Write to Learn 2012 - Pre-Conference Speakers

Pre-Conference Speakers and Session Information Thursday, March 1, 2011
A.	"Creating Strategic Readers and Writers" Valerie Ellery, Author and Educational Consultant Grades K-6 Valerie Ellery has dedicated her professional career to the field of literacy. Over twenty years ago, she realized that her son had a problem with reading. This very personal experience launched her journey in the quest for understanding what good readers do. On the first stretch of her journey, she spent over ten years watching, listening to, and analyzing students as they were learning to read. In 1998, she was certified as a National Board Teacher where she learned the importance of reflecting on her instructional techniques. After acquiring her master's in reading in 2000, she stepped out of the classroom to support teachers as a district curriculum specialist. This new role gave her the opportunity to model reading strategies, mentor teachers, and inspire the desire to construct a roadmap for creating strategic readers. In 2003, Valerie began the rugged path of researching, analyzing, and writing a resource tool to map out the five components of reading in a strategic manner while continuing to work full time at the district level. In 2004, Valerie went back in the classroom as a second grade teacher. It was her aspiration to continue fostering a comprehensive literacy classroom while applying strategies and maintaining the quest for action research. The book Creating Strategic Readers: Techniques for Developing Competency in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension grew out of her teaching experience and was published in 2005, earning book club selection and best-seller honors from the International Reading Association. The second edition of Creating Strategic Readers was published in 2009 with 35 new techniques included. Valerie currently consults internationally and just co-published Sustaining Strategic Readers, which also received the honor of being named IRA's April, 2011, Book Club Selection. In her motivating and engaging pre-conference session, Valerie will show you how to build a strong foundation for a comprehensive literacy classroom, specifically connecting reading and writing. Curriculum, assessment, and instruction in the essential components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) will be highlighted and woven together with writing. Strategies, techniques, and "teacher talk" will be presented in a motivating, hands-on, interactive way in each of these areas, demonstrating how you can create strategic readers and writers!
B.	"Get Real: Instructional Strategies to Support Reading and Writing Nonfiction" Dr. Janet Allen, Literacy Expert and Author Grades 4-12 Janet Allen is an international consultant recognized for her literacy work with at-risk students. She is the author of many professional books: More Tools for Teaching Content Literacy; Tools for Teaching Content Literacy; On the Same Page: Shared Reading Beyond the Primary Grades; Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading; and, Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12 (Stenhouse Publishers); It's Never Too Late: Leading Adolescents to Lifelong Literacy (Heinemann); and co-author of There's Room for Me Here: Literacy Workshop in the Middle School (Stenhouse); The Scholastic Read-Aloud Anthology (Scholastic); and, Reading History (Oxford University Press). She is the editor of the collection, Using Literature to Help Troubled Teenagers Cope with End-of-Life Issues (Greenwood). Janet's first picture book, Best Little Wingman, has been published by Boyds Mills Press. She has also written numerous professional articles and chapters in texts related to young adult literature, teaching reading and writing, and vocabulary instruction. Her upcoming book is entitled Testing 1, 2, 3. . . Bridging Best Practice and High Stakes Testing. In addition to her professional writing, Janet has created an audio-assisted literacy workshop published by Recorded Books: Plugged-in to Reading, for grades 5-12 and Plugged-in to Nonfiction, for grades 4-12. Janet taught high school reading and English in northern Maine from 1972 until 1992 when she relocated to Florida to teach English and reading education courses at the University of Central Florida. During her tenure at UCF, she directed the Central Florida Writing Project and assisted in the creation of the Orange County Literacy Project. Dr. Allen has received several teaching awards including the Milken Foundation's National Educator Award. She is currently spending her time researching, writing, speaking, and conducting literacy workshops, seminars and content literacy institutes across the country. Of her pre-conference session, Janet writes, "We all know just how interested our students are in reading 'real' books about 'real' people and events. However, in order for our students to read about these people and events, they have to know and be able to use a variety of strategies to negotiate the diversity of topics, text structures, and specialized information found in these texts. Join us as we explore ways we can help our students get excited about learning using real books!"
C.	"Let's Get Digital" Barri Bumgarner, University of Missouri-Columbia, Author Grades 9-12 Barri L. Bumgarner's "The Dark Side" has just been released in Mysteries of the Ozarks Vol. III. Her teacher story "Preconceptions" appears in My First Year in the Classroom. In 2010, she won honorable mention for stories in Well Versed, and wrote a cover story for MNEA's summer issue of Something Better. Her young adult novel, Dregs, was runner-up for the Walter Williams Major Work Award in 2008. Barri's psychological thriller, Slipping, received MWG's Best Fiction 2006, runner-up and received rave reviews from national radio host Jim Bohannon and Washington Post's Tyrone Banks. Her short story "Retribution" appears in Mysteries of the Ozarks, Vol. II. Her true crime book, Shades of Gray: The Steven Rios Story, about a Columbia police officer convicted of murder, explores the possibilities of a case that stirred international controversy. Bumgarner's debut novel, 8 Days, is currently in its second print-run. A former junior high school teacher, Bumgarner now teaches at the University of Missouri while completing her PhD. Learn more at: www.barriLbumgarner.com. In this interactive session, Barri will teach you how to create a digital composition and how to use digital storytelling in a variety of ways and content areas. Starting with an activity called "Box Logic," you will do some synthesis writing, and then you'll learn all the intricate details of making videos! You will learn how to add text to images, embed video or podcasts, incorporate transitions, even clipping existing videos into new ones, along with other nuances of digital storytelling. This session is designed for teachers and writers to do hands-on work. As such, it is an interactive session, and you should come prepared with a laptop, a flash drive with music, personal photos, and videos to use. The goal of the session is to give you activities and lessons to take straight to your classroom!
D.	"From Page to Stage to Digital Age: Exploring New Genres Through Transmediation" Nick Kremer, Columbia Public Schools Grades 9-12 Nick Kremer is the Language Arts and Social Studies Coordinator (6-12) for Columbia Public Schools and a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he teaches graduate courses in composition and visual literacy. He is an executive board member for the Missouri Writing Project and the American Legion Missouri Boys State program, where he serves as Dean of Education. Nick's research emphasis is in 21st-Century Literacy; he has been published in Education Leadership, Voices from the Middle, and Sequential Art Narratives in Education, was a contributor to Maupin House's Rationales for Teaching Graphic Novels, and has presented frequently at Write to Learn, NCTE's annual convention, and Whole Language Umbrella's "Literacy for All" national conference. In Nick's highly interactive pre-conference workshop, you will have the opportunity to craft a short piece of original prose writing, then adapt that narrative into a variety of different genres and media, including: poetry, theatrical scripts, graphic novellas, and screenplays. At each step along the way, Nick will provide guided instruction in the genre being studied and offer a variety of radical revision strategies to help you transform your stories across symbol systems. You will get to examine samples from students who went through these same processes in a year-long 9th grade Reading Enrichment course Nick has taught in the past, and you will be able to take home all PowerPoint slides and resources used in the presentation.