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Learn how schools across the nation are utilizing NCTE Web seminars.
Topics Include:
21st Century Literacies
Administrator and Teacher Leader Series
Adolescent Literacy
Assessment
Content Area Literacy
Plagiarism
Reading Instruction
Writing
HOT Blogging: Using Blogs to Support Higher Order Thinking Skills
Presenters: Lisa Zawilinski and Donald Leu
Date: February 3, 2010
Audience: K-5
Time: 5:00 pm Eastern
Have you ever considered blogging with your students but weren't sure where to begin? During this Web seminar, participants will discover why integrating reading and writing on the Internet is important. Next, they will learn how elementary classroom teachers are currently using blogs with students. Additionally, free blogging resources and steps for beginning a classroom blog will be shared. Presenters will then provide a framework for how to use blogs to teach higher order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation, and synthesis. Participants will leave the webinar with the necessary resources and ideas to begin blogging with their students or the skills to step up their current blogging practices to include higher order thinking skills.
Examples in this webinar will focus on elementary classrooms, but the blogging skills shared can be used through high school.
Searching for an Answer: Reading Strategies for Locating Internet-Based Information
Presenter: Laurie Henry
Date: March 3, 2010
Audience: 6-8
Time: 5:00 pm Eastern
Most middle school students do not possess strategic reading skills that are required for searching on the Internet. Too often they rely on natural language keyword strategies and a "click and look" technique, which can be time consuming and unsuccessful. This webinar will present key reading strategies that will help your students successfully navigate the Internet during information searching.
The Socially Networked English Classroom: Web 2.0 in the English Classroom
Presenter: William Kist
Date: February 17, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:00 pm Eastern
From the technologically barren classroom to the completely equipped digital classroom, teachers in all kinds of settings are attempting to overcome barriers and are beginning to enter the Web 2.0 age. This webinar will provide participants with a baseline of description of what a truly “social networked” classroom can look like on a daily basis. Building on 12 years of research studying teachers nationally and internationally, William Kist has compiled an archive of groundbreaking teaching and learning practices that take advantage of these new media no matter the level of technology being used—from the one-room schoolhouse to the starship Enterprise. This webinar will include many real-world examples—assignment sheets, assessments, and rubrics, setting this work in context of the rapidly evolving world of literacy instruction.
Storytelling 2.0: New Possibilities Within a New Practice
Presenter: Sara Kajder
Date: October 21, 2009
Audience: K-12 teachers and teacher leaders
Come explore the possibilities of storytelling by bringing together storytelling goals and web tools like flickr, voicethread, geograffiti and more. This web seminar will examine digital storytelling as a tool, genre, and a powerful approach to teaching writing. You will gain insight from K-12 examples and be able to incorporate these web 2.0 tools into your teaching.
Summarization in any Subject
Presenter: Rick Wormeli
Date: February 8, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:30 pm Eastern
In the 21st century, students not only have to know facts, but they have to be skilled “information managers.” They must get the main idea and its supportive details along with the principle argument and the underlying evidence. One of the greatest gifts we can teach students is how to distill salient information, no matter how it's presented. Summarization is one of few strategies that ensures long-term retention of student learning and students' autonomy, yet many of us don't understand how to break out what we are asking students to do when we tell them to summarize texts or experiences. Focusing on practical applications, this Web Seminar presents the specific steps of summarization, its impact on learning, and dozens of summarization techniques for all subject areas, not just English. Join us for an eye-opening session on the power of summarization!
As a result of this Web Seminar, participants will be able to:
Define summarization
Articulate the cognitive science principles behind effective summarization
Articulate why summarization is so effective as a teaching tool
Identify and convey to students the specific actions taken when summarizing effectively
Present and use multiple summarization techniques with their students, creating both teachers' and students' summarization versatility
Identify specific parallels between summarization success and reading comprehension
Using the Arts and Technology to Support Critical Literacy in your Elementary Classroom
Presenters: Peggy Albers, Vivian M. Vasquez, and Jerome C. Harste
Date: April 22, 2010
Audience: K-5
Time: 4:30 Eastern
Today more and more attention is being given to technology as a new literacy and how it might be incorporated in the English language arts classroom. In this web seminar we share our work in visual and critical literacy and how we have supported teacher in rethinking literacy and in exploring new possibilities for the English language arts classroom. Specifically we will share the work we have done with elementary students in critiquing advertisements, developing public service announcements, creating classroom podcasts and other such projects.
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Supporting Beginning English Teachers: Induction, Mentoring, and Assistance
Presenter: Tom McCann
Audience: Administrators and school leaders
Date: August 12, 2009
Learn how to create strategies and systems that will support new teachers’ growth and retention. We explore the research about the major concerns of beginning teachers--we’ll look at new teachers’ coping strategies, the contrast between new and veteran staff, and the critical episodes that typically confront all new teachers. This seminar will help you create your plan for research-supported induction activities, improved mentoring approaches, and long-term professional growth.
Planning For Success in your Gradual Release of Responsibility Classrooms
Presenter: Nancy Frey
Audience: Administrators and school leaders
Date: August 19, 2009
Your teachers have learned the basics of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model of instruction, so join us as we discuss:
- Development of a coaching eye that recognizes the quality indicators of good instruction
- Elements of GRR: Modeling, guided instruction, and productive group work
Administrators, coaches, and mentors of beginning teachers can hone their skills to continue to build on the good work happening in your schools.
Homework: To Assign or Not to Assign? What to Really Consider
Presenters: Kay Haas, Stacy Kitsis, Buffy Salee and Neil Rigler
Audience: Administrators, school leaders, and teachers
Date: August 26, 2009
Many schools and nearly every teacher has a homework policy, but few are able to agree on what it should look like. And with all the competition on students’ time outside the school day, some are abandoning assigning homework altogether. Participants in this web seminar will discuss the many issues surrounding assigning homework: What is its purpose? What is a proper amount? What are the characteristics of a good homework assignment? How can it be assigned equitably considering the variety of student needs in our heterogeneous classes? How do we motivate students to complete it? How do we grade it? Participants will leave the session reflecting on how to revise their homework policies based on the needs of their current students. Join current classroom teachers and a language arts coordinator for a hot discussion on a hot topic!
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Adolescent Literacy and the Affect of Standards
Presenters: Rebecca Sipe and Cathy Fleischer
Date: January 28, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:00 pm Eastern
Building from a historical overview of how notions about what standards are and how they should function, this webnar will help participants explore why standards have become so complex, why particular implementation metaphors have complicated and, too often, weakened well intended implementation efforts, and how mismatched and misaligned assessments have proven to be counter-productive to the ideals first envisioned for literacy standards. The presenter will suggest specific and tested strategies for engaging stakeholders in productive planning and implementation efforts.
Specific questions to be explored include:
- How has the concept and function of standards changed across our four-decade conversation about educational equity?
- What political forces are at play and how are they influencing the standards in our classrooms?
- How are tests shaping our ability to implement meaningful standards-based change?
- How do standards intersect with NCTE’s Policy on Adolescent Literacy?
- What do we do now? How can we engage our communities of stakeholders to address standards in ways that lead to meaningful literacy programs?
Together, we’ll deepen our understanding of standards and testing and consider concrete plans for moving forward with literacy changes that work.
Literature Circles in the Middle and High School Classroom
Presenter: Katie McKnight
Date: November 4, 2009
Audience: 6-8 teachers and teacher leaders
Are you ready to go beyond the basal or literature anthology? This web seminar will provide practical strategies to shift toward a literature based language arts program in the middle school or high school. Learn about the similarities and differences between the reading workshop and literature circles. This one hour session will also feature classroom organization strategies and motivating lessons to support all readers.
Reading Shakespeare with All Our Students
Presenters: Mary Ellen Dakin, Jonathan Mitchell and Christina Porter
Date: December 3, 2009
Time: 5:00 pm Eastern
Reading Shakespeare takes everything we’ve got-–an arsenal of strategies grounded in research for teaching advanced literacy to all our students, and the imagination to adapt those strategies to Shakespeare’s early modern text. This web seminar focuses on the collaborative reading of Shakespeare’s plays. Collaborative as in what we can learn from classroom teachers, adolescents, literacy researchers, Shakespeare scholars, performers, and media specialists; reading as in what we can do with increasing independence to construct meaning from the transaction with challenging content written in early modern English; plays as in what we can apply to thirty-seven because the reading skills and strategies outlined in this seminar are transferable across the collection of Shakespeare’s plays. In this seminar, participants will engage in a progression of strategies that sets the stage for comprehension of a play by William Shakespeare and guides students of all ability levels through the reading of Act One. From pre-reading strategies to focused reading to reading movie posters of Shakespeare’s plays, participants will come away with research-based and classroom-tested ideas for teaching all our students how to read Shakespeare, and why.
Back to Top
Adolescent Literacy and the Affect of Standards
Presenters: Rebecca Sipe and Cathy Fleischer
Date: January 28, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:00 pm Eastern
Building from a historical overview of how notions about what standards are and how they should function, this webnar will help participants explore why standards have become so complex, why particular implementation metaphors have complicated and, too often, weakened well intended implementation efforts, and how mismatched and misaligned assessments have proven to be counter-productive to the ideals first envisioned for literacy standards. The presenter will suggest specific and tested strategies for engaging stakeholders in productive planning and implementation efforts.
Specific questions to be explored include:
- How has the concept and function of standards changed across our four-decade conversation about educational equity?
- What political forces are at play and how are they influencing the standards in our classrooms?
- How are tests shaping our ability to implement meaningful standards-based change?
- How do standards intersect with NCTE’s Policy on Adolescent Literacy?
- What do we do now? How can we engage our communities of stakeholders to address standards in ways that lead to meaningful literacy programs?
Together, we’ll deepen our understanding of standards and testing and consider concrete plans for moving forward with literacy changes that work.
Planning For Success in your Gradual Release of Responsibility Classrooms
Presenter: Nancy Frey
Audience: Administrators and school leaders
Date: August 19, 2009
Your teachers have learned the basics of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model of instruction, so join us as we discuss:
- Development of a coaching eye that recognizes the quality indicators of good instruction
- Elements of GRR: Modeling, guided instruction, and productive group work
Administrators, coaches, and mentors of beginning teachers can hone their skills to continue to build on the good work happening in your schools.
Homework: To Assign or Not to Assign? What to Really Consider
Presenters: Kay Haas, Stacy Kitsis, Buffy Salee and Neil Rigler
Audience: Administrators, school leaders, and teachers
Date: August 26, 2009
Many schools and nearly every teacher has a homework policy, but few are able to agree on what it should look like. And with all the competition on students’ time outside the school day, some are abandoning assigning homework altogether. Participants in this web seminar will discuss the many issues surrounding assigning homework: What is its purpose? What is a proper amount? What are the characteristics of a good homework assignment? How can it be assigned equitably considering the variety of student needs in our heterogeneous classes? How do we motivate students to complete it? How do we grade it? Participants will leave the session reflecting on how to revise their homework policies based on the needs of their current students. Join current classroom teachers and a language arts coordinator for a hot discussion on a hot topic!
The Socially Networked English Classroom: Web 2.0 in the English Classroom
Presenter: William Kist
Date: February 17, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:00 pm Eastern
From the technologically barren classroom to the completely equipped digital classroom, teachers in all kinds of settings are attempting to overcome barriers and are beginning to enter the Web 2.0 age. This webinar will provide participants with a baseline of description of what a truly “social networked” classroom can look like on a daily basis. Building on 12 years of research studying teachers nationally and internationally, William Kist has compiled an archive of groundbreaking teaching and learning practices that take advantage of these new media no matter the level of technology being used—from the one-room schoolhouse to the starship Enterprise. This webinar will include many real-world examples—assignment sheets, assessments, and rubrics, setting this work in context of the rapidly evolving world of literacy instruction.
Back to Top
Middle School Content Area Literature: Picturing the Possibilities
Presenters: Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins
Date: September 22, 2009
Audience: 5-8 teachers and teacher leaders
Picture engaged students...captivating content...and lessons with lasting impressions. Participants of this web seminar will have an inside look at the picture books that draw middle school students into Language Arts, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, and The Arts. Not limited by constraints often placed on textbooks, picture books offer updated material on specialized topics that meet a wide range of students' learning needs. Teachers will find picture books can introduce new topics, extend areas of interest, or provide authentic cultural perspectives. The colorful pictures and rich language will spark interest in even the most reluctant learner. We will discuss reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing across the curriculum, inspired by age appropriate content literature. Participants will have an exclusive look at ways to engage learners and infuse new ideas into their teaching through the newest and best picture books.
On Teaching Content: Building a Schoolwide Culture
Presenter: Doug Fisher (Moderator) and a panel of content teachers
Date: October 15, 2009
Audience: 6-12 teachers and teacher leaders
Teachers across subject areas will discuss the ways in which literacy instructional routines develop students understanding about the content. They will share successful approaches for engaging students with vocabulary, writing, and building background such that learning occurs.
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Write from Wrong: Strategies for Addressing Student Plagiarism
Presenter: Barry Gilmore
Date: November 10, 2009
Audience: 9-12
Time: 4:00 Eastern
Every teacher dreads it—the plagiarized paper, the confrontation with a student, the demise of trust and learning. Worse still, academic dishonesty is on the rise; plagiarism and cheating proliferate as schools move toward an online future, with more than half of students admitting to online cheating. This presentation, while recognizing the problem, will not focus on the crime of plagiarism but on strategies for prevention and aspects of school and classroom culture that can reduce or eliminate student cheating. We’ll also reconsider our writing prompts with the goal of discovering how we can stop plagiarism before it happens rather than merely reacting to it after the fact.
During this session, we’ll aim to learn strategies that help students:
- Desire to write original work;
- Build research and note-taking skills that will help them to avoid the need to plagiarize;
- Evaluate their own study habits and pressures to avoid bad decision-making.
Back to Top
Middle School Content Area Literature: Picturing the Possibilities
Presenters: Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins
Date: September 22, 2009
Audience: 5-8 teachers and teacher leaders
Picture engaged students...captivating content...and lessons with lasting impressions. Participants of this web seminar will have an inside look at the picture books that draw middle school students into Language Arts, Social Studies, Mathematics, Science, and The Arts. Not limited by constraints often placed on textbooks, picture books offer updated material on specialized topics that meet a wide range of students' learning needs. Teachers will find picture books can introduce new topics, extend areas of interest, or provide authentic cultural perspectives. The colorful pictures and rich language will spark interest in even the most reluctant learner. We will discuss reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing across the curriculum, inspired by age appropriate content literature. Participants will have an exclusive look at ways to engage learners and infuse new ideas into their teaching through the newest and best picture books.
Literature Circles in the Middle and High School Classroom
Presenter: Katie McKnight
Date: November 4, 2009
Audience: 6-8 teachers and teacher leaders
Are you ready to go beyond the basal or literature anthology? This web seminar will provide practical strategies to shift toward a literature based language arts program in the middle school or high school. Learn about the similarities and differences between the reading workshop and literature circles. This one hour session will also feature classroom organization strategies and motivating lessons to support all readers.
Reading Shakespeare with All Our Students
Presenters: Mary Ellen Dakin, Jonathan Mitchell and Christina Porter
Date: December 3, 2009
Time: 5:00 pm Eastern
Reading Shakespeare takes everything we’ve got-–an arsenal of strategies grounded in research for teaching advanced literacy to all our students, and the imagination to adapt those strategies to Shakespeare’s early modern text. This web seminar focuses on the collaborative reading of Shakespeare’s plays. Collaborative as in what we can learn from classroom teachers, adolescents, literacy researchers, Shakespeare scholars, performers, and media specialists; reading as in what we can do with increasing independence to construct meaning from the transaction with challenging content written in early modern English; plays as in what we can apply to thirty-seven because the reading skills and strategies outlined in this seminar are transferable across the collection of Shakespeare’s plays. In this seminar, participants will engage in a progression of strategies that sets the stage for comprehension of a play by William Shakespeare and guides students of all ability levels through the reading of Act One. From pre-reading strategies to focused reading to reading movie posters of Shakespeare’s plays, participants will come away with research-based and classroom-tested ideas for teaching all our students how to read Shakespeare, and why.
Searching for an Answer: Reading Strategies for Locating Internet-Based Information
Presenter: Laurie Henry
Date: March 3, 2010
Audience: 6-8
Time: 5:00 pm Eastern
Most middle school students do not possess strategic reading skills that are required for searching on the Internet. Too often they rely on natural language keyword strategies and a "click and look" technique, which can be time consuming and unsuccessful. This webinar will present key reading strategies that will help your students successfully navigate the Internet during information searching.
Summarization in any Subject
Presenter: Rick Wormeli
Date: February 8, 2010
Audience: 6-12
Time: 4:30 pm Eastern
In the 21st century, students not only have to know facts, but they have to be skilled “information managers.” They must get the main idea and its supportive details along with the principle argument and the underlying evidence. One of the greatest gifts we can teach students is how to distill salient information, no matter how it's presented. Summarization is one of few strategies that ensures long -term retention of student learning and students' autonomy, yet many of us don't understand how to break out what we are asking students to do when we tell them to summarize texts or experiences. Focusing on practical applications, this Web Seminar presents the specific steps of summarization, its impact on learning, and dozens of summarization techniques for all subject areas, not just English. Join us for an eye-opening session on the power of summarization!
As a result of this Web Seminar, participants will be able to:
Define summarization
Articulate the cognitive science principles behind effective summarization
Articulate why summarization is so effective as a teaching tool
Identify and convey to students the specific actions taken when summarizing effectively
Present and use multiple summarization techniques with their students, creating both teachers' and students' summarization versatility
Identify specific parallels between summarization success and reading comprehension
Back to Top
Integrating Grammar into the Context of Writing
Presenter: Jeff Anderson
Date: October 27, 2009
Audience: 3-8 teachers
What does teaching grammar in context actually mean? And more importantly what are some ways I can transform grammar instruction so kids will actually pay attention and use it in their speaking and writing. Come explore what research says and apply it to what we actually do in our classrooms on a day-to-day basis.
Revision: How to Teach it, Learn it, Love it!
Presenter: Barry Lane
Date: January 20, 2010
Audience: 3-12 teachers
Time: 4:30 Eastern
Revision is an ongoing, creative process, not simply the act of correcting a rough draft. Teachers often find that students groan and go limp at the prospect for revising their work. This idea-packed web seminar, based on two of Barry Lane's books will send you back to the classroom with practical techniques and mini- lessons to show students how to love revision as much as professional writers do. Teachers of all grade levels are invited, but especially grades 3-12. Ideas modeled include, Growing Leads, Binoculars, Snapshots, Thoughtshots, Exploding moments and more.
Storytelling 2.0: New Possibilities Within a New Practice
Presenter: Sara Kajder
Date: October 21, 2009
Audience: K-12 teachers and teacher leaders
Come explore the possibilities of storytelling by bringing together storytelling goals and web tools like flickr, voicethread, geograffiti and more. This web seminar will examine digital storytelling as a tool, genre, and a powerful approach to teaching writing. You will gain insight from K-12 examples and be able to incorporate these web 2.0 tools into your teaching.
Write from Wrong: Strategies for Addressing Student Plagiarism
Presenter: Barry Gilmore
Date: November 10, 2009
Audience: 9-12
Time: 4:00 Eastern
Every teacher dreads it—the plagiarized paper, the confrontation with a student, the demise of trust and learning. Worse still, academic dishonesty is on the rise; plagiarism and cheating proliferate as schools move toward an online future, with more than half of students admitting to online cheating. This presentation, while recognizing the problem, will not focus on the crime of plagiarism but on strategies for prevention and aspects of school and classroom culture that can reduce or eliminate student cheating. We’ll also reconsider our writing prompts with the goal of discovering how we can stop plagiarism before it happens rather than merely reacting to it after the fact.
During this session, we’ll aim to learn strategies that help students:
- Desire to write original work;
- Build research and note-taking skills that will help them to avoid the need to plagiarize;
- Evaluate their own study habits and pressures to avoid bad decision-making.
Back to Top
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