Breakout Session H

Session H1

Lisa Thetard, lltheta@ilstu.edu
Illinois State ELA Pre-Service Teachers
     Illinois State University
Room: Redbird E
Audience: High School

“Real Reading and Authentic Writing:” Pre-Service Teachers Designing Lessons for Student Engagement
Sense + meaning = personal relevance.   Without making the personal connection that yields a “why” and “what,” adolescent learners struggle to master and transfer knowledge and skills to new contexts. Pre-service teachers will share lesson plans for reading and writing skill development with specific methods and strategies for motivating and engaging students.

Session H2

James Trottier
Derek Laughlin
    Round Lake High School
Room: Redbird B
Audience: High School

Contemporary English: Texts and Reading Selections of the 21st Century
Students no longer care to read texts that take place in the past, they want to read about the present to understand the present better. This presentation is about modern text selection, the presence of quality non-fiction articles, and all of which is built around Common Core.

Session H3

Jenna Grites, jennagrites@gmail.com
    Westville High School
Room: Fell C
Audience: Middle/High School

Dissecting Dystopias: A Critical Analysis of Values in the Secondary English Classroom
Young adults everywhere are captivated by dystopian literature and film. This session introduces a technique for teaching dystopian lit to students grades 6-12 that allows for critical connections between the students’ lives and the literature in the classroom. These connections lead to even deeper understanding of this genre and the text itself. This technique is applicable to any dystopian study, be it a multi-text project, a novel, or a single short story.

Session H4

Jennifer Smith, smije@sages.us
    Monticello Middle School
Room: Fell B
Audience: Middle School/General

Addressing Literacy Standards in Science
Illinois’ adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards provides an excellent opportunity for science teachers to address CCSS in literacy and math while maintaining focus on science content and lays the groundwork for interdisciplinary activities at the middle school level.  During this session, participants will examine the similarities in the language used in the NGSS and literacy portions of CCSS.  From there, classroom-tested lesson plans for incorporating the use of close reading with an eye toward NGSS will be reviewed and practiced.  Suggestions for implementing the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning framework for writing and ideas for integrated cross curricular lessons will be discussed.

Session H5

Jennifer Hudson, jahudson@dps61.org
        MacArthur High School
Room: Fell A
Audience: High School

Library Programs for High School Students: Beyond Dewey and “Shhh!”
Too often, high school students see their school library only as place to get reading materials, do research, or find books for class projects.  Our school libraries are so much more than that today. Come see what library programs you can implement in your school to get kids involved, to see the library as a community space, and to support literacy skills.

Session H6

Jennifer Mitchell, jennifer_mitchell@glenbard.org
Alison Witt, alison_witt@glenbard.org
        Glenbard West High School
Room: Beaufort
Audience: High School

Using Audio Feedback to Improve Student Writing
Have you struggled with getting your students to effectively revise their writing? We have, too! Audio feedback allows a teacher to provide more detailed revision suggestions to students. It increases student ownership, engagement, and performance.

Session H7

Ryan Smith, smith.ryan0506@gmail.com
       Naperville North High School
Room: Redbird F
Audience: General

Revisiting the Christensen Method: Teach Reading and Writing through Syntax
Francis Christensen’s Notes Toward a New Rhetoric transformed the way I think about writing. The author, a former composition professor at USC, argues that students should learn writing through analyzing and writing one specific syntactic construction: the cumulative sentence. This presentation will include my lecture that I present to my classes as well as sample sentences that are used as formative and summative assessments.