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?
Blog Archives
Enduring Monuments: Using Kindred to Bridge the Gaps
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.
Session Materials:
Presenter Notes: This is the link to my presentation. Within the slide show, there are links to several other resources (as websites or Google Docs) that I am sharing. If you hear me mention a resource that is not currently linked, I can always add it to the resource folder.
Poetry and Song
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.
Session Materials:
Notes:
These are the poems and song lyrics I will discuss and perform.
SOLUTION ROOM, Building Bridges: Tier 1 and Tier 2 Literacy Approaches for Engaging Reluctant and Diverse Learners
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.
Session Materials:
Reclaiming Novel Study with Blended Learning
While NCTE makes 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.
Literature to Life: Infusing Authentic Narratives and Experiential Learning in the High School English Classroom
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.
Plot Twists and Power Ups: Turning Curriculum into Gameplay
One of my fascinations as an educator has been gamification, creating novel ways to teach, review, and contextualize content. In this breakout session, I will present some of the activities I have created, such as a book scavenger hunt to correspond with Fahrenheit 451, a crime scene investigation that corresponds with Macbeth, or vocab battleship, a vocabulary review game I use quite often in my classroom. During this session, I will offer some advice on what to consider when creating games or interactive classroom experiences, as well as explain how utilizing AI can make a seemingly daunting task very achievable. This session will most appeal to middle school and high school teachers who seek novel ways to incorporate active learning and gamification into their lessons.
It’s Your Cue! Using Shakespeare’s Cue Scripts to Unpack Shakespeare’s Folio Clues
Shakespeare’s work provides a wealth of themes and complex characters to engage our 21st century students, though Early Modern English provides challenges in reading and understanding his plays for many students. We can, and should, supplement any modern edition and its resources with excerpts from the First Folio as well as cue scripts similar to those Shakespeare’s actors used to apply the surprising clues the Bard embedded in his plays often missing or obscured in the edited versions students read.
Session Materials:
- CUE-SCRIPTS-HAMLET-Act-I-Scene-1-Marcellus-Barnardo-Horatio-Francisco-Ghost.pdf
- HAMLET-Act-I-Scene-1-KEEPER-OF-THE-BOOK-IATE.pdf
- IATE-2025-CUE-SCRIPT-HAMLET-Presentation.pdf
Website:
https://www.kevinlongdirector.com
Notes:
Hear ye, hear ye, good friends and fellow lovers of the Bard!
Join us for “It’s Your Cue! Using Shakespeare’s Cue Scripts to Unpack Shakespeare’s Folio Clues” — a spirited exploration of how Shakespeare’s original stage practices can unlock new discoveries for our 21st-century students!
Together, we’ll dive into cue scripts, glimpse the actor’s world of the Globe, and uncover the secret “Folio Clues” Shakespeare left behind to guide his players toward truth, clarity, and emotion.
“The play’s the thing…” — and this session will show you why!
Identifying, Preventing, and Addressing AI-Authored Drafts in the Composition Classroom
Three JJC English faculty members will share their insights on AI in the composition classroom and discusshow it has transformed and will continue to transform their lessons and projects. They will outline their departmental policy on AI use in college composition and explain its rationale. Additionally, they willdemonstrate how they identify AI-authored essays using multiple AI detection services and by analyzingcommon AI language patterns and paragraph structures. The faculty will also describe various approachesthey use to address AI-authored compositions.
Cultivating Multi-Genre Responses to When the Emperor Was Divine
In this session directed toward those who teach high school English, teachers will learn how to enhance students’ ability to connect with the novel When the Emperor Was Divine through the use of sketch journals and explorations of poetic forms like haiku, blackout poetry, and redaction techniques. Presenters will share contextual resources to build students’ background knowledge and help them to “see” the landscapes of the novel. Participants will engage in a simulated activity to create a sketch, haiku, blackout poem, or redaction. Student artifacts will be shared.
Session Materials:
MULTIGENRE_RESPONSES_EMPEROR_1024.pptx
Website:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14QCIWyE0pPbjDJzkCBKGy3QMJT6ojEoI?usp=drive_link