Families and Schools: Building Emergent Literacy Children enter school with many home and community experiences. We will connect those experiences to developing emergent literacy in your students. This is practical application through combining each child’s experiences and his/her developmental stage of emergent literacy with the Language Arts Standards as well as with the state goals and indicators.

We are in this Together! How can we connect to and form partnerships with families? Schools throughout the United States have shared, and some have answered, this question. We will take the best of these answers and adapt them to each person’s specific classroom.

Diversity in Populations Equals Diversity in Books Learn about the wonderful ethnically diverse books, K-12, that are available for you and your students. These books can be used in your classroom for read alouds, for shared readings and literature circles -but that’s not all. Transform reading in the content areas. Use single books (Joyce Hansen’s The Heart Calls Home) or a series of books (Ron Takaki’s entire series for ages 8-12) to add the voices of all our citizens to the single voices found in most texts.

Power of Creative Writing for Students with Disabilities Children have power in their writing. Harnessing their creativity helps children focus on how they can influence their worlds and make changes occur. We will look at words and design and create meaning.

Inclusion, Not Seclusion: Challenging Students with Diverse Needs in Literacy Development Inclusion, mainstreaming, integration, LRE, differentiation, accommodation, adaptation, individualization — Are you confused? Learn the key elements of successful inclusion: awareness, knowledge, skills and application.

Literacy for the Elementary School Student Learn multiple new and exciting strategies to help emergent/beginning readers in: building a solid repertoire of sight words; mastering decoding skills; constructing meaning from text; and responding to text. Meeting the Standards through Read Alouds Read alouds provide settings for authentic experiences teaching children to construct meaning from text. Use these opportunities to make the HCPSII come alive!

Reading Magic Means Comprehension When does the squiggle on the page take shape and form meaning? How does a teacher take a snake, toss it into a bunch of wriggly kids and make magic? Reading can take our students to the moon, to meet unicorns and elves and other people just like them.

Building Literacy Skills in Learning Disabled Adolescents Teachers need additional strategies to help struggling adolescents build their literacy skills. These sessions offer just the inspiration and practical information you need.

Guiding Struggling Adolescents through Content Area Literacy: A Strategic Approach Following the reading process, content area teachers will learn strategies to support student learning in the content areas.

TRY THINK! Learn thinking strategies that help students with disabilities become independent problem-solvers.

911-READ for Parents of Struggling Readers Parents learn practical ways to work with their struggling reader.
Part I: parents learn ways to develop relationships and bond with their child through reading aloud; protective factors for preventing school failure using literacy activities; and how these protective factors promote resiliency giving hope to parents and child.
Part II: parents learn ways to help their child at home to develop reading strategies.

Tutoring Struggling Readers This series of workshops offers tutors an overview of the reading process and practical, hands-on strategies to help children learn to read. The focus will be on helping students develop a repertoire of reading strategies to decode unknown words and explicit instruction in word study.

Interactive Writing Process: All Students Can Be Hooked on Writing What do you do when a student doesn’t want to write? The interactive writing processes help students to improve and care about writing. Learn processes for meaningful journaling, finding writing ideas, peer review, audience feedback, publishing, self-scoring rubrics and mentoring. Help students learn more about themselves and the writing process. Strategies presented will be interactive, authentic, empowering, balanced and socially relevant.

Zeroing in on the Target: Aligning Formative Assessment and Literacy Instruction for Struggling Elementary Students Use formative assessments to design individualized instruction for the elementary student with disabilities. (Suitable for small group instruction.)

Zeroing in on the Target: Aligning Formative Assessment and Literacy Instruction for Struggling Adolescent Students. This session offers teachers/tutors instructional strategies in one to one tutoring for the struggling adolescent student using formative assessments to design instruction. (Suitable for small group instruction.

Teachers of Special Education: Do our literacy beliefs match our classroom practices? Our beliefs about learning and instruction impact our classroom practices. Let’s examine our beliefs and what matters in literacy development; then through conversation, dialogue, and professional readings, explore how these insights connect to our classroom practices. Become a reflective practitioner to support our special needs students.

I Get It: Helping Special Needs Students to Understand Text Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman provides concrete ideas in understanding how to help students comprehend written texts. Apply these ideas in classroom practices. Share observations and implications for teaching and learning through follow-up sessions.

Teaching Critical Reading and Writing Skills to Adolescents with Disabilities using Popular Culture Explore the popular culture of your community to promote the critical reading and the writing skills of adolescents with learning disabilities.

Meeting the Standards through Read Alouds Read alouds provide settings for authentic experiences teaching children to construct meaning from text. Use these opportunities to make the HCPSII come alive!