Let’s celebrate the mighty voices of our young people! This session will provide hands-on strategies for uplifting and expanding students’ personal narrative writing. Whether it’s a stepping stone to the college essay or a fun way of building community, storytelling techniques can enhance students’ creative expression as well as promote an inclusive space to excavate compelling stories based on their lived experiences. We’ll be exploring multi-genre forms including flash narrative, poetry, and graphic memoirs. Participants will enjoy an interactive experience that they can bring back to their own classrooms. No prior storytelling or visual art skills necessary.
Blog Archives
Exploring Effective Instructional Strategies for Pre-Service Teachers
This panel presentation is organized and delivered by pre-service teachers, with a particular intended audience of teachers and pre-service teachers who seek new and novel instructional strategies. Presenters will provide evidence-based recommendations on the most effective student-centered instructional strategies for engagement and learning, ways to balance engaging lessons with the demands of classroom management, and ways teachers can build confidence in selecting and adapting strategies for diverse learners. By sharing insights gained through research, we hope to equip session attendees with practical strategies they can confidently implement in their classrooms. This presentation will serve as a resource for teachers who are looking for structured, effective, and adaptable approaches to instruction. The panel’s goal is to bridge the gap between pre-service teacher preparation and in-service classroom effectiveness, ultimately contributing to stronger and more engaging teaching practices.
Teaching About Censorship and its Effects Using Video Games and Popular Media
Recently, the NCTE released a book reflecting concerns over censorship and teaching. The NY Times has also published about the effects of Chinese censorship on the worldwide production of video games. Given the ways in which many classrooms are being (invisibly to students?) censored, it seems like an opportune moment to teach students about how censorship works and its impact using their interest in video games and other popular media.
Get Connected: Working with Your School Librarian
Long-time teacher, new school librarian Jennifer Connolly will take you on a quick journey of her first year in the library and explore ways to build connections between students and books, between teachers and librarians, and between libraries and communities. With tips from how to better your readers’ advisory to ideas and plans on how to build programs that connect classrooms and library spaces, let’s look at ways to get connected that benefit students and teachers alike. How can we use this collaboration to foster reading growth and help students become “real” readers?
Implementing Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) in Secondary ELA Classes
This is a hands-on, active workshop! I’ll introduce Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), a research-based instructional strategy that uses small-group collaborative learning to enhance student understanding and recall in content-area learning. I’ll explain the reasons to use this technique in secondary ELA classes. We’ll practice the strategy with the cards and logs often used with this teaching method. We’ll follow-up with a discussion of benefits, possible hiccups, and ideas for adaptations. You’ll walk out with everything you need to implement CSR in your classroom. Attend this session if you’re looking for ways to enhance student engagement while strengthening students’ reading comprehension.
Let’s Talk About News: Bringing Local Issues into Text-Based Discussions
Explore how text-based discussions around local news can build cross-disciplinary skills and motivate students to find their place and voice in their communities. This session shares results and free materials from the federally funded THINKING PRO media literacy curriculum unit, which connects reading, thinking, and writing skills.
Participants will learn a framework for meaningful text-based discussions that help students comprehend texts, think critically about local issues, and connect content to lived experiences. The session also offers tools for guiding collaborative problem-solving, respectful dialogue, and active participation—adaptable for diverse classrooms and student needs.
Providing Feedback That is Nurturing, Productive, and Sustainable
This session’s presenters—a high school teacher and a teacher educator—will describe their project to refinethe tone and content of their and their students’ writing feedback to support writers’ agency and growth, a process-oriented approach, and relationship-building in the classroom. They will also describe how such work can lead to more sustainable feedback practices.
“This is heavy:” Rethinking the Research Essay with Alternate History and Lateral Reading
A few years ago, I discovered the Alternate History topic from John Warner’s “The Writer’s Practice,” and it changed my attitude towards teaching research. I realized conventional research databases wouldn’t work for this project, and I needed the work of the school’s librarian to develop materials for a new research method: lateral reading. This breakout session will be co-presented, and we will share our experience developing this novel project.
Learning to Differentiate Your Teaching
Kristen Koppers, author of Differentiated Instruction in the Teaching Profession and co-author of Escape ED: Unlocking Student Achievement, is a Nationally Board Certified English teacher with over 20 years of experience in secondary education and 10 years in post-secondary teaching. She brings a fresh perspective to the study of novels, creatively developing innovative methods to help students critically analyze literature. Kristen is known for creating interdisciplinary units between multiple subjects where she collaborates with other teachers, designs engaging units and lessons, adapts lessons and assignments to students’ needs, and offers students choices in assessments while continuing to encourage creativity to enhance learning in the classroom. https://kristenkoppers.wixsite.com/koppers
CAFÉ SESSION, Build Your Stack®: Teachers as Readers and Writers
Making novel connections is what NCTE’s Build Your Stack® is all about! Join current and former committee members to explore tips for book selection, themed text sets, and using books to spark student writing. You’ll leave with fresh titles, creative ideas, and new ways to connect reading and writing in your classroom. Proposed Topics (ranked): 1. Thoughtful book selection 2. Using texts as a catalyst for writing 3. Thematic sets of books and classroom.