Friday, April 11
8:00 - 9:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast
9:00 - 9:45

Plenary session - Richard Lederer

(General)

10:00 - 11:00

Rethinking Peer Review Groups

(High School, College)

Michelle Timp-Pilon

St. Cloud State

Composition instructors use peer review groups to facilitate growth in student writing. Unfortunately, traditionally structured groups have little effect on refining student writing.  In this presentation, I will share findings from my study on traditional and writing center orientated peer review groups that I completed for my M.A. thesis. 

Multigenre Writing: Expanding Creativity and Improving Writing

(General)

Sherri Larson

St. Michael - Albertville HS

 

What if students used a variety of writing styles and perspectives to achieve understanding in challenging, creative, and unconventional ways?  That’s what multigenre writing is.  This introduction will draw on the expertise of Tom Romano and Melinda Putz.  Participants will leave with several lesson ideas.

 

Voices from Shakespeare

(High School/College)

Andrew Wade

Guthrie Theater

 
 

Overview of new state GRADWriting Test

(General)

Dirk Mattson

MN Dept of Ed

This session will discuss why the high school writing test moved from tenth to ninth grade, as well as enhancements in the scoring that are now available for all students who do not pass the assessment. The session will also include a discussion on the future of Minnesota's writing graduation exam regarding the standards revision and what computer administration and scoring might have to offer.

Anticipation Guides: More Than Just a Pre-reading Strategy

(General)

Suzanne Kaback

College of St. Catherine

Are you searching for successful ways to motivate your students to read and to support their engagement with texts once they start reading?  Anticipation guides are an excellent tool to use across grade levels and content areas. This session will review the basic principles of anticipation guides, but move beyond their traditional uses by demonstrating how they can be implemented to encourage "writing to learn", as well as lively class discussions.  If you plan to attend, please bring a short text you’re planning on using with your students.  If you don't have a text with you at the conference, don’t despair!  A variety of readings from multiple disciplines and genres will be available for practice.

11:15 - 12:15

Teaching Writing Using Suzuki Techniques

(Middle/High School)

Karen Morrill-Bryan

Twin Cities Academy

I will present lessons demonstrating how the Suzuki method can work to engage students and enhance their writing.  The presentation includes hands-on writing activities, violin demonstrations of the Suzuki method, and hand-outs to take and use with your own students.

 

Ready or Not Writing: Discoveries and Lessons from the First Year

(High School/College)

Paul Carney

Minnesota State Community and Technical College

The Ready or Not Writing invites high school students to submit essays electronically to Minnesota college English instructors for college-readiness assessment and feedback. The panel, comprised of college readers, high school teachers, and high school students, will discuss discoveries made and lessons learned from the first year of implementation.

 

Wanna Good Book?

(Middle/High School)

Judith Landrum

Bethel University

This interactive session will update middle school and high school teachers on relatively recently published fiction and non-fiction for their students.  Criteria for evaluating young adult literature and a list of books categorized by theme and or genre will be included

 

Getting the Most Out of Your One-to One Student Writing Conferences

(General)

Kirsten Jamsen

University of Minnesota/
Minnesota Writing Project

Individual conferences can be one of the most productive means of responding to student writing and motivating student writers to engage in the writing process. In this interactive session we ll look at several ways to structure conferences and share strategies to make the most of those precious minutes.
 

Podcasting and the American Dream

(Middle/High School/College)

Lisa Sackett &
Susan Meyer

Becker High School

This presentation shows how 11th grade English students create a "museum display" which combines their original photography, poetry, essay and narration with existing music in a podcast.  The presentation discusses methods, process and content (including novels and music) used.  Examples of the podcasts and photography will be played and shown.

 

The Play of Words

(General)

Richard Lederer  
12:30 - 1:45

Lunch - Letters About Literature Recognition Ceremony presented by MN Humanities Center

Keynote speaker: Alison McGhee

2:00 - 2:00

Parler Pastiche?

Middle/High School

Russ Markert

Hmong Academy

Come and have some fun with classical rhetoric as you learn a different approach to the concept of style through the writing of paraphrases and pastiche.  This workshop takes a low-stress writing lab approach, as participants take a run at composing like a famous American writer.
 

Building a Better Toolkit: Developing a Web Site to Support Writing-Intensive Courses

Bill Dyer &
Anne O'Meara

Minnesota State University

Our presentation will share (1) the realities of our "writing-intensive" situation, (2) the means by which we secured resources to develop such a WEB resource, (3) the manner in which we determined to proceed with our construction, including decisions concerning how ouor WEB pages should be composed, what should be included on them, how the should be organized, and the relative division of our labor.  Although we expect our work on this WEB project never to be completed, we believe we're well on the way to delivering usable and accessible materials to those who most need them.  And we'll conclude our presentation by discussing how we've engaged a number of instructors from across the university to contribute, in an on-going way, to the project.

 

New Directions: Asian American Literature in the New Century

Middle/High School/ College

Joan Thompson

 

The Twenty-First Century has brought changes in the scope of Asian American literature, as well as introducing new issues and themes. An overview of contemporary issues in Asian American literature, book talks on recent titles, and resources for teaching them will be covered in this session.
 

Using Online Role-play in High School and College Classrooms

(General)

Richard Beach &
Candance Doerr

University of Minnesota

Elizabeth Boeser,
Jefferson High School, Bloomington

This session will describe three online role-play activities at the high school, college, and graduate school level designed to foster students’ ability to address the demands of a rhetorical context, convince others  to adopt their positions, build alliances to bolster one's power, and experiment with language in a fictional role
 

Faculty Pet Peeves in Academic Writing

(General)

Carol Mohrbacher & Cindy Deuser

St. Cloud State

The presenters discuss the results of two SCSU faculty surveys of writing pet peeves and preferences.  A workshop PowerPoint titled, "10+ Tips for Improving your Academic Writing," drawn from the survey data will be shown.   The PowerPoint will be made available to those who request it. Discussion will follow.
 

Puns and Games for the Middle School

(Elementary
Middle School)

Richard Lederer  
3:15 - 4:30 Social Hour & Annual Meeting
Saturday, April 12
8:00 - 9:00 Breakfast
9:00 - 10:00 Plenary Session - Ka Vang, speaker
10:15 - 11:15 Buddy Holly, Bob Frost, Bono, and the Bard: Celebrating and Reinforcing Literature with Parody

John Zdrazil

(High School)

Looking for a clever way to end a unit on a good note--literally and literarily? Ever need the Poppinslike spoonful of sugar to help the Bloom's Taxonomian Analysis and Synthesis come up? Found yourself tempted during third period to utter, "That Weird Al Yankovic, he's a genius!"? Well...
  "Promoting Critical Thinking in the Writing Classroom: Templates and Why Good Word Choice Matters".

Alexandra Glynn

(High School; College)

n this presentation I will give examples of reading and writing exercises based on rhetorical techniques employed by the ancients, demonstrating their worth in teaching philosophically sound and rhetorically strong writing. I will share assignments that follow the ancient and modern “template method” of teaching composition.  I also will hand out several examples of templates for each of the assignments and provide examples of how students have completed them

Learning Communities: One English Instructor’s Methods and Experiences

(College)

Loli M. Dillon

Century Community and Technical College

 

With linked courses and learning communities’ focus on increasing learning potentials and retention rates among college students, learning community based pedagogies have overlapping curriculum, which naturally builds community among the instructors and students.  While this is certainly true, there is little research that describes how courses and lesson plans can be linked.  Therefore, I will explore specific methods, techniques, and results of the pairing of a college English composition course and a student success course.  I will be discussing this pairing and the teaching methods implemented in order to enhance the learning experience for students and how they created a space for collaborative and student-centered learning.

Artful Writing: Exploring the Art Museum as Writing Site

(General)

Judi Petkau

Weisman Art Museum

Introduction to Artful Writing at the Weisman Art Museum. Participants will practice generating discussion around the interpretation of images. They will be introduced to the Critical Response strategy, and explore the Artful Writing resource kit.  The session will focus on discussion, the practice of making meaning and the translation of visual ideas into writing.

Becoming a Reflective Teacher

(General)

Peter Henry

Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College

Reflection is the key to teaching, for how else are we going to improve and grow as professionals?  Yet, what specifically is "reflective practice"?  How does one cultivate and sustain it as a practice?  This session proposes a series of steps for growing reflection as a means to improved practice.  It aims to assist educators, from elementary through college, come to terms with teaching experiences and transform them into insight and a more mindful professional practice.

11:30 - 12:30

Teaching To Kill A Mockingbird with Cultural Lenses

(High School)

Jana Rieck
Nicole Kronzer
Marika Belusa
Justin Grinage

Champlin Park High School

Tired of the same old To Kill a Mockingbird? Looking to give students a fresh, relevant, captivating approach? Four teachers with a variety of life experiences have developed a comprehensive unit utilizing the Marxist, Gender, and Cultural Lenses to engage students in this classic book by examining their present world.

Critically Thinking about Science in the First-Year Composition Classroom

(College)

James Heiman

St. Cloud State

How can teachers encourage first-year composition students to employ critical thinking skills when reading and writing about scientific issues? This presentation shows how I used survey and course evaluation data to create a curriculum that teaches students to question their assumptions about English while improving their reading and writing.

Just Journaling

(General)

Peder Engebretson

COMPASS Learning

Learn the joys and benefits of reading student journals.  Share your own experiences and observations. Develop your own plan to use journal writing as a strategic, holistic intervention for your students.

Tutoring Strategies for Developmental Writers

Alex Pickens &
Ryan Hanson

St. Cloud State

 

This presentation will examine the roles a tutor plays in the education of developmental writers.   A five-week case study on developmental writers will be presented and analyzed to show the effectiveness of using student-centered teaching and tutoring techniques. Sample handouts and plans for mini-lessons covering grammar, punctuation, and other writing issues will be provided.

 

Conan the Grammarian

(General)

Richard Lederer  
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch - Sheri Register, speaker