® in Texas.
Come learn the key narrative writing skills: crafting entertaining beginnings, developing elaborative detail, building suspense, creating significant main events, and designing meaningful story endings. Specific background information and lesson plans with clear objectives will be included in the handouts.
Come explore the words, sentences, paragraphs (or lines!), and finally a full, rich text with us as we immerse students in skills that make them stronger readers and writers. Participants will practice style imitation, examine texts closely, and leave with techniques to immerse students in texts in new ways.
Three book lovers come together to book talk the best books of the past, present, and maybe even the future!
Thinking Writing is a variation of freewriting that teaches students how to productively question their thinking. It is practiced with personal texts but has benefits for academic writing, discussion skills, and critical reading. Students learn to expand and improve their writing and their thinking using a dialogic structure.
This is not a commercial for a packaged intervention program. Instead, an easily replicated, engaging approach to intervention will be shared by a t-year veteran of education who recently retired from an ELA Coordinator's position to go back into the classroom with students who have repeatedly failed EOC or are at risk. Come share the journey to EOC success!
Small groups and the teacher table are not just for the elementary classroom. Let's revisit the benefits of small-group instruction and the logistics of making it work for your students. We will design a set of stations and small-group activities that align with the TEKS and prepare students for success!
Poetry makes no sense to many of today's learners—and to many educators too. We were lousy at teaching poetry so did something about it: spent a week at Frost's Farm at the Conference on Poetry & Teaching. We will "provide, provide" highlights on how to transform instruction with poetry at the core.
Multimodal texts inundate our society. Readers of multimodal texts must process print, visual images, and elements of design to construct meaning. Participants will gain strategies for engaging students in the study of rhetoric in order to develop students’ own comprehension and creation of multimodal texts.
Participants will be provided multiple instructional strategies/activities that promote student engagement in the development of vocabulary and its impact on comprehension and analysis to texts. The research-based ideas and tips will be applicable for all learners and can be applied across disciplines as texts and vocabulary are encountered throughout the school day.
Whether for testing mandates or the burgeoning demands of a digital age, writing short is more than stopping at the end of the page or cutting longer pieces. Come explore examples as well as strategies and lessons for purposeful short writing that is composed and crafted as well as short and sweet.
All aboard! Ride along as we explore ways to engage K-3 students in informational text reading, research, visual representation, and writing. You will leave with a practical toolkit of research-based ideas for your classroom. An extensive handout describing the strategies and a bibliography of helpful resources will be provided.
The “banking knowledge” model of instruction in literacy often disengages at-risk students. In contrast, using a combination of viewing films and personal filmmaking as a springboard to compose both expository and narrative written compositions, in this study, not only motivated students but improved the quality of their written compositions.
This sweet workshop will demonstrate that “when we don't have the words, chocolate can speak volumes,” (Joan Bauer, author of Almost Home). Participants will “eat up” ways to use chocolate to develop ideas for expository, persuasive, and synthesis essays. They will receive a generous confection of ideas, strategies, and activities while nibbling away at the writing process.
Use Generation Y’s “all about me” mindset to your advantage. Give up some of the control by allowing more choice into reading and writing while adhering to district curriculum and excelling on state tests. Participants will leave with a variety of effective assignments and assessments which can be used as-is or modified.
This session will highlight a selection of multicultural children's books that entice a student to respond in writing. Types of responses are represented in activities that include personal associations, evaluations and reflections, interpretations of story elements, narration, and literary judgments. Participants will receive a bibliography of recommended multicultural children's books.
Many students are content to read with their floaties on. They may notice the characters and conflict but not much more. Implement a guided reading program that strengthens skills and develops observant, deep readers across genres. Teachers will leave with a process that builds academic vocabulary, comprehension, and skill mastery.
The presenters will discuss the idea of developing an annual student academic conference, situating it in the context of current research into independent inquiry. We present the students' experiences and feedback at two such conferences, provide advice for developing partnerships in higher education and the community, and describe instructions and supplies for building your own student conference.
Do you have difficulty engaging students in lessons on components of reading and writing? Students of all levels (inclusion to GT) gain confidence by actively participating in three innovative, timed, grouped activities. Teachers work together to create common curricular vocabulary, then assume the role of facilitator on activity day.
Public school campuses that serve students from poverty face overwhelming challenges connecting with students, families, and the surrounding community. Hear how one elementary school takes baby steps (and sometimes larger steps) to establish relationships with teachers, families, and community members through the power of reading and writing.
With renewed emphasis on reading nonfiction texts, teachers face a challenge. While many students enjoy (or prefer) nonfiction texts, some express disinterest or avoidance. How can we engage students with nonfiction when students’ past reading experiences may be limited to dry textbook reading and research report assignments? In this session, Donalyn Miller shares instructional moves and conferring tips for engaging students with nonfiction (or any genre they avoid). Session includes a look at newer nonfiction titles, authors, and formats, as well as online resources. Next, Gretchen Bernabei will share some activities and resources for drawing writer’s craft from nonfiction texts.
