VIRTUAL EVENTS FOR K-12 EDUCATORS

Advance students through the hierarchy of phonics development.

• Assess individual students to determine needs.
• Receive 8 developmental activities to know and use sounds.
• Honor the scope and sequence of phonics skills.

Grow vocabulary knowledge exponentially with explicit lessons on prefixes, suffixes, and bases.

• Apply the generative principle to word study.
• Unlock the meaning with direct instruction.
• Develop and refine understanding with visuals and word play.

Provide whole-class mini-lessons on domain-specific vocabulary following Marzano’s research-based steps to mastery.

• Learn the purpose behind each of Marzano’s six interactive steps and how they build.
• Receive numerous strategies to ensure that students own and utilize new vocabulary.
• Access vocabulary notebook templates.

Recognize the direct relationship between knowing general academic words and accurately decoding a prompt.

• Demonstrate the impact that subtle word choice has on the answer.
• Select 10-15 functional words per grade level.
• Decode academic vocabulary in prompts.

Learn the 4-step process for building a grade-level list of domain-specific and general academic words.

• Generate initial grade-specific lists per subject area.
• Learn ways to pare down the lists to prioritize essential words.
• Revise and align lists to build across grade levels.

Understand that phonics and decoding must be taught in conjunction with comprehension and meaning—and vice versa.

• Understand how the 5 components of reading—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—are dependent on one another.
• Dissect the individual components of a typical reading block to denote those that address decoding versus comprehension.
• Acquire fluency lesson ideas that go beyond reading rate to target phrasing, expression, and more.

Go beyond telling students to use context clues by explicitly teaching what clues to look for, where to look for them, and how to apply them.

• Introduce types of clues authors provide.
• Apply context clues during reading.
• Provide various experiences for practice.

Introduce how the Reading Voice and Thinking Voice work together to figure out something the author never stated.

• Use both voices to make an inference.
• Reveal the inference process within a growing anchor chart.
• Apply the 5-step inference process to print, visual, audio, and video texts.

Provide strategies for readers to approximate answers even without personal experience.

• Create a classroom climate rooted in evidence.
• Define what makes a text detail “relevant.”
• Activate more than text-to-self connections.

Equip readers with various ways to record their thoughts about authors’ ideas.

• Discern between annotation versus note-taking.
• Make notes within one text and across multiple sources.
• Scaffold skills for primary students and struggling readers.

Identify frequent and authentic opportunities for students to execute research in the everyday classroom.

• Discern between traditional research papers versus simulated-research tasks.
• Recognize authentic reasons to research.
• Emphasize the research process over the end product.

Learn precisely how texts and purposes vary when reading in math, ELA, science, and social studies.

• Identify common text types inherent to different subject areas.
• Adjust reading purposes for each content area.
• Learn to overcome reader challenges associated with content-area texts.

More than naming types of text features, emphasize the purposes behind the inclusion of these organizational aids.

• Identify the three purposes text features serve.
• Apply text features before, during, and after reading.
• Recognize what grade levels introduce which text features.

Teach the technical and close-reading skills needed to comprehend story problems in math.

• Model how to closely read every story problem three times.
• Adjust reader habits to think like a mathematician.
• Translate numbers and symbols to find the story in the problem.

Teach students what the Reading Voice says, sees, and hears when “reading” audio, visual, and video texts.

• Alter students’ mindsets & mental efforts.
• Define what counts as text evidence in various formats.
• Overcome common reader struggle points.

To build writers, it’s not a matter of choosing between the Six Traits, the writing process, state standards, or even the writer’s workshop model. All of these components need to occur in tandem. Every writer needs explicit instruction, in-class time to try the skill, and an opportunity to receive feedback. During this session, learn how to incorporate all of these facets within the core components of the writer’s workshop.

AUDIENCE: K-12
PRESENTER: Rachel Remenschneider

Students get better at writing when they have an opportunity to experiment with a newly-taught writing skill. This experience occurs during the “You-do” portion of the writer’s workshop. During this session, collect practical ideas for engaging students in purposeful writing tasks after the mini-lesson.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Courtney Gordon

Although strong writing includes all Six Traits, the first hurdle is to teach students how to write more. This session focuses on the trait of ideas with explicit lessons on developing a topic, adding details, and incorporating evidence. These strategies will increase the length of students’ writing and also grow their writer stamina.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Kristina Smekens

The power of mentor text is that students read and analyze the qualities of strong writing before they are expected to apply those same qualities within their own products. This session reveals the do’s and don’ts of incorporating picture books, exemplar papers, and real-world texts into your mini-lessons.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Rachel Remenschneider

When the writer’s workshop is anchored in strong procedures, it sets the stage for building student independence. This session offers practical strategies for handling the “I’m done” writer,  the “I need help” learner, and the “I’m stuck on spelling” student. Learn several routines and procedures that build writer stamina and student independence, regardless of their age or grade level.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Kristina Smekens

Highly-effective teaching occurs when educators deliver explicit instruction on standards-based skills during a 10-15 minute whole-class mini-lesson. In this session, learn how to deliver focused and engaging mini-lessons that follow the 4-step process and honor the gradual release of responsibility.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Shona Lansdell

The most effective writing mini-lessons follow the gradual release of responsibility starting with a strong teacher demonstration and Think Aloud. These teacher tools provide a framework that helps students understand the end goal and the steps required. In this session, learn how to perfect this “I-do” portion of every mini-lesson by moving beyond telling what to teaching how.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Kristina Smekens

In order to write well in math, science, and social studies, the standards require explicit instruction be taught in every content area. This session will show attendees how they can punctuate students’ subject-area learning with short and powerful writing experiences. This includes providing discipline-specific writing instruction, assigning relevant writing tasks, and assessing content accuracy with first-draft writing skills.

AUDIENCE: 2-12, ELL Levels 3-5
PRESENTER: Rachel Remenschneider

Convention instruction must go beyond memorizing rules. Rather, the instruction should focus on the purpose, function, and impact the grammar skill has on a sentence’s overall message. This session outlines several ways to make your initial grammar lessons more powerful, more visual, and more memorable.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Shona Lansdell

The expectation to write short responses in language arts is well known—but this is also an important component in today’s math class. Beyond showing their work and providing the correct answer, students also have to explain their thinking in writing. This session reveals mini-lesson concepts that target core writing skills needed in math.

AUDIENCE: 2-12, ELL Levels 3-5
PRESENTER: Bridget Longmeier

When writing assessment is directly tied to instruction, students get to practice a skill while it’s fresh, and teachers can focus on meaningful feedback rather than draining their red pens. In this session, learn how to use the Six Traits of Writing to frame writing lessons and the assessments that follow. Then learn strategies for when to score for particular traits and when to assess all of them.

AUDIENCE: 2-12, ELL Levels 3-5
PRESENTER: Courtney Gordon

Students need a tool that defines “good” writing and identifies what the teacher wants. Rubrics accomplish this. However, a rubric must be kid-friendly. Five-year-olds and/or ELLs have to be able to “read” it. This session will reveal strategies to create and grow a rubric with students that is visual and includes simple language that the youngest writers understand.

AUDIENCE: K-2, ELL Levels 1-2
PRESENTER: Shona Lansdell

This session will reveal how 6-Trait rubrics are incorporated into the intermediate and secondary writing curriculum. Additionally, teachers will learn how to create a “kid-friendly” rubric, update the rubric as writers grow, and apply the same rubric to different writing products.

AUDIENCE: 2-12, ELL Levels 3-5
PRESENTER: Courtney Gordon

Using the Six Traits of Writing as the framework to assess student work is a logical spinoff of trait-based instruction. But converting a Six-Traits rubric to points, and ultimately a letter grade, can seem like a barrier. In this session, learn how to assign value to each trait being assessed and then convert writing scores to grades.

AUDIENCE: 2-12, ELL Levels 3-5
PRESENTER: Kristina Smekens

Students grow as writers when they are given feedback that is prompt, purposeful, precise, and personal. In this session, learn how to hold conferences and provide students with feedback via compliments and comments.

AUDIENCE: K-12, ELL All Levels
PRESENTER: Kristi McCullough