READ ALL ABOUT IT! A Huge Success

On April 1, 2008, nearly six hundred teachers, coaches, assistant principals and principals attended the New York City Department of Education’s citywide content area literacy conference at Columbia University titled READ ALL ABOUT IT! Content Literacy for All Learners. Stephanie Harvey, author of Strategies that Work and Nonfiction Matters, was the keynote speaker. Find a copy of her keynote address, Content Literacy: Reading, Writing, Drawing, Talking, Listening and Investigating by clicking here.

After the keynote, participants attended morning and afternoon workshops given by ten nationally known authors and literacy experts. Click on the names below for biographies and on the workshop title for the handout that accompanied each workshop (when available).

Pam Allyn Time Is of the Essence: Using Our Reading and Writing Instruction to Fuel Our Content Area Work, Grades K-8

Pam Allyn shared her innovative approach to planning and implementing instruction called The Complete 4. This system helps teachers to create yearlong curriculum calendars for the teaching of reading and writing which honor and affirm the important work of critical reading and writing in the content areas. Pam shared ways to integrate the teaching of reading and writing which enhance the connections between the two and maximize the impact of  instructional time. Pam also provided specific units of study which foster ideal foundations for the multiple types of reading and writing  students do in the content areas.

Carl Anderson Conferring with Student Writers in the Content Areas

In this workshop for grades 3-8, Carl Anderson discussed how one-on-one conferences with students can help them improve the quality of their informational content area writing. By looking at samples of student work, he named some of the common issues that teachers need to address in student writing. He also explained how to have conversations with student writers that help them improve as writers.

Janet Angelillo Revision in Nonfiction Writing

In this workshop for grades 3-5, Janet examined ways to overcome student resistance to revising and to make it a core part of their thinking processes. She also presented ways to make students independent revisers, so that they no longer need the teacher’s advice on “how to make it better.” Ultimately, we must teach students to assess their own writing, study nonfiction mentor authors, develop independent revision techniques, and master strategies for improving their work. Janet also offered support around revision across the year and ways to make revising a central component of the writing curriculum.

Dorothy Barnhouse Teaching Content Literacy in High School Teaching Content Literacy in High School
Dorothy took a close look at the challenges that content-area teachers are facing in high schools. What do we do with students who can’t comprehend the text book? How do we help students build background knowledge? How do we balance the teaching of content with the teaching of critical thinking in our field? How do we keep students engaged? This workshop blended theory and practice with some hands-on activities for teachers to use in their classrooms.

Donald Bear Word Study K-3: The Integration of Phonics, Vocabulary and Spelling

Word Study is an active and developmental approach to teach students phonics, vocabulary and spelling. How are these three areas integrated and related to reading instruction? Through examples of students sorting at each instructional level, teachers learned how word study flows from brief teacher demonstration to students’ independent and repeated practice. Teachers discovered how word study impacts reading, and how spelling complements phonic instruction and how word study is differentiated based on the results of a classroom analysis of students’ qualitative spelling inventories (QSIs). Word study with English learners was also a part of this examination of word study throughout this presentation.

Word Study, 4 - 8: A Key to Vocabulary and Literacy Learning

Word Study is an approach to teach vocabulary and concepts in the language arts and the content areas. There are over a billion words in English, and students learn thousands of words by knowing how to look at the meaning and spelling relations among words. Teachers followed students sorting in the pattern layer of the writing system, and then tracked morph magic with 2-syllable words, and saw how vocabulary grew more deeply when derivational relations were examined.

Harvey Daniels Hooked on Nonfiction

Harvey presented a lively demonstration and discussion of ways to enhance kids’ comprehension and discussion of informational text in grades 4-8. Teachers were provided use a text set of short articles to explore thinking, writing and talking activities that enhance kids’ engagement and understanding. The detailed handout  covers all the strategies demonstrated, and samples of student work  show how these activities work in different subjects.

Amanda Grumet Integrated Arts across the Content Areas

Amanda presented a multiple modality approach to integrating the arts across the curriculum for grades k-3. This workshop gave teachers an enhanced toolbox to make their teaching more enjoyable and resonant both for themselves and their students. This was an experiential workshop using movement, theatre, visual arts, and music to enhance classroom teaching.

Stephanie believes that schools should be havens for thinking, and incubators for deep thought. David Perkins says “Learning is a consequence of thinking. Only when we think about the content we are learning do we truly learn it.” We merge content teaching with comprehension instruction so our kids learn, understand, acquire and actively use knowledge. We model our own thinking and learning and provide our students with compelling text on engaging topics. Passion and wonder are contagious. When we model our own passion and curiosity, kids jump right in. This session shared strategies for teaching kids to think about content they are learning and suggest ways to support teachers as they teach for understanding.

Isoke Nia The Forgotten Genre: Nonfiction

This workshop was a hands-on inquiry into the study of Nonfiction in the Upper Grade (3 - 8) Writing Workshop. The genre explored was -- Feature Article, Essay, Commentary, -- the types of writing most required of upper grade students. Teachers actively participated in an investigation of Feature Article, Essay and Commentary as they appear in the world and begin to rethink the teaching of these significant genre in their classrooms. During this study teachers also carefully examined particular texts, chose appropriate texts and planned teaching points for these studies at various grade levels. Through this identifying and defining teachers were able to examine their own beliefs about genre.

All participants received professional books by the various presenters  and by other noted content literacy experts. Click here for a list of essential texts on literacy in the content areas.