Conferences

Region 4

Reading and Language Arts Virtual Conference

Virtual Learning, Visible Results

Meet our Keynote Speakers

Donalyn Miller is an award-winning Texas teacher, literacy consultant, and author (or co-author) of numerous articles, books, and essays about engaging young people with reading, increasing book access, and creating positive reading communities, including The Book Whisperer (Jossey-Bass, 2009), Reading in the Wild (Jossey-Bass, 2013), and Game Changer: Book Access for All Kids (co-written with Colby Sharp/ Scholastic, 2018).

Presentation: Making A Case for Reading Joy

Adults who continue to read long after formal schooling ends read because they find some intellectual or personal enjoyment. In this session, participants will explore and discuss the conditions, rituals, and instructional opportunities that engage young people with reading and help set them on the path of reading joy for a lifetime.

Presentation: Books for a Better World: Using Culturally Diverse Text

Reading offers validation for our experiences and fosters empathy and awareness of people who have different experiences than ours. In this session, Donalyn Miller will book talk new(ish) children’s and young adult books offering a wide variety of perspectives, voices, formats, and provide resources and suggestions for sharing these books with young readers.

Stephanie Harvey has spent the past forty plus years teaching and learning about reading and writing. Insatiably curious about student thinking, Ms. Harvey is a teacher first and foremost, and she continues to work in schools on a regular basis, savoring any time spent with kids. Her company, Stephanie Harvey Consulting, implements K-12 district-wide literacy initiatives focused on comprehension, collaboration and inquiry across the curriculum. She is the author or co-author of a number of books and resources, including Inquiry Illuminated, From Striving to Thriving, Nonfiction Matters, Strategies That Work (3rd Edition), Comprehension and Collaboration, Connecting Comprehension and Technology, The Comprehension Toolkit series, the American History series, and the National Geographic Ladders series.

Presentation: Researcher's Workshop: Inquiry Based Learning Across the Curriculum (K-5)

We love reader’s and writer’s workshop, so why not researcher’s workshop? Rather than simply “covering” science and social studies topics in more traditional ways, kids engage in investigations, real world learning and even advocacy in what we have come to call Researcher’s Workshop. This session will feature what workshop looks like with content topics in K-5 classroom, where kids read, write, talk, draw, listen, investigate, create and take action. It will share a research/inquiry process that you can use to create your own researcher’s workshop with your own curriculum online or face to face. Limited to 40 participants.

Presentation: Identity Matters: Getting to Know Your Kids as Readers

Nothing is more important in the teaching/learning equation than relationship. It is our primary responsibility to get to know our kids-- their interests, desires, talents, learning styles, experiences, fears etc., We can truly facilitate their learning when we build relationships by knowing our kids. And when we know their identities as people, we grow to know them as readers. In these unpredictable times, we need to be prepared to teach virtually as well as face to face. This session will share some ways to get to know kids and build relationships in either case. We always begin with interest, so we will share a variety of strategies and techniques for using their interest to get to know our kids as people and as readers. Limited to 40 participants.

Breakout Sessions

Breakout sessions will feature content  for elementary, middle school, and high school audiences - choose the ones of most interest to you!  Download the full list of sessions and their descriptions using the link below (subject to change).

• The Achievement Gap is Truly a Connection Gap
• PenPal Schools: A Collaborative Online Experience
• Is It the Reading or the Math? Problem-Solving Strategies for Mathematics
• Become a Zoom Meeting Expert
• Let Them Talk: Academic and Social Conversations in Support of Foundational Literacy
• Playbook of Processing Strategies: Teaching Learners How to Learn  
• Creating a Culturally Relevant Literacy Classroom (CRP)
• Cognitive Strategies for a Literacy Rich Classroom
• Representation: Authentic or Misguided
• Digital Differentiation
• Breathe a Structure of Relief: Using Text Structures to Teach Writing Skills
• Schoology for Teachers
• I Will Write Here, I Will Write There, I Will Write Everywhere!
• An Overview of the 5 Evidence-Based Practices of Classwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (CWPBIS) 
• PearDeck in the Remote Classroom
• I'm a Reading Teacher...I Can't Teach Social Studies
• The Six Syllable Types
• Writing Samples as Data Points- Mining Writing Through an Instructional Lens
• Get the Sage Off the Stage: Using the SPIDER WEb Discussion as a Scaffold for Writing Complex Text
• Engaging Learners Virtually Through Arts Integration
• An Overview of the 5 Evidence-Based Practices of Classwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (CWPBIS)