Blog Archives

Frag-Free Fluency: The Importance of Complete Sentences and Sentence Variety in Dialogue, Reading, and Writing

This session will teach participants how to provide more opportunities for student-to-student discourse, giving written and verbal feedback, and utilizing tech, activities, and research-based strategies to improve communication in the classroom while answering the age-old question posed by students, Do We Need To Use Complete Sentences? This session can provide elementary and junior high teachers with valuable insights and practical strategies to en- hance their literacy instruction and support their students’ development as proficient readers and writers.

 

The Rhetoric of Rap: Harnessing the Power of Hip-Hop When Teaching Rhetorical Moves

Rather in-the-face of literary tradition, participants will explore how hip-hop/rap lyrics can be used to teach rhetorical moves and examine expert use of language in many situations. The session presenter will highlight a unit she’s taught in high school classrooms for almost 10 years, sharing ways to harness student engagement through the use of rap lyrics, examining context, appeals, reading like a writer, and a little literary analysis. Turn the love of a fascinating musical genre into a real-world way to teach rhetorical concepts.

Note from presenter on session materials: These slides are Google Slides, but feel free to email and I will send you access to view. Thanks for attending!

Throwing Open the Doors: How to Make AP English Language Accessible to More Students

AP Language, the most popular exam in the AP portfolio, should be open to all students who are searching for a challenge, but too often teachers are stuck as to how to forge the necessary skills. How can teachers throw open the doors and offer the right kind of support? As more and more schools move away from traditional tracking, the students in AP Language arrive with a wider variety of skills and skill deficits.

This session will introduce techniques and approaches rooted in cognitive psychology and brain science that work with students new to the AP experience, including exiting EL students. Approaches will include logical thinking applications, rhetorical analysis exercises, vocabulary acquisition that works, essay revision approaches, and pathways to deepen discussion and move students into more sophisticated thinking. Participants will be offered workable student-centered solutions to the barriers that prevent students from entering and succeeding in AP Language. Both experienced teachers and those newer to AP Language will benefit from the presentation. The presenter, Rita Thompson, has over a decade of experience teaching AP English Language in a Title I school. Though not required, attendees may want to bring a tablet or laptop to access resources.

Session materials:

Authentic Assessments with AI

Authentic Assessment with AI is a workshop that attempts to align project- based learning with AI supports. Whether researching a topic for an essay, developing an in-class paragraph, or designing a creative project, students can utilize AI independently or with teacher supports to create prompts that address the fundamental structures of an assignment or assessment while also evaluating and reflecting on their decisions in the development of a product. By using authentic assessments with AI, teachers can show students the limitations of AI in this process when it comes to the authentic learning experiences they engage in as well as the critical thinking skills necessary for student success.

Participants will be provided with some purposeful review and examples of project-based learning with practical application for a high school setting or relative experience in middle-school or college. Participants will also explore, design, and outline their own authentic assessment with AI. Organizationally, participants will be provided with an overview of the steps of a project-based learning assessment and will be shown where AI can be used to support student learning. Though not necessary, attendees are suggested to bring a device with access to ChatGPT or MagicSchool AI to allow for some person- alized exploration.

Session materials:

Teaching Texts with Multiple Perspectives: Analyze “Perspective,” Cultivate Humanity

Cultivate humanity by preparing your high school students to see the world and all it encompasses (past, present, future) by reading texts that encourage analyzing multiple perspectives so they, as the next generation of readers, thinkers and leaders, can be more tolerant and accepting of others around them. Three specific novels are intertwined in this presentation: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Grammar for All by Focusing on Patterns

By focusing on parts of speech and sentence patterns, teachers empower students to improve their use of punctuation, sentence complexity, and overall writing. Bonus: they also teach reading strategies that assist with tackling difficult texts and create opportunities for English emergent students to succeed. Join this session to discuss this useful and non-threatening approach to grammar and review visuals and lessons that the presenter uses in College Readiness and English classes.

Session materials: Slides

Note from presenter: If you have any questions or need clarification on something, or if you’d like to see some materials, please contact me at jve_profacct@gmail.com or jvanerden@cusd201.org.

Stories in Every Classroom: Energize Your Teaching, Empower Your Stu- dents, and Help Save the World

Storytelling is the key to classroom learning. Why? Because it’s the key to human cognition, communication, and culture. If the English teaching pendu- lum has swung away from narrative and toward argumentation and analysis, it needs to swing back. The presenter proposes that telling stories—both oral and written—is one of the most powerful life skills a student can ever learn. The same goes for teachers, because stories are essential to a lively, humane, and knowledge-resonant classroom. And yet, storytelling is prone to pitfalls and misuses, and students need to learn about those, too. The presentation will include storytelling basics, practical story activities, and an overview of the storytelling crisis students and teachers face today—and what teachers can do about it.

Interactive Lectures and You

In this session, the presenter will demonstrate how interactive lectures (Nearpod, Peardeck, etc.) can introduce literature and literary elements, help students to analyze literature, make note-taking engaging, guide them through self-assessments of their writing, and more. Teachers are always looking to increase student engagement, deepen student reflection, and teach more effectively, and interactive lecture sites can help teachers to reach those goals. Teachers are invited to learn how they can incorporate this option into their current repertoire. Attendees are suggested to bring a laptop or tablet (a phone will work, too) to access the sites featured in the presentation.

Session materials: Nearpod

Implementing Writing Across the Disciplines

This workshop introduces instructional techniques and activities for implementing writing across the disciplines. It is appropriate for all grades K-12 and is based on The Writing Revolution, training educators to incorporate short and simple activities into pre-planned lessons for any content. The objective is to boost students’ writing abilities and knowledge of the similarities and differences of content writing. Think about a science report and an ELA literary essay—a hypothesis vs. thesis statement, results of an experiment vs. proving an argument, etc. Participants will leave with several content-specific activities and the know-how to incorporate them into the units they’re already teaching. Attendees are suggested to bring a lesson plan.

Session materials:

Themes Across Time and Place

Can exploring themes found in traditional folklore, pop culture, comics, and classical literature help students understand the dreams, needs, and fears that connect humanity across time and place? “Themes Across Time and Place” provides opportunities for students to discover and to think critically about ideas that link us to the past and connect us wherever we find ourselves in the present. Workshop attendees will delve into themes and discuss how the activity might be used in their classrooms.