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.
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.
A diverse panel of educators from the Metro South District discuss current educational issues and ideas affecting English Language Arts teaching.
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.
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.
High school teachers that work with students who lack the skills and confidence to be college ready know how difficult it is to capture their attention in the last quarter of the senior year. In this breakout session, I will walk you through a unit designed to engage students in a real-world debate by centering the discussion on controversial monuments in a way that not only captures their interest and reinforces their researching skills, but also offers shared historical context to one of America’s most troubling political choices without alienating students from any particular partisan stance. This session requires participants to bring a device to the session.
Meter, rhyme, imagery, sensual language, and ideas are basic to both poetry and lyrics. This session will explore parallels in the English folk tradition exemplified by the centuries’-old “Scarborough Fair” and Bob Dylan’s modern rendition “The Girl from the North Country”; delve into the art song with original settings of the iconic poems “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” by Yeats, Dickinson’s “Wild Nights!” and Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”; and discuss and demonstrate the lyrical and musical process of writing original songs. The presenter is a veteran English teacher and a singer-songwriter who performs professionally in Central Illinois.
This Solution Room session aims to offer a space for teachers to seek and share advice on the challenges we face in teaching literacy to diverse and at-risk students. With years of experience as a high school English teacher in a Title 1 environment, PBIS Teacher Specialist, and T3 Interventionalist, the facilitator will lead us in collaborative problem-solving focused on effective Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) practices. We will address challenges such as implementing Tier 1 and Tier 2 literacy supports for novel study in diverse classrooms, developing strategies for amplifying all voices in the English curriculum, supporting struggling readers, and building collaborative networks within departments to strengthen literacy instruction for at-risk students. Everyone will have the opportunity to participate in structured peer consultations, where we can brainstorm and develop practical strategies that not only engage our learners but also provide the necessary support for our struggling readers and writers.
While NCTE takes a compelling case for “de-centering novel studies,” it is worth wondering what we might lose if we lose novel study all together. Blended learning is an educational approach that leverages technology, scheduling, and physical spaces to optimize engagement, learning, and human development in students. Mike and Amy are high school teachers who have leveraged blended learning to optimize student engagement in traditional novel study using the Harkness method of discussion founded at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. This session will introduce you to the concept of blended learning and help you advocate for its adoption in your school or classroom. We will explain the rationale and method of Harkness style discussion and its application to novel study, and attendees will participate in a simulated “flex day” discussion that incorporates blended learning and the Harkness method of discussion.
As English teachers, we strive to build a bridge between literature and lived experience. Thus, this presentation will focus on a method of instruction that enhances textual relevance and centers authentic first-person narratives by including diverse guest speakers, current event curricular tie-ins, and experiential learning activities in the high school classroom. Specifically, presenters will share examples of how they brought The Kite Runner, Night, Just Mercy, and Lord of the Flies to life within the English classroom to support student engagement, foster compassion and empathy, and push analytical inquiry. The presenters, four experienced English teachers, will engage participants with materials, discussion, and student feedback, while also offering suggestions and resources for further application and adaptation to texts beyond those included in the presentation.
