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.
Synthesizing Stories: From Pages to Play
Diving into studies about characters, plots, and themes are typical and essential tasks of novel units within junior high and high school English classrooms. To build upon the traditional end-of-unit test or essay, join this session presenter to extend the idea of a culminating project into the realm of creativity, critical thinking, and all-out controlled chaos! This session will examine the gradual process of students’ learning of story structure and character development. This presentation will then describe the culminating project called the “Synthesis Play” where students are challenged to develop a script that involves the interactions of characters from major novels they’ve read for the year while still adhering to textual details and applying key elements of story structure and character development. The end product gives students opportunities to perform their scripts live or create mini-videos to showcase their thinking, creativity, and joy! This session will provide concrete suggestions for sequencing learning experiences so that students examine story structure and character development through various texts until they’re ready to unleash their analytical and creative skills; session attendees will also have a chance to see student products and receive artifacts that they can start using in their own classrooms.
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.
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.
CAFÉ SESSION, Reading Curricula and Bridge Programs
We are writing faculty seeking feedback on curriculum we are developing for a summer reading course for at-risk, newly admitted students at DePaul University. Here are the questions we’d like to explore with our audience: What models of Reading and Bridge programs have you seen succeed at teaching complex reading skills to struggling readers entering college? How do we integrate reading and writing so students see how these activities inform one another? What are effective ways of helping students branch out from their current interests to reading (and writing) across the curriculum? We welcome attendees to this Café Session, a moderated discussion between panelists seeking advice and audience members willing to share experiences and knowledge with the overall goal of learning more how best to help our at-risk students succeed.