8:20-9:20 Concurrent Sessions
“Can’t You Teach Me Now?” Take the Power out of Power
Struggles & Put the Class back into your Classroom.
Intended Audience: K-12 teachers and Administrators
Presenter: Jerry Stevens, Educational Coach and Trainer, Salem, OR.
Presentation Location: Bridal Veil Room
In this session you will receive practical, proven and powerful strategies and tools that
help you dramatically increase your instructional time and better connect with your
students all while decreasing the amount of time you spend on the “discipline dance”
and annoying power struggles.
“The Short Story Approach to Common Core”
Intended Audience: Middle and High School Teachers
Presenters: Amy Curtis, Tigard-Tualatin School District and Ben Bleckley, St.
Helens School District
Presentation Location: Latourell Room
Learn to use short stories to teach Common Core State Standards for literacy in the
mainstream language arts classroom. Participants will be able to scaffold instruction
for dependent readers using short and micro fiction so all students can meet the
standards and will leave with classroom ready activities.
“Reading Rock Stars: Using Music to Enhance Engagement
and Academic Achievement During Literacy”
Intended Audience: Elementary, Grades K-3
Presenters: Erin McKee, Portland Public Schools and Concordia University and
Elizabeth Rossmiller, Gladstone School District and creator and author of
education website, Learning with Lizz R.
Presentation Location: Multnomah Room
Do your students know the lyrics to every song on the radio; yet struggle to remember
important literacy concepts in your classroom? In this interactive and technology
integrated session, you will explore the latest research on using music in the classroom,
learn how to access and create songs that help that help boost students’ memory, and
easy ways to create classroom music videos that fully support the Common Core. You
won’t need to carry a tune in a bucket to transform your classroom into reading rock
stars!
9:30-10:30 Concurrent Sessions
“Connecting the
Canon of Literature to Social Action
Through Essential Questions”
Intended Audience: Grades 6-12
Presenters: Joan Flora, Canby School District and Pattie Sloan, retired from
Salem-Keizer School District
Presentation Location: Bridal Veil Room
Literature was not created in a vacuum but from an extraordinary set of historical and
societal issues. Using essential questions to connect required literature in our
classrooms to the world, this session delves into eight essential questions that allow
teachers and students to develop social awareness and empathy for issues they must
face when the leave the classroom.
“Kindergarten
Writing and the Common Core: Proven
Practices from Four Diverse Oregon Classrooms”
Intended Audience: Kindergarten teachers, literacy coaches, and principals
Presenter: Nellie Edge, kindergarten teacher -researcher, literacy coach,
nationally recognized early literacy presenter, folk musician, and recording
artist.
Presentation Location: Wahkeena Room
This presentation with beautiful PowerPoint documentation provides glimpses of life
inside four joyful, diverse kindergartens led by accomplished writing teachers.
Participants will experience expert, intensive writing lessons with high learning
outcomes. This action-research project focused on our highest-impact writing
strategies through the lens of the Common Core. Comprehensive handouts provided.
“How to Use the Gallagher Award Books to Teach Language
Arts and Inspire Students to Read and Write.”
Intended Audience: K-5, SPED, Title 1
Presenter: Karen Antikajian, Retired/Language Arts Consultant/EERC
Presentation Location: Latourell Room
Participants will learn about the Gallagher Award, the five books nominated this year
and some from previous years. Karen will demonstrate how these books and related
books can be used to teach reading and writing to meet the CCSS along with various
activities that will inspire students to read and write independently. The handouts will
list activities, the standards they address, and related books.
10:40-11:40 Concurrent Sessions
“English Language Arts Shifts and Common Core State
Standards”
Intended Audience: Elementary teachers and principals
Presenters: Susan Richmond, Research and Development and Arcema Tovar,
Coordinator of Teaching and Learning Hillsboro School District
Presentation Location: Bridal Veil Room
Participants will learn how the structure of our assessments support the CCSS ELA
shifts. They will also learn how to write constructive response questions aligned to
DOK level (depth of knowledge) and ELA shifts. Our assessments are K-6 in English and
K-2 in Spanish. This session will help teachers create performance tasks and quarterly
pre-assessments.
“What comes first: The Curriculum or the discipline?”
Intended Audience: K-12 teachers
Presenter: Julia Barto, Classroom Management Specialist
Presentation Location: Latourell Room
What teacher hasn’t heard or said, “There isn’t enough time to teach!” Teachers are
losing hours each week to low-level misbehavior. Come learn classroom management
strategies that yield positive results, more time on task and accelerated learning. It’s
time to teach that curriculum comes first, but discipline does too!
“Using Articles of the Week (A oW) Aligned to CCSS in the
Middle School Classroom”
Intended Audience: Middle School educators
Presenter: Angelia Lattin, Vale School District, Classroom teacher
Presentation Location: Multnomah Room
Are you a fan of Gallagher’s Articles of the Week? Attend this workshop to learn how
an educator successfully combined AoWs, CCSS and Oregon’s reading work samples at
the middle school level. Attendees will have access to over 150 AoW in addition to new
articles each week.
“Children’s Literature for Introducing Dimensions of
Depth and Complexity”
Intended Audience: Early Childhood, Primary, Elementary, Title 1
Presenter: Karren Timmermans, professor Pacific University
Presentation Location: Wahkeena Room
This session will provide strategies to help students work towards achieving ways for
identifying key ideas and details in text and illustrations, and ways to analyze an
author’s craft and the text’s structure.
12:45-1:45 Concurrent Sessions
NAEP and the Common Core: Informational text and items
requiring evidence from the text in the National
Assessment of Educational Progress”
Intended Audience: Elementary, Middle School
Presenter: Beth LaDuca, NAEP State Coordinator, and Oregon Department of
Education
Presentation Location: Bridal Veil Room
The NAEP Reading Framework was a key resource for writes of the Common Core
State Standards. Both emphasize informational text, text-based questions, and making
inferences across multiple texts. This session uses NAEP reading passages and items,
available to teachers online, to illustrate major instructional shifts require in the
Common Core.
“Reading Is a Lifetime Sport.” So Put the Teach back in
Teaching, the Joy back in the Classroom and make Student
Success Contagious!”
Intended Audience: Middle School and High School
Presenter: Dr. Cheri Dill-Schenkar, Consultant
Presentation Location: Latourell Room
In this jam-packed session you will learn time-tested research based strategies and
techniques designed to:
Improve student focus
Drastically reduce problem behavior
Increase instruction time
Provide simple effective techniques that you can use on Monday!
“Sing Your Way to Literacy: How to use YouTube
music
videos to engage your elementary students in Literacy and
Beyond.”
Intended Audience: Early Childhood and Elementary
Presenter: Sarah Mercado, Spring Branch Texas, Special Education/General
Education Homebound Teacher
Presentation Location: Multnomah Room
Harness the power of YouTube as you sing along with your students. Learn how to
infuse your teaching with music in order to engage students with literacy across the
multiple subject areas. Walk away with a list of videos you can use in your classroom
immediately.
1:55-2:55 Concurrent Sessions
“Language for Literacy”
Intended Audience: K-6
Presenter: Dovina Israel-Greco, Instructional Coach Hillsboro School District
Presentation Location: Bridal Veil Room
Language for Literacy involves a sequential system of balanced content based literacy
time: using Sheltered Instruction that fosters student self-directed literacy. Focused
English Language Development is guided, scaffold, across all content areas: including
strategies and structures for rehearsed academic discourses, negotiating for meaning,
guided oral practice and academic vocabulary instruction.
“Student Choice-Using Book Clubs to increase Reading
Skills and Motivation”
Intended Audience: 6-12
Presenter: Ben Bleckley, St. Helen High School
Presentation Location: Latourell Room
Research indicates that the book club model promotes readers’ intrinsic motivation,
increasing the chances they will become lifelong readers. Learn how to plan a book
club unit, prepare student to have productive discussions in small groups, and assess
student work.
“Fluency, Miscues and the Comprehension of Complex
Disciplinary Texts”
Intended Audience: Elementary
Presenter: Stephen B. Kucer, Professor of Language and Literacy Education,
Washington State University, Vancouver
Presentation Location: Multnomah Room
This research examines the impact of various reading behaviors on the comprehension
of complex disciplinary texts. It was discovered that readers were more likely to
comprehend information that was read with meaning maintaining miscues than when
read with no miscues whatsoever. Meaning was more important than accuracy. Get an
understanding of instructional strategies for supporting students in reading and
comprehending of complex literary and scientific disciplinary texts.