Adolescent Literacy
Peggy Albers, Jeff Anderson, Amy Benjamin, Beverly Ann Chin, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, John Golden, Jeffrey Golub, William Kist, Heather Lattimer, Katherine McKnight, Ernest Morrell, Robert Probst, Michael W. Smith, Jeffrey Wilhelm
Onsite Workshops Focused on Adolescent Literacy
Below is a listing of workshop topics related to adolescent literacy available from NCTE consultants. Click on the consultant's name to learn more about their consulting experiences, publications, and professional experiences. All workshops can be customized to meet your specific needs.
Additional NCTE consultants presenting on adolescent literacy include Peggy Albers, Jeff Anderson, Amy Benjamin, Beverly Ann Chin, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, John Golden, Jeffrey Golub, William Kist, Heather Lattimer, Katherine McKnight, Ernest Morrell, Bob Probst, Michael W. Smith, Jeffrey Wilhelm.
Workshop Title: Content Area Literacy: Reading for Meaning (Grades 3-12)
Consultant: Peggy Albers
In this single or multiple-day workshop, teachers will understand how the reading process works, and how learners make sense of content materials. Teachers will learn the significance of understanding text structures within content materials and reader stances, and how to use these structures and stances to support students’ writing. See an example of Peggy’s handout for this workshop.
Workshop Title: Content Literacy Strategies that Work
Consultant: Douglas Fisher
Audience: content teachers in middle and high school, administrators
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the use and advantages of content literacy strategies
- Describe a decision-making process for identifying and implementing a school-wide literacy approach
- Identify the components of a professional development plan to foster teacher proficiency and collegial coaching
- Link schoolwide approaches to a systematic accountability design
- Complete a planning tool for establishing and implementing a school-wide literacy program for their school site
Workshop Title: Making Learning Happen—Interactive Classroom
This Jeffrey N. Golub workshop is designed for those who want to change the way they (and their students) use English.
- IMPROVE students' performance with language by focusing on the constructing, negotiating, and communicating of meanings.
- BECOME a designer and director of classroom instruction.
- CREATE situations that allow students to engage in authentic communication for real audiences and real purposes.
- DISCOVER ways to use students' own talk as a vehicle for learning.
- FIND how to make critical thinking, cooperative learning, authentic assessment, and interpretive discussions of literature work for your and your students.
Workshop Title: Making Reading Happen
This Jeffrey N. Golub workshop is designed to be insightful, challenging, engaging, worthwhile, and fun. In the first part, the presenter describes and demonstrates the concept of "making the invisible visible," and then, through a series of examples and activities, makes the various reading skills "visible" to the participants.
The presenter goes on to engage the participants in specific classroom activities that utilize four important instructional strategies: The Close procedure, Making inferences, Read & Retell, and Constructing and negotiating meanings.
Important points about the workshop:
- This is not a workshop about "teaching" reading. Instead, it is a presentation and demonstration of ways to set up one's classroom instruction so that READING HAPPENS.
- Speaking and listening and writing are an integral part of making reading happen. This insight is make visible by the structure of the many activities in which participants will be engaged.
- The most important insight--and the one that will be emphasized at the conclusion of the workshop--is: "Use your course content as a vehicle to develop your students' reading skills. If you do this well, then your students can, in turn, use their 'new and improved' reading skills to master the rest of your content."
This one-day workshop is designed to appeal to middle and high school teachers of all disciplines. Participants will learn how to make reading happen in ways that make sense.
Workshop Title: Making Learning Happen—Developing Students' Speaking and Listening Skills
Consultant: Jeffrey N. Golub
A teacher is a manager of a communication environment. And this is the workshop that will identify the characteristics of that environment and offer insights, information, and instructional strategies designed to help the teacher be an effective "communication manager." In addition, teachers will participate in several lively, engaging instructional activities aimed at improving their own-and their students'-speaking and listening skills. Since classroom communication occurs daily in all classes in all subjects, this workshop is pertinent and valuable for teachers of all disciplines working at either the middle or high school levels.
Topics and Goals
- Describing the nature of the communication process
- Identifying basic principles of interpersonal communication
- Learning how to communicate directions clearly
- Practicing three basic skills involved in effective listening
- Establishing a sense of "community" and a positive class climate
- Developing students' creative, logical, and critical thinking skills
- Teaching students to work productively in a small-group setting
- Making literature and other textual material come alive through oral readings
- Improving students' information literacy skills through an analysis of "doublespeak" and deceptive advertising
Workshop Title: Motivating the Unmotivated Adolescent Reader
Consultant: William Kist
Audiences: Teachers (Grades 5-Adult), Administrators, Literacy Coaches
In a single-day or multiple-day workshop, teachers will read about and discuss trends and strategies used in adolescent literacy education. A key component of the workshop will be strategies to motivate struggling readers, both those “a-literates” who just don’t like to read and those who struggling with decoding and comprehension. Strategies will be divided into those done before, during, and after reading. These strategies are hands-on, and can be implemented quickly and easy in language arts classrooms and across content areas.
Teaching the Classics in the Inclusive Classrooms
Consultant: Katherine McKnight
Audience: Grade Level: 6-12
What happens when you are required and want to teach classics works like Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, and Austen to students whose reading abilities are widely different? How do you unpack these linguistically complex literature classics that our so much a part of our popular culture and experience? The answer lies in creating active reader response strategies that are based on current models for effectively teaching adolescent readers.
The classics are not too difficult for our students to read, understand, and appreciate when the appropriate teaching strategies were used. This book contains discussion, teaching ideas, and full lessons that were developed by the presenter who has experience teaching in diverse middle and secondary high school classrooms. All of the lessons and ideas were developed through her teaching experience and encourage students to be active readers and learners as they experience the rich human experience of these literature classics.
This presentation is based on the material in Teaching the Lliterature Classics in the Inclusive Classroom, grades 6-12. Jossey Bass, (In Press).
Active Literacy Learning Requires Active Teaching
Consultant: Katherine McKnight
Audience: Grade Level: 4-12
The current model for teaching and learning promotes the ideas and notions that classrooms should be interactive where learning activities are a result of the partnership between the classroom teacher and the students. Students have a voice in their learning and are encouraged to be active participants in the classroom. Unlike the traditional classroom, where activities are primarily directed by the classroom teacher, the contemporary classroom is a result of active collaboration as a result of a common quest for learning.
In this hands-on presentation, the participants will explore student centered learning strategies that actively involve learners in classroom activities.
Content Area Literacy Strategies
Consultant: Katherine McKnight
Audience: Grade Level: 6-12
You might be familiar with the adage, “We are all teachers of reading and writing”. This workshop will explore the theory and practice involved in teaching content reading at the middle and secondary school level. It focuses on the literacy processes, which involves listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In addition, building on general knowledge of teaching literacy in middle and secondary schools, this workshop provides exploration of the methods of teaching reading and writing within the content areas. Through the exploration of current research in the field of adolescent literacy, participants will develop their knowledge of instructional methods associated with increasing comprehension for students in secondary schools.
Integrating the Arts into the Literacy Curriculum
Consultant: Katherine McKnight
Audience: Grade Level: 6-12
This professional development explores importance and instructional value of the integration of the arts: dance, drama, music, and visual art in the adolescent literacy curriculum. It is through the arts that students learn and develop important skills in focus, concentration, creativity, and problem solving that are directly related to the skill set for literacy learning. This presentation will briefly draw on recent brain research and other sources to show evidence that the arts are a vital teaching tool that significantly impacts literacy learning in a traditional educational setting.
This presentation is based on the upcoming book, The Second City Guide to Improvisation for the Classroom, Grades K-8. (Publication Date, January 2008).