April Innovative Voices

Tonya Gilchrist

• 9:00 AM CST on April 14  Amplify Inquiry and Honor Agency through Readers' and Writers' Workshop You are an inquiry-based educator. You value curiosity, critical thinking, and concept-based learning. What could it look like to move a child’s critical reading and writing skills forward while also holding tight to the essential elements and core values of an inquiry spirit? Can you have it all? In this session, you'll explore the beautiful braid of inquiry, agency, and literacy. Together, we will examine how workshop practices can amplify inquiry and honor agency while maximizing instructional essentials for reading and writing. Leave with strategies for designing an agentic environment and curricular plan that keep kids at the center of it all.

• 9:00 AM CST on April 28  There's a Better Way: Translanguaging as a Path to Empowerment Your literacy classroom is filled with culturally and linguistically diverse learners. You want to keep content challenging and relevant, but you're worried that "language limits" are getting in the way. You might even find yourself thinking, "These kids can't..." Translanguaging can help. Join us for a highly practical session on ways to empower your students to harness their entire linguistic repertoires as agentic readers, writers, and communicators. Together, we'll examine what translanguaging means and how it's changing the face of classrooms around the world in beautiful ways. We'll also explore research-based strategies to support emergent and proficient multilingual learners in a variety of teaching and learning experiences.

• 2:45 pm CST on April 14: Engaging Children: Helping Students Find and Hold Onto Engagement Engagement lies at the heart of learning—remembering what is most important and using those understandings in new contexts later. What does it mean to be engaged? How does engagement relate to compliance, participation, and internal motivation? What is our role when it comes to helping students discover what most engages them? We’ll discuss these questions and ways in which students can take increasing responsibility for their own engagement whether they are learning from school or at home. We’ll also explore how we can reliably know when students are engaged and what to do when they aren’t. 
   
• 2:45 pm CST on April 28 The Literacy Studio: Integrating Reading and Writing Imagine a buzzing studio of literacy learning in which children understand reading from a writer's perspective and writing through the eyes of a reader. Why have we developed the habit of teaching reading and writing separately, often without making the connections between them explicit? In a Literacy Studio, lessons focus simultaneously on reading and writing, and students choose when to apply what they learn as readers and when to work as writers. Teachers, therefore, have much more time to differentiate for students through conferences and small group learning and students spend more time in independent work developing and applying the skills and strategies that matter most. Participants will discuss ways to transform reader’s and writer’s workshop into a Literacy Studio.

Elisabeth Bostwick

• 7:00 pm CST on April 14 Empower a Culture of Innovation: Amplify Learner Agency Our schools ought to be places where students explore, inquire, and unleash creative thinking within a supportive and collaborative environment. Collectively, we will explore how to create the conditions that empower meaningful learning, rooted in relationships, and lead to a culture of innovation where every learner thrives. We will re-imagine learning experiences through integrating Design Thinking, and the use of tools that can be leveraged in meaningful ways to catalyze agency and amplify student voice. Together, we can create the conditions to inspire learners to take greater ownership of their learning and increase intrinsic motivation to take action. Every child has incredible inner potential; let’s create dynamic learning opportunities to unleash it! 

• 2:45 pm on April 28 There's a Better Way: Translanguaging as a Path to Empowerment Your literacy classroom is filled with culturally and linguistically diverse learners. You want to keep content challenging and relevant, but you're worried that "language limits" are getting in the way. You might even find yourself thinking, "These kids can't..." Translanguaging can help. Join us for a highly practical session on ways to empower your students to harness their entire linguistic repertoires as agentic readers, writers, and communicators. Together, we'll examine what translanguaging means and how it's changing the face of classrooms around the world in beautiful ways. We'll also explore research-based strategies to support emergent and proficient multilingual learners in a variety of teaching and learning experiences.

Obtain effective methods and intervention strategies that will assist Literacy Teachers. As Title 1 professionals, we will share best practices for engaging and uplifting all learners. These interventions will focus on intermediate grade students. Various components of phonemic awareness & phonics, comprehension and writing will be presented. In light of our current situation, we will also examine how to take these best practices and show how they can be applied in a digital platform.

Anne Kissinger Pre-recorded session A Case For Literacy: Value the Activity of Reading See how one Milwaukee County Library is in the process of transforming the view of reading with zero extrinsic rewards (e.g. stickers, badges, logs, coupons, etc.) by valuing the activity of reading itself. Reading rewards lead to false statistical gains, oppression, lower level reading, and detrimental effects to intrinsic motivation. 

Jen Breezee and Christina Stefonek Pre-recorded session Supporting All Students in Language Learning Across Disciplines This session will focus on the challenges of supporting the language learning of all students including English Learners and striving readers and writers across subject areas. We will address before-, during-, and after- reading strategies to improve comprehension, such as modeling and think- alouds. Additionally, we will share strategies for producing oral and written academic language, (e.g., sentence stems and frames) and provide ways to use students' social oral language to support their written academic language. You will experience these strategies and practice as learners and educators as you consider your own contexts.