NCTE offers consultants and services on early liteacy instruction that when used together, provide extended learning opportunities for teachers and makes a positive impact on learning. These opportunities include the Pathways Program, Web Seminars and early literacy books for study groups. Consultants are available to present one-day or multi-day presentations or provide year-round consulting. All workshops and presentations can be customized to meet your specific needs. Make your request today!
K-5: Peggy Albers: K-5
Mary Cappellini: K-5
Linda Crafton: K-5
Kathy Egawa: K-5
Barbara Flores: K-5
,Shari Frost, Susi Long, Trina Strickland Randle, Diane Stephens, Susan Stires, Katie Van Sluys
Critical Literacy
Becoming Critical Literacy Educators or What’s Critical in Critical Conversations? (Grades K-12)
Consultant: Peggy Albers
In this workshop, teachers are introduced to critical literacy and its significance in English language arts curriculum. Through participatory demonstrations, teachers will learn to read a range of texts critically, from language-, art-, film-, music-, to drama-based texts. See sample slides from her workshop presentation on critical literacy.
The Discussion-Based Classroom as a Key to High Achievement
Consultant: Thomas McCann
Audience: 6–12 Teachers
The workshop will reveal strategies for inviting and facilitating authentic discussion in the English classroom. The workshop activities will illustrate how engagement in authentic discussion helps students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to work with challenging texts and complex writing assignments.
Elementary Literacy
Constructing Classrooms to Support Young Readers and Writers
Consultant: Susi Long
Audiences: PreK, kindergarten (and their teaching assistants), first–third grade teachers, and administrators. These sessions can be 1-day sessins but they are most helpful when they are multiple day experiences. They can be developed to focus on audiences of teachers in multiage classrooms, four- and five-year-old kindergartens, the primary grades, or a combination of all of the above.
In these workshops, Susi works with teachers and administrators to envision classroom structures and strategies that build on what we know about young children as readers and writers. Engaging in the practices themselves, teachers will explore the teaching of skills and strategies in the context of purposeful literacy events as well as ways to articulate the power of their teaching to others. Examples of practices explored include: using children’s names, language from environmental print, songs and poems, language from favorite predictable books, written conversations, authentic morning messages, writing from the heart, and noticing language in the world around them—to support children in learning about reading and writing as meaning-making processes and as contexts in which they also develop understandings about parts of language and language structures.
Where’s the Phonics (and other stuff people always ask you)?: Understanding and Articulating Children’s Learning Within Semantically-Rich Classrooms
Consultant: Susi Long
Audiences: Classroom teachers, teaching assistants, and administrators in schools that serve children in preK, kindergarten through third grade classrooms. These workshops can focus on audiences of teachers in multiage classrooms, four- and five-year-old kindergartens, the primary grades, or a combination of all of the above.
In a day when outside pressures make the articulation of what we do and why we do it even more important, this workshop engages teachers and administrators directly in practices that support children as thoughtful literacy users and learners while demonstrating how specific skills and strategies are learned in the context of those experiences. Together, we will explore and articulate strategies for building a dynamic classroom environment in which children learn about letters and sounds and other aspects of language structures as a part of the intentional yet seamless flow of instruction.
Developing Readers that READ: Critical Reading Strategies for All Readers
Consultant: Katie Van Sluys
As teachers of reading we need shared understandings about reading processes and practices, students’ needs, and the best tools and strategies to support our students in becoming life-long readers. To support students’ development of decoding, comprehension, and so on readers need to experience the power and potentials of being readers. You’re invited to work with Katie Van Sluys in a day-long workshop to pursue issues and strategies to help all students’ in becoming critical readers who use reading in their everyday lives for pleasure, problem solving, and action. Together we will use rich and relevant literature to explore a range of reading strategies and practices to further develop the reading repertoire of readers in your classroom(s) so that our students not only can read but do read.