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.
Session Materials:
PDF of slides
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Session Materials:
PDF of slides
Notes:
We’re very motivated to hear your experience with college-bound, under-prepared students. What do they need to succeed?
In this interactive Café Session, four pre-service teacher candidates will each present a challenge they have faced in student teaching or in their clinicals and the instructional strategies they have developed and implemented to address these challenges. Student teachers, teacher candidates, teachers in their first few years of service, and experienced teachers who care about the struggles of novice teachers are encouraged to attend and share their ideas.
Everyone is a writer. We write texts and emails. We write for ourselves and for others. We write novels or write about novels. Inviting students into living the life of a writer shifts the focus of our instruction from the writing to the writer. In this session, educator and author Jen Vincent will guide you through the six practices writers have, know, and do while sharing strategies you can try tomorrow with student writers.
