Workshop Snapshots
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Rap, Clap, and Sing—Phonics Activities with Zing! Tired of "same-old, same-old" phonics drill? Spice up your literacy program with motivational songs, games, raps, and movement, and just watch what happens to enthusiasm and memory! This workshop familiarizes participants with Sing Your Way Through Phonics, a series of musical learning experiences for primary grade students, as well as a wide variety of lively activities that take the tedium out of phonics practice. Reinforcing phonics skills through music and movement has proven to be an especially effective strategy for at-risk students who may experience difficulties with traditional methods of instruction. More...
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Listen Up! Adventures in Auditory Learning is an interactive workshop designed to provide early childhood educators with a toolbox of easy-to-implement activities that help children build the listening and communication skills so essential to literacy. Participants will learn how to translate the latest research on oral and written language development into daily routines through music, play, and children’s natural interests. Each motivational workshop activity is linked to state preschool and early childhood literacy standards. More...
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How Children Learn to Read...and What You Can Do to Help. This workshop highlights the stages of reading and writing development and explains how each stage of development is affected by experiential, personality, social, environmental, and cultural influences. Helpful hints are included for building literacy foundations, assisting children in each stage of development, creating literacy-rich environments, and teaching balanced literacy lessons. The information is particularly helpful for parents, grandparents, tutors, and teachers who want to know what they can do to help their children succeed in school. More...
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Reading Comprehension—Do We Really Teach It? There are many types and levels of reading comprehension. This workshop familiarizes educators with practices that help children develop practical comprehension strategies as they read for different purposes. In addition, educators will be guided in helping children self-monitor their own comprehension through meta-comprehension tools and meta-comprehension questions. Participants will engage in reading and responding to a wide variety of literature to promote comprehension at each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognition. The link between reading and writing will be explored in pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading activities. More...
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Sound Off! Building Phonemic Awareness Through Rhythm and Rhyme. Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are important components of children’s preparation for reading and writing. This workshop familiarizes early childhood educators with practices that help children develop sensitivities to the sounds and symbols of their language. Through play, singing, chanting, and moving, young children can be helped to build foundations for literacy and learning. These early literacy activities promote a fascination with language because they are aligned with children’s natural inclinations, abilities, and interests. Workshop participants will construct ready-to-use learning aids that can be expanded and modified to suit the individual needs of their preschoolers. More...
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Write Away! Writing Process and Writing Workshop Management. How do I ... get my students excited about the whole process of writing? ...encourage my students to write creatively? ...design interesting writing assignments that address all forms of writing? ...assess my students' writing? These questions and more are addressed in our Write Away! workshop. Participants in half-day or full-day workshops will get a bird's-eye view of the student perspective as they engage in the writing process, respond to their own writing prompts, and conduct effective writing conferences. More...
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Learning Centers That Run Themselves. To reach all children, we know that we must provide learning options that address individual learning styles, motivation, and interests. Self-running activity centers fulfill this need by giving children a chance to learn through auditory, visual, and tactile/kinesthetic modalities. Projects and activities at centers allow children to work individually, in pairs, or in small groups. Well-designed centers can encourage children to participate in creative activities that break away from the paper/pencil tasks so common to traditional assignments. As children learn to manage and self-monitor the quality of their work, they begin to take responsibility for their own learning, forming work habits that will serve them for the rest of their lives. More....
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Games That Can Help You Teach Just About Anything. People of any age love games. Now, there is a way to harness that enthusiasm to teach and reinforce important information in reading, spelling, math, social studies, and science. The teacher-and-student constructed games in this workshop are easy to assemble and can be designed to address a wide range of concepts, skills, and subject matter. Most of these games encourage self-competition so that students of differing abilities are not pitted against one another. This type of competition builds self-confidence and provides positive feedback about learning progress. Students get so involved in the games, they don’t even realize they are learning! More...
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A Blueprint for Reading Success—Building a Solid Tutoring Program from the Ground Up is a uniquely crafted tutor training program that includes three vital components: organization, communication, and documentation. Tutoring sessions are organized to target weaknesses and maximize student engagement. Weekly communication between tutor, teacher, parent, and student facilitate transfer of concepts and skills to the regular classroom. And students themselves participate in goal setting and documenting their own progress. Tutors help students overcome reading problems through enjoyable games and activities. A special feature of this program is the signature piece—a technique for developing reading fluency so necessary for comprehension. More...
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Practical Strategies for At-Risk Students. Learners with special needs and those who have experienced failure in traditional classrooms often thrive when learning tasks are presented in new and motivating contexts. This workshop focuses on five goals that can turn school failure around by helping students to 1) develop skills and knowledge necessary for success, 2) develop intrinsic motivation, 3) become problem solvers, 4) become lifelong learners, and 5) achieve their personal potential. Workshop activities are designed around ten principles for attaining these educational goals. Participants receive a packet of learning tools that are readily adaptable to a wide range of ability levels. Packets also include information about locating additional resources to meet special learning needs. More...
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Create a Classroom Newspaper Read all about it! Nothing motivates writers like having a personally meaningful purpose for writing. Through classroom newspapers, teachers can give their students practice in many modes of writing as they report on classroom projects, events, student-of-the week, assignments, hobbies, and more. Spelling words can be studied via class-made crossword puzzles and word scrambles. Research can be shared via feature articles. Calendars for classroom tests and assignments are easy to incorporate. Workshop participants learn techniques for assembling desktop publications with text and graphics, using popular computer programs. The result is a professional looking product that gives students pride of ownership. More...
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Paint Your Day with Poetry and Wordplay and color your classroom with a rainbow of rhythm, rhyme, repetition, imagery, and shape. This workshop addresses both the reading and writing of poetry in a highly-charged interactive format. Participants will learn how to “orchestrate” poems by adding layers of repeating phrases, sound effects, and dynamics. Children will delight in this new approach which enables them to score poems like a symphonies, assigning segments to individuals and groups and varying pitch, speed, and volume. Participants will also learn to teach poetry writing in a way that that produces fresh writing with personality and creativity. More...
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Enrich Your Spelling Program with Games and Challenges. How is it that students can earn a 100% on a spelling test only to misspell those very words in their writing? How can we teach students spelling principles so that they can spell words they may not have seen in print? And what can we do to help students remember word spellings over the long haul? Answers to these questions and more are the focus of this workshop. The brain-based tips, techniques, and activities can infuse a spirit of playfulness and self-competition into your spelling curriculum, helping students to improve their spelling and have fun in the process. More...
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Journaling—A Daily Journey in Discovery. Spice up journal writing in your classroom with six different types of journals that help children develop as writers. Through personal journals, simulated journals, dialogue journals, learning logs, reader response journals, and writing notebooks, students can gain needed practice in several modes of expression. Workshop participants improve their own narrative, poetic, expository, and transactional writing skills as they experience journaling from the student perspective. Full-day workshops include make-and-take projects that provide ready-to-use materials for writing centers, learning labs, and classrooms. Orientation for computer-assisted writing, electronic journals, and desktop publishing are options for full-day workshops. More...
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Sing Your Way Through Phonics
