2018 VATE Conference: We Are The Change

Argument is a vital skill for students to learn, not only within the classroom, but for life, in general. However, it is often difficult spark within them a true desire to engage in the process. One tried and true way of doing this is through formal debate, specifically the Lincoln-Douglas model. From creating debate topics to conducting the debates themselves, this session teaches everything that is necessary to begin using Lincoln-Douglas debate within your classroom.

Learning Outcomes: Participants will leave this session with a thorough understanding of Lincoln-Douglas debate and how it can be effectively implemented within any classroom. The lesson provides an explanation of the structure of debate, methods for formulating debate topics, instructions for assisting students in creating effective presentations, and directions for conducting the debates themselves.

Session Process: The session begins with research-based reasons as to why debate is so effective in regard to teaching writing and analysis. Then, participants will learn the process of Lincoln-Douglas debate by engaging in the process themselves. After viewing the music video "This is America" by Childish Gambino, participants will be asked to choose a topic (or resolution) related to the contents of the video. With that topic, they will themselves create a debate constructive speech, questions for cross-examination, and rebuttals. By actually engaging in this process, participants will have a thorough understanding of how to use it within the classroom.

Opportunities to experience online teaching are necessary for teacher candidates, and over half of P-12 schools use one-to-one devices; yet, there is a dearth of research on online experiential education in teacher education programs. This interactive presentation will share findings from 5-semesters of a digital internship in a teacher education program. I will focus on the reflections of undergraduate teacher candidates and a 7th-grade cooperating teacher. The sample included the cooperating teacher and undergraduate teacher candidates (n=165). Two main purposes guided this research: to understand how a 7th grade social studies teacher motivates students using a DI, and to understand teacher candidates’ perceptions of this instruction. I will share how I worked with an undergraduate student to deductively analyze data from the cooperating teacher’s unit plans, participant interviews, candidate reflections, and learning management documents. Motivational themes of success and interest dominated the codes for both research questions. Findings suggest that the cooperating teacher and the teacher candidates focused on supporting students in being successful through specific feedback, timely communication, adjusting communication based on audience, backward design in planning, and rubrics. Relevant to both higher education and P-12 practitioners, experiential learning via a DI is one way to enhance learning units. I will leave time at the end of the session for questions, and I will provide a graphic organizer for participants to consider how they may use this partnership in their classroom.

Embracing "messy research," this session demonstrates several ways teachers can go beyond the traditional research paper to foster a culture of curiosity, personal connection, and academic inquiry in the English classroom with student choice in developing research questions as a foundation. Participants will see examples of student deliverables from year-long projects as well as one-week sessions and will learn strategies for teaching key word searches, annotated bibliographies, and APA format.

As authors and consumers of content, students may be led to more critical habits of mind in part through harnessing their own creative impulses in the design of promotional products as are routinely found in stores everywhere.  Books, games, and movies (and books and games made into movies), and music all routinely migrate to marketable products such as t-shirts, collectible or decorative figures and artwork, water bottles and coffee mugs and glassware, and office supplies, all with students as major consumers of such products.  The model unit and lessons offered in this workshop seek to harness that media savvy by leading students to design their own, unique versions of such promotional products, but in service to critical thinking, critical literacy, and research experience.  The session begins with a brief overview of a model unit and lessons followed by audience participation to create (individually or in a small group) an outline or overview of a similar collection of coherent lessons involving reading, research, writing, and multiple communicative channels for publication of the student products arising from those lessons.  Participants will have the opportunity to consider their own students’ specific reading, writing, and research tasks within the various lessons.  Participants will likewise choose from among a variety of product platforms (toys, Lego sets, board games, etc.), clothing (t-shirts, cloaks, hats, etc.), decorative objects (figures, display signs, etc.), home and office items (water bottles, mugs, writing utensils, glassware, kitchen tools, etc.) that students may design in keeping with the students’ reading and research.  For example, while reading Holes, students might research the desert setting described in the book and then design (and describe in detail) a Lego-style building set to match that landscape, and with associated sketches and character descriptions.  Further, these same promotional materials may be turned toward the purpose of promoting the work, Holes, in this instance and likewise similarly used to promote thoughtful reading itself.  The presenters will advocate (with a final model) for this style of lesson design for students to design promotional products in support of civic engagement, as with contemporary voting promotions (Get Out the Vote, etc.), or other civic advocacy models.  Participants will only need traditional writing materials, or laptops or tablets, to engage with the lesson design activities.

As English teachers, we want to do it all: promote student growth and academic achievement, close the gap, individualize instruction, and promote a love of reading. Too often though, those goals feel overwhelming and mutually exclusive. In response, we continue digging in to literacy instruction the exact same way our teachers did, and the exact same way their teachers did- textbook anthologies, whole-class texts, and worksheet after worksheet. 

But what if there really was a way to do it all? What if you could foster a love of reading in students while promoting other academic goals? Learn about how to implement research based practices in your classroom, and most of all, get students excited about reading! This session will provide an overview of academic research about independent reading and the need for the change in pedagogy. In addition, this session will offer modeled practices for connecting readers with texts through digital surveys, book talks, and book tastings. Resources will also be provided so that teachers feel confident about monitoring students' reading skills and comprehension in this individualized approach to the English classroom (one-on-one reading conferences, writing about reading, etc.).

The objective of this session is to show the relevance of the classics in today's society and ways to engage modern day students.  We have taken six classic pieces of literature and illustrated the relevance and high interest level.  We will provide practical activities and connections for each text.  Any middle or high school teacher should be able to take these ideas and apply any or all strands of Standards of Learning.  We will use electronic and hands on materials.  Participants will leave our session with a renewed appreciation for classic literature and its relevance to today, as well as practical ideas to immediately implement within their classrooms.  

Every year FCPS brings its best teachers to the central office to develop curriculum.  This summer our talented teachers created a unit planner for concept based curriculum that streamlines the planning process for teachers by capitalizing on easy backwards design.  The tool includes focus on Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions, Portrait of a Graduate characteristics, a yearlong collaborative team checklist of SOL Strand Alignments, Digital Citizenship, Authentic Assessments, Blended Learning, and much more. All of this is housed in a comprehensive, one one page document. This session will focus on sustained implementation and use of the tool, and will make use of the Student Engagement Model and Literacy Strategies any teacher can use in the classroom to keep participants interested.  

Intro:

It’s no surprise that in the age of standardized testing, standardized curriculum, and standardized instruction, students no longer see themselves in their education. Learning has been broken down and atomized in to bite sized bits that can be easily collected, quantified, and politicized. In a system that says results matter more than learning, we shouldn’t be surprised that students no longer excited to learn. 

We’ve forgotten why we learn in the first place: to better understand ourselves and our world, to find and cultivate our passions, to connect with each other, and most simply of all, because it's fun. There’s no shortage of philosophies, methods, tools, and tech at teacher’s disposal to combat the travails of modern education, but what’s missing is a clear, coherent framework to organize when, where, and how to use them. More importantly, it’s a framework that teachers can use regardless of content, level, or cultural context. It’s as universal as the human experience.

The Monomyth Framework is built around Joseph Campbell's Monomyth. Essentially, it's a thematic distillation of best practice pedagogy that provides a sequence and structure to a variety of current best practice methods. At its core, is the Mythic Question: a relatable, engaging question about the human experience that will inform the texts the students read, conversations they engage in, and information they explore over the course of the year.

It’s our hope that our framework will serve as the campfire we gather around to share our experiences—experiences that remind us that though our stories are unique, we are all the same.

Objectives:

-Introduce teachers to our thematic framework 
-Provide them with documents to start utilizing our framework in their own classroom
-Build a community of engaged participants who want to share how they've used, adapted, and innovated our framework so we can all build a better tool together long after our session has ended.

Activities:

Part 1: Introduction to the Framework- My colleague and I will run through our framework with the group. (Time: 30 minutes) 

Part 2: Q&A- My colleague and I will field an general questions, thoughts, or comments about the framework. (Time: 15-20 minutes)

Part 3: Workshop- Educators break up in to grade level groups and see how they can use our framework to either structure their entire year or a single unit using our methodology. My colleague and I will walk around and facilitate learning. 

(If time allows, we would repeat the small group work/large group discussion process)

Intended Audiences: Secondary English Teachers

Resources we use: 
-Prezi Presentation of our Framework
-Hard copies of the "Unit at a Glance" graphic organizer
-Hard copies of "Year at a Glance"  graphic organizer

All attendees will have access to both hard and digital copies of our materials for use in their own classrooms as well as access to our planned website/community where they can connect to other teachers around Virginia (and beyond) to discuss their experiences with the framework.

We live in an era of rich diversity in books for young readers, when we can choose more fine books for any level, K-12, than ever before. The phenomenonal success of Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water attests to the impact that books can have, prompting young readers across the United States to raise money for wells in Africa. In addition to furnishing a gripping story, two salient factors in the book’s success are its ability to spark empathy for those in other countries and the real-world story at its heart. Moving beyond the boundaries established by canonical fictional texts can pose some challenging questions about choice: how many diverse texts to choose, what role nonfiction plays, whether to balance canonical texts with more contemporary texts, whether to choose texts that movies have been based on, how often to push students out of their comfort zone with texts they might not choose for themselves. 
In this session, presenters will discuss their experiences teaching diverse children’s and YA literature, including nonfiction and graphic novels as well as traditional fiction, in a college setting. They will share text suggestions and assignments based on these texts as well as invite discussion and books/assignment recommendations from those who attend.

In this interactive workshop, we will share two original board games we have created and used to support middle and high school students during the writing process.  We will begin by sharing our objectives for using game-based learning in the ELA classroom. Games can serve as a method to motivate and engage students in academic literacies. They do so by drawing on adolescents' natural interest in and enjoyment of games. We will provide an overview of the two writing units during which these games were situated: a spoken word poetry unit and a unit on creating written arguments. We will then invite participants to play the games (Box of Chocolates and Race to the White House) and then reflect on how they might use or adapt these games for their own classrooms.

I'm teaching English teachers to use Google Draw for formative assessment and to encourage student creativity and communication using alternative formats. Have already delivered this session once to KG English teachers for all levels and got great, very positive feedback. No time to write more now.