Embracing Literacy 2024

Gain an understanding of the process Pinedale High School went through to establish a highly effective Literacy Lab elective course designed to target student deficits and positively impact students who need extra support at the secondary level. The presenter will share how this tier 2 and/or tier 3 intervention course evolved from day one to its present structure, the inherent challenges of offering such a course, the selection and recruitment of students, the necessary professional development, the curricular resources and materials used, and how success is measured for individual students and the course.

Learner Outcomes:
This session intends to provide enough information so that other schools may be able to replicate this course in their unique school context.

Credit Reflection Questions:
1. List at least 2 of the instructional components of the Lit Lab class.

2. Explain the connection between the Science of Reading or Structured Literacy and the approaches of the Literacy Lab class.

3. What is one of the resources or trainings recommended for running a Lit Lab class that you are interested in?

In this hands-on session, teachers will explore proven strategies to orchestrate classroom discussions in ways that will improve comprehension. Classroom discussions are essential for all students, as it helps to develop critical thinking and language skills that are requirements in the classroom and in life. Using specific disciplinary language to address authentic disciplinary concepts in academic discourse helps students develop strong communication skills and the ability to effectively convey their ideas to others, setting the groundwork for effective writing. It can also help them to evaluate and analyze information as they develop their critical thinking skills. Finally, academic discourse can help to create a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. In this session we will unpack the strengths and challenges of facilitating peer-to-peer discussions and scrutinize effective strategies to help our students benefit from these discussions to amplify their understanding of important disciplinary concepts. 

Link to presentation:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Viei6e7e544BWZtpyeFJItBk-TmdfVHxrMpO5VS1kMs/edit?usp=sharing

Learning Objectives:
Describe the ways in which discussion promotes reading comprehension
* Identify the key elements of productive academic talk that promotes reading comprehension
* Create at least one peer-peer discussion lesson that can be used in the classroom to promote productive academic talk that promotes reading comprehension
*Apply tools to continue to investigate ways to support productive academic talk that promotes reading comprehension.

Questions:
1) What is the difference between unproductive talk, talk to teach students to participate in productive academic talk, and productive academic talk?
2) What tools did you gather today that you are excited about leveraging to encourage deeper comprehension through deeper discussion?
3) What do you still want to learn about facilitating deeper discussion?

Abstract:
Learn best practices for ensuring that beginning readers grasp the idea that sounds are represented by letters and groups of letters. You’ll come away with ideas on how to connect phoneme awareness with foundational phonics and handwriting skills and a lesson plan that works for teaching this critical first literacy concept.

Learner Outcomes:
Understand current research on alphabetic principle instruction and implement an alphabetic principle lesson plan.

The presentation is a combination of a dyslexia presentation and dyslexia and other learning difficulties simulation.  Participants will learn what is happening in the brain of individuals with dyslexia, the signs and symptoms of dyslexia, evidence-based interventions and accommodations to help people with dyslexia succeed.  Learning difficulty simulations will be interspersed into the presentation.  Participants will have a minute feeling of how people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties feel during their school day.

Learner Outcomes
Have a better understanding of dyslexia, including evidence-based interventions and accommodations.

Engage your families through a night of literacy, where families will learn how to support their child.  Activies will include a Whoville book walk to win books and let their imaginations soar, Grinch Emotions and make and take to help them learn the emotions behind characters in literature, create bookmarks with a song to support early learning, small bag with markers to help them develop writing. There is also a letter writing, to Santa, and Lap reading workshop.  I will show how to partner with the community and give you all materials to support you in making a special night for birth through 5 with your community.  Another station includes reading to children with the Polar express.  There is also a polar bear hand art with a song.  We will educate parents about the types of questions that are to be asked while lap reading. We will work hard to help parents understand why reading 1000 books prior to Kindergarten helps them be a more successful reader.

Session:
This session will focus on Family Engagement for Birth through 5 for the entire community.  Best practices for literacy are included in the activities and all preschools were invited to participate in our community.  We did a Winter Fair, and I will share how to make this happen in your District as well as share the Canva created materials you will need to make your own special Family Engagement night.  Participants will see a successful night and rotate to see what each station looks like in real time

Learner Outcomes
We will show a mini family engagement night to support families in engagement of reading with their child.  They will learn early literacy ideas to promote comprehsnion, vocabulary, oral language, and phonemic awareness.
1.  Create Family Engagement  Night for Literacy birth to age 5. 2.  You learn what activities support our youngest learners in our community.
3.  You will leave with all the materials to create your own night.  We will give you our materials, so you can save time.

Questions Answered:
How do you engage your families to promote literacy?
What practices support our earliest learners?

Do you want to involve partnerships in your community to meet the needs of students?

Slide Deck:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGDJ81oebU/NbkMHx3Q1ndhy9RwCrIE6A/view?utm_content=DAGDJ81oebU&utm_campaign=share_your_des

Session Description and Learning Objective
Teachers and administrators make countless decisions each day, from in-the-moment instructional choices to complex, long-term district planning. With this in mind, we will learn about three "anchors" to better understand big-picture ideas about the science of reading and inform educators' decisions. We will discuss various topics in the context of these enchors, including assessments and data, curriculum and text choice, and special populations such as English learners/emergent bilinguals and students with disabilities. Our learning objective is for participants to become comfortable using these anchors to guide their everyday instructional decision-making. 

Credit Reflection Questions

1. How does the Simple View of Reading help us better understand assessment data?
2. How can Scarborough's Rope help guide decisions about aligning types of texts (e.g. decodable texts, children's literature) with a lesson's purpose?
3. Using the language of the Four-Part Processing Model for Word Recognition, how can we plan instruction to meet the diverse needs of all learners?

Spelling...it's not just a byproduct of reading! The relationship between spelling and reading is deeply interconnected, relying on a shared foundation of knowledge about the relationships between letters and sounds, orthography, and morphology. Utilizing key findings from research, this session will provide participants with strategic routines grounded in structured literacy principles that build student mastery in the accuracy and automaticity of sound-symbol correspondences to improve student spelling. Educators will walk away with a multisensory approach to spelling, targeting phonemic awareness, phonics, and orthographic knowledge so that students will simultaneously access multiple pathways in the brain in order to dramatically increase students' spelling skills and confidence.

Learning Objectives:

• The learner will examine evidence for instruction in phonics and encoding from the What Works Clearinghouse IES Educator’s Practice Guide for Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
• The learner will discuss the importance of the Six-Step Explicit Phonics Lesson with emphasis on Introducing a Sound Symbol Correspondence and Encoding with dictation
• The learner will contrast the brain processes involved in decoding and encoding and how encoding supports orthographic mapping.
• The learner will view and discuss the introduction of a Sound Spelling Card routine
• The learner will view and practice the dictation routine
• The learner will discuss the benefits of teaching sound-symbol correspondence with a multimodal approach

Credit Reflection Questions:
1. Explain how encoding differs from decoding.
2. How does encoding practice benefit students' ability to orthographically map words for automatic retrieval?
3. What is the value of explicitly teaching sound symbol correspondence and providing students with lots of repetition?

With new state requirements requiring professional development in evidence-based practices, schools must develop meaningful and powerful plans that give the biggest bang for your buck. This session will help you navigate state requirements and prioritize areas to focus your PD.

Clarify state requirements for PD, Begin development of a plan to prioritize PD needs in your setting

Effective leadership plays a vital role in fostering healthy reading ecosystems that drive strong student literacy outcomes. Through case studies, hands on activities and thoughtful discussion participants will gain actionable strategies for monitoring and improving their reading ecosystems that support gains in student achievement.  
Session Objectives:
Leaders will be able to:

1. Analyze leader actions that drive healthy reading ecosystems
2. Identify how to align leadership structures to support reading outcomes

Key Questions to Explore:

1. What are the critical elements of a short improvement cycle? 
2. What the key elements of a research aligned reading ecosystem?

Through this two-part session, leaders will briefly explore a range of historical and current approaches to literacy instruction in the US. Although there is a debate about the best ways to teach literacy, there is clear and overwhelming research that supports a few specific best practices that promote equity in literacy outcomes for all students These are: systemic instruction in reading foundational skills, engaging in grade-level complex text, building knowledge through text, and evidence-based discussion and writing. By the end of this two-part session, leaders will be able to identify the four key literacy best practices in classroom instruction, have the beginnings of a vision for strong instruction in ELA and next steps on where to start support growing teacher knowledge. 

Explore the historical arc of reading instruction and how it’s led to the current practices and debate.    Identify the four research-based best practices in literacy instruction, and how these practices serve the needs of all students.

Learning Questions

1. Share two key takeaways around best practices in literacy instruction that you learned in this session. 
2. Share one clear next step you plan to take from the learning in this session.  
3. Share more about the learning that you would want or need to advance your practice in literacy instruction.

Through this two-part session, leaders will briefly explore a range of historical and current approaches to literacy instruction in the US. Although there is a debate about the best ways to teach literacy, there is clear and overwhelming research that supports a few specific best practices that promote equity in literacy outcomes for all students These are: systemic instruction in reading foundational skills, engaging in grade-level complex text, building knowledge through text, and evidence-based discussion and writing. By the end of this two-part session, leaders will be able to identify the four key literacy best practices in classroom instruction, have the beginnings of a vision for strong instruction in ELA and next steps on where to start support growing teacher knowledge. 

Learner Outcomes
Revisit the four research-based best practices in literacy instruction, and how these practices serve the needs of all students. Learn how these practices look like in action, and how leaders can begin to support teachers to adopt them. Describe aspects of excellent literacy teaching and learning through a vision of strong instruction for ELA.

Learning Questions

1. Share two key takeaways around best practices in literacy instruction that you learned in this session. 
2. Share one clear next step you plan to take from the learning in this session.  
3. Share more about the learning that you would want or need to advance your practice in literacy instruction.

The progress of moving literacy practices in a school district can feel daunting. Creating a guiding coalition can help expedite the process. A district literacy team is an integral part of a school district’s literacy ecosystem. Learn how to recruit members, determine member roles and responsibilities, develop a mission and vision statement, collaborate around collective commitments, create a guiding framework, plan regular meetings with detailed agendas, and spur literacy development and growth in a school district. We will share hands-on activities to build literacy leadership and help you create a phased plan of action to implement an effective, sustainable district literacy team. 

Objectives
Understand how a district literacy team complements a literacy ecosystem.
Learn the hallmarks of an efficacious district literacy team.
Reflect on specific district literacy team meeting components.  
Create a phased plan for implementation of a district literacy team.

Reflection Questions
What are the hallmarks of an efficacious district literacy team?
What are the components for a district literacy team meeting?
What is your phased implementation plan for your district literacy team?