Jeffrey N. Golub recently worked as an associate professor of English Education at the University of South Florida, preparing students to teach English in the public schools. For 20 years, he taught English, speech communication, and writing classes at both junior and senior high schools in Seattle, Washington. He has presented sessions and conducted workshops for teachers and school districts throughout the country on such topics as “Making Learning Happen,” “Constructing an Interactive Classroom,” “Infusing Technology into the Curriculum,” “Developing Students’ Speaking and Listening Skills,” and “Responding to Poetry and Other Literature.” Dr. Golub is the author of Activities for an Interactive Classroom and Making Learning Happen, coeditor of Reflective Activities: Helping Students Connect with Texts, and the editor of Activities to Promote Critical Thinking and Focus on Collaborative Learning.
View Jeffrey Golub's Resume/Vita, Publications and Workshops.
Listen to Jeff as he reflects on supporting and retaining new teachers in the profession.
Level: 6-12
- Reading and Writing Instruction
- Computers for Writing Instruction
- Positive Classroom Climate and Community
- Authentic Assessment
- Critical Literacy
- Constructing an Interactive Classroom
- Curriculum Audits
In his workshop sessions, Jeff engages participants in several different classroom activities, each activity designed to demonstrate specific insights, principles, and instructional approaches. His presentations are tailored to the specific needs and concerns of the particular audience of teachers in attendance.
Making Writing Happen—A Writing Across the Curriculum Workshop
Students will write when (1) they have something to say, (2) they have an audience, and (3) they know they will receive feedback. Topics and goals:
- Developing students' fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration skills
- Improving students' ability to keep their audience in mind as they write
- Improving students' ability to give directions clearly
- Showing, not telling
- Writing concisely
- Writing detailed, accurate, vivid descriptions
- Using Writing-to-Learn activities
- Construction and negotiating meanings through writing
- Writing in response to literature and other texts
- Incorporating grammar instruction into the writing activities
- Working productively in small groups on peer-editing tasks
- Authentic assessment of writing
- Authentic assessment through writing
This is a practical, engaging, insightful workshop that will enhance the participants' range of innovative and worthwhile strategies to make writing happen in their classroom.
Making Learning Happen—Activities for an Interactive Classroom
This 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.
In short, learn how to help students make sense of English in ways that make sense.
Making Reading Happen—A Reading in the Content Areas Workshop
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; 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."
Making Learning Happen—Developing Students' Speaking and Listening Skills
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