Breakout Sessions

Peter Wright

Building on the current research of how the brain learns, this presentation will explore ways teachers can increase their students’ learning.  Areas such as emotion, memory, assessment, attention and student engagement will be included.

Robin Kohl

Making the Most of Classroom Time:  A Guide to Curriculum Compacting  

Begin your instruction by assessing what students already know, and use what you learn to differentiate your curriculum. This session focuses on how to best serve students who learn information quickly or have a high level of subject matter knowledge. Challenge your most challenging students!

Suzanne DeLaCruz

In order to build an effective foundation upon which to build reading skills, all students need adequate oral language skills and sufficient receptive and expressive vocabularies. This foundation is critical for all students, but is often problematic for those students who have limited English proficiency and for students who come from poverty.  These two areas are chronic causes of low achievement for a majority of at-risk students.

Direct attention to vocabulary development and building upon background knowledge are areas that are often overlooked by teachers; the amount of instructional attention, student practice and repetition required for student success is usually greatly underestimated.  
This session will highlight the need for direct, consistent instruction in these areas and provide some specific instructional techniques and activities that will help educators attend to the needs not only of at-risk students, but all students in the class.

Helen Campbell

Recognizing and Supporting Homeless Students

In this session participants will learn about how to identify and support homeless children and youth in school.  The growing problem of family homelessness will be discussed as well as the definition of homelessness for educational purposes and the educational rights of homeless children and youth.  The presenter will share the unique barriers that homeless children face and how teachers can help them overcome these barriers and become successful students.  School is often the only stable place in a homeless child’s life and educators have a special opportunity to help these at risk students feel secure so that they can succeed at school.

Amy McCann

This workshop will present various ways of both designing and implementing ways of integrating reading into the content areas.  It will enable participants to apply practical applications of the latest research findings in the area of reading.

Mara Sapon-Shevin

This workshop will explore practical ways to deal with issues of exclusion and bullying in the elementary classroom. We will explore games, children's literature and music as ways of bringing the issue to children's attention in an age-appropriate, engaging way.