Break-out Sessions - Spring Conference 2008

2011 MCTE Spring Conference
Literacy at the Lake

Friday, April 15 & Saturday, April 16
Cragun's Resort & Hotel on Gull Lake, Brainerd

Conference Registration form ~ Deadline: April 1
Word format
pdf format

hotel reservation form ~ deadline: March 14

Conference Schedule

Friday, April 15
8:00 ~ Registration and continental breakfast ~ Vendors available (also available during breaks)
8:45 ~ Welcome and introductions
9:00 - 9:45 ~ Keynote: Frank Sentwali, performance poet and spoken word artist
10:00 - 10:50 ~ Session 1
Lindsey Nelson Orono Intermediate School Mike Borka CSB/SJU	Elementary	It’s Elementary: Essay Writing in the Elementary Classroom The new MN language arts standards stress the importance of expository writing in the elementary grades. This session will focus on the teaching and writing of essays. Teachers will come away with a better knowledge of the essay writing process and structures used to teach elementary students about such a complex topic.
Brian Lewis Century College Laura Lykken Century College Jeff Stephenson Anoka Technical College	General	Speaking Up with Online Avatars: A Workshop on Using Vokis in Writing Classrooms Participants in this workshop will learn uses for Vokis—voice-based avatars—in writing classrooms and develop one of their own. Everyone should leave the workshop with ideas for Voki-based composition assignments. Bring your portable computer!
Sandra Russell St. Cloud State University	General	The Vocabulary Album: From Text to Cognition The Vocabulary Album is an interactive activity used to promote language acquisition and vocabulary development. Research shows that a prerequisite for successful reading comprehension is adequate word knowledge. Participants will be given a vocabulary album and will participate in a sequence of seven steps that will enhance their learning of vocabulary.
Amy Koskela Heidi Dresser Kerrie Speer New York Mills High School	High School	*How the Center for College Readiness Can Improve Your Students' Writing* The Center for College Readiness programs can aid teachers in preparing students for life-long writing. By using the rubrics that focus on good writing traits, students can get different ideas/perspectives on improving their writing without a grade.
Julie Stauber Proctor High School	High School	Creative Inspirations with Photostories Participants will learn how to develop a photo story and how to help students develop good questioning skills for inspiring one another and for research.
Jeff Johnson Central Lakes College/College of St. Benedict	High School	How to Host a Great American Poet Are you curious about how cool it would be to have Jorie Graham, Li-Young Lee, Billy Collins, W.S. Merwin, Marie Howe, Charles Simic, Robert Hass and Major Jackson (among others) to your home and school? Come to this session for the low-down, and let’s remember together how important poets and poetry are in our magical English teaching lives. A brief presentation will give way to spirited discussion.
11:00 - 11:50 ~ Session 2
Scott Alger Beth Pearson	Elementary	Deconstructing the Standards: Developing Essential Learning Targets The new language arts standards present many new teaching opportunities for schools and for students. This presentation will focus on a collaborative process that allows teachers and administrators to work together to determine essential learning targets, identify kid-friendly learning targets, and develop common assessments.
Tess Bademan South View Middle School, Edina Maria Theissen Concord Elementary, Edina Elizabeth Barniskis Eding High School	Elementary Middle School High School	Adventures in Digital Writing: Voice Threads, Book Trailers, and Nings Three teachers, one elementary, one middle school, and one high school, will describe the ways they have used multimodal, digital tools including Voice Threads, Nings, and book trailers to help their students become media creators.
Joanne M. Larson Ilene Christian Kathy Steffen	Middle School High School	Assessment With and Without Technology in the Literature Classroom This presentation on formative assessment will give you ideas to use in the RTI through honors classroom that won’t mean more grading after class. ActivInspire student response systems will be demonstrated along with assessments that use no technology. Leave with a handout of ideas to put to use Monday morning!
Deborah Appleman Carleton College John Schmit Augsburg College	High School College	Literary Theory as Liberatory Pedagogy: Classroom Applications This interactive presentation contests the notion that literary theories only serve college-bound students; in fact, they can be particularly meaningful for students who are marginalized or disenfranchised. Using a workshop approach, the presenters will engage participants in specific applications of contemporary theories and will provide classroom materials for diverse settings.
William D. Dyer, Anna Brovold, Justin Erickson, Joseph Finn, Haley Hamilton, Christopher McCarthy, Kyle Milliron, Nathaniel Wagner University of Minnesota, Mankato	High School College	From Theory to Practice: Some Fresh Ways to Assist Students into Ownership of Shakespeare's Plays Several participants in a graduate 605 “Shakespeare Seminar” (some teaching Shakespeare’s plays now and others preparing to do so) will share their theoretical/pedagogical strategies in an active panel discussion. Attendees will carry away the detailed bibliographies of the materials and theoretical formulations that have contributed to their approaches to Shakespeare.
12:00 - 1:15 ~ Lunch & Speaker ~ Lorna Landvik, author and performer
1:30 ~ 2:20 ~ Session 3
Lindsey Neumann	Elementary	Spelling in the Elementary Classroom Rote memorization and weekly spelling lists do not promote the learning of spelling or support word knowledge. In this session, participants will learn how to develop a word study program in their elementary classroom based on students’ developmental levels. Teachers will learn the process of teaching students how to spell words in ways that help students develop word knowledge.
Candance Doerr-Stevens Minnesota Writing Project, University of Minnesota	Middle School High School College	Radio and Film Documentaries in the English Classroom: Promoting Engagement and Finding Voice through Media Production This session will describe the use of radio and film documentaries in the high school English Language Arts Classroom. Through sharing curriculum resources and showing student projects, we will focus specifically on the medium’s ability to promote student storytelling and voice through practices of critical analysis, research, and media production.
Linda Lein Minnesota State University, Moorhead	Middle School High School College	Writing Leads: Action, Dialogue, Reaction, and Place Students often say that the hardest part of writing a story is getting started. This workshop is designed to provide English instructors with four ways to help students write a lead for a story. During the workshop, instructors have a first-hand experience in writing action, dialogue, reaction, and place leads for a story, and they will learn how to use cooperative groups to determine which lead works best.
Karen Lennan UST/Minneapolis Public Schools	High School	Best Practices for Rubrics: In and Out of the Box I will show educators of writing literacy how to take a "box" out of the top of the rubric, and make an action plan for students to achieve and learn the steps toward scoring the highest on the rubric for the state writing test. Everyone can increase their students' scores. I have students scoring at college level writing every year.
Corinne Ehrfurth Rochester Public Schools Candice Deal University of Minnesota, Mankato Pattie Ekman Rochester Public Schools	High School College	E-Term: Academic Risks and Articulation An MCTE grant encouraged expanding a week-long E[nglish]-Term, which brings together students from diverse backgrounds. Teaming secondary and college instructors further integrates curricula across disciplines. Audience members will have opportunities to discuss innovative strategies for encouraging academic risk and facilitating articulation between high school and college expectations and skills.
2:30 - 3:20 ~ Session 4
Terry Johnson	Elementary	Making Connections: Discovering the World with Picture Books and Google Earth During this session, we will share elementary-level lesson plans that integrate children’s literature and Google Earth. Activities demonstrated will illustrate how Google Earth can be used to enhance elementary students’ geographic thinking skills as they explore the impact of geography on literary characters and storylines.
Susan Ardoff Steve Tuytschaevers	General	Using Podcasts to Improve Writing St. Cloud State University’s Writing Center uses video podcasts to build writing skills and engage students on an ongoing basis. This workshop explores innovative uses for podcasts in teaching, and offers hands-on instruction on how to create effective podcasts with easy to use technology. Laptops are encouraged.
Sandy Hayes Becker Middle School	General	Fair Use: Using Images and Music in Multi-media Writing Think your students can't use commercial music or graphics from the internet in their projects? Think they can only use 30 seconds of a song or 10% of a poem? Well, that might not be true. Learn how Fair Use guidelines and an inquiry process help your students ethically use music and images in their multi-media projects.
Anne O'Meara Jacqueline Arnold William Dyer University of Minnesota, Mankato	High School College	Online Tools to Inspire Literacy This panel will demonstrate uses of several online technology tools that foster improved literacy and communication. These tools—such as Google.doc, Camstasia, Jing, streaming MP3s files and YouTube clips—help engage students and facilitate their interaction in shared writing, presentations, and discussions.
Susan Perala-Dewey University of Minnesota, Duluth Barb Perushek University of Minnesota, Duluth Julie Stauber Proctor High School	High School College	College in our Schools & Teachers in our College: Exchanging Perspectives Find out what kinds of workshop activities have helped to nurture both effective professional development and collaborative relationships between university and high school literacy faculty. Presenters in this panel include UMD's CITS Director, UMD's CITS Writing Studies Liaison, and a UMD CITS high school English teacher.

Suzanne Kaback St. Catherine University	General	An Eye for Information: How to Recognize Notable Nonfiction Literature When You See It This workshop will introduce participants to criteria for selecting high-quality nonfiction literature, including attention to type, organizational structure, accuracy, style, language use and the names of awards given annually to the best nonfiction. By the end of the hour, teachers will understand that with nonfiction, quality trumps quantity and they will leave confident in their ability to bring the most engaging and accurate informational texts to their classrooms—the kinds of texts that strengthen the nonfiction reading-writing connection.
John Banschbach University of Minnesota, Mankato	Middle School	Using Picture Books to Teach Literary Concepts Topics include the relationship of illustrations and texts, picture books that exemplify literary concepts such as juxtaposition, irony, and mood, and the evaluation of picture books for this kind of use.
Kristin Bergsagel Anthony Middle School Molly Vasich Roosevelt High School	Middle School High School	Input/Output: Critical consumption and Production of Media in Middle and High School Language Arts We believe the need for media literacy is apparent in 21st century classrooms. Come explore how to incorporate Minnesota’s new common core standards for media literacy. A sixth grade language arts teacher and a twelfth grade media teacher testify to the success of media analysis and production in the classroom.
Kathryn Campbell St. Paul Academy and Summit School	High School	Memoir: Tell a Little Personal Truth in Your Classroom Walk into any bookstore and the shelves will be bursting with personal nonfiction. Memoir is a popular form to read but rarely do we take time in high school classrooms to write it. Come to this session to write, read, share, and explore this fantastic genre and collect resources to add more memoir to your classroom.
Maria Burnham Becker High School	Middle School High School College	Diigo: Online Notecards for Research The presentation would be a demonstration of the online software Diigo. I would show what the software looks like, how my students used it with their History Day/research project, and discuss the advantages/disadvantages of the software. While students research, Diigo keeps track of highlighted and noted information which helps students with bibliographies, annotated bibliographies, and organizing researched information.
4:30 - 5:30 ~ Annual Meeting & Social Hour (appetizers and cash bar) 6:00 ~ Dinner 7:30 ~ Entertainment ~ Lorna Landvik
Saturday, April 16
7:30 ~ Early Bird Coffee: Common Core Standards with Charon Tierney, MDE language arts specialist
8:00 - 8:50 ~ Full breakfast
9:00 - 11:30 ~ Jim Burke Workshop
11:30 - 12:30 ~ Lunch ~ Letters About Literature Award Winners
12:30 - 12:00 ~ Jim Burke Workshop