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Conferences Near and Far

Page history last edited by Moira Ekdahl 10 years, 1 month ago

 

 

JOHN OLIVER INVITES YOU:  LET’S TALK ABOUT READING

 

Krashen Redux:

The Power of Reading

 

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21:  VSB DISTRICT DAY


REGISTRATION FORM:  Krashen Redux-3.pdf

 


College of UGA Faculty of Education COE Lecture Series

 

See also GORDON POWELL'S KRASHEN WEBPAGEhttp://goo.gl/CskjZC


 

 USC Professor Emeritus Dr Stephen Krashen is “back” by popular demand.

 

The August 2013 BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association Summer Institute at Hamber featured Dr Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus, USC, a well-known, respected, and frequently cited international expert on:

 

  •  free voluntary reading
  • reading and student achievement
  • the politics of reading including testing, US core curriculum reform, and the profound effects of poverty on reading
  • reading and its importance to learning an additional language

 

The 2013 Summer Institute presentation was such a success that many who missed it have asked for a chance to hear him.  While Stephen is unavailable on this date due to speaking commitments abroad, we have his permission to “go virtual” and re-offer the talk (described by one attendee as powerful professional development, the best in years).

 

You are invited to join us for a morning of Krashen, brought back (redux) for careful collective consideration. This virtual version of Krashen’s summer presentation will be mediated by Richmond District #38 Coordinator of Library and Information Services Gordon Powell

 

KRASHEN REDUX: THE POWER OF READING

 

AGENDA

 

8:00 am:         Registration and coffee

 

9:00 am:         Welcome | Krashen, part 1 | BREAK with SNACK | Krashen, part 2  

 

12:00 pm:       LUNCH: Bring your own or check out our local eateries.  We have a handy list.

 

1:30 pm:          VARIOUS (R)E(A)DCAMP sessions (optional):  book a meeting space for or join a group:  a group of

schools, families of schools, district groups, special interests, workshop offerings.  More details to follow.

 

Audience:        Elementary and secondary teachers and teacher-librarians, administrators, district consultants, mentors, etc.

 

Location:         John Oliver Secondary School, Learning Commons

                       530 E. 41st Avenue, Vancouver, BC   V5W 1P3

                          604-713-8938

 

Date:                 Friday, February 21, 2014

 

Time:                9:00 am to 3:00 pm (Registration and coffee, 8:00 to 9:00 am)

 

Contacts:       Tim McGeer (tmcgeer@vsb.bc.ca) Principal, John Oliver Secondary School

                       

                     Gordon Chow (gchow@vsb.bc.ca) Teacher, Pro D Chair, John Oliver Secondary

 

                     Moira Ekdahl (mekdahl@vsb.bc.ca)

Teacher-Librarian, John Oliver (Day 1s) – phone 604-713-8938
Teacher, English and ELL, University Hill Secondary (Day 2s) – phone 604-713-8258

 

Presenters:      Gordon Powell, Consultant, Richmond School District -- see Gordon's Krashen webpage:  http://goo.gl/CskjZC

                       Virtual Krashen

 

Costs:           $15 VSB registrants; $20 out of district.   Register online here.  Maximum 100.

                    Once registered, please send a cheque (payable to John Oliver Secondary School) via VSB internal blue bag  or by mail to:

                    John Oliver Secondary School, Attention: , 530 E. 41st Avenue, Vancouver, BC  V5W 1P3

 

Readings:      Need to know more about Krashen?  Check below for readings, links, and handouts

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Emeritus Dr Stephen Krashen is a well-known and frequently cited international expert on the importance and power of reading.  He is amazing -- engaging and informative -- and the day will be well worth the time.  Krashen focuses on free voluntary reading, on the research that supports free voluntary reading -- reading widely and lots -- and on the politics of reading, including issues of testing, poverty and access to books. Krashen is, of course, also well known as an expert on second language learning, particularly as this is enhanced by reading widely and lots!

 

NOTE:  BCTLA's Summer Institute on Reading with Dr Stephen Krashen was intended for and attended by a much wider audience than teacher-librarians.  Nearly 100 attendees agreed:  great food, superb location, amazing keynote ... all reviews were positive. "Best Pro D I have been to in a long time," said one teacher. 


 

Handouts:                        Krashen 1 Developing Academic Language.pdf

                                        krashen 2 Encouraging Reading.pdf

                                        Krashen 3 DRW Daily Regular Writing.pdf

                                        krashen 4 on phonics.pdf

 

Krashen-recommended resources for teachers: 

 

 

 

 

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

 

From Chapters-Indigo:  Donalyn Miller says she has yet to meet a child she couldn't turn into a reader. No matter how far behind Miller''s students might be when they reach her 6th grade classroom, they end up reading an average of 40 to 50 books a year. Miller''s unconventional approach dispenses with drills and worksheets that make reading a chore. Instead, she helps students navigate the world of literature and gives them time to read books they pick out themselves. Her love of books and teaching is both infectious and inspiring. The book includes a dynamite list of recommended "kid lit" that helps parents and teachers find the books that students really like to read.

 

See also Donalyn Miller's website:  The Book Whisperer

 

Amazon.ca:  CDN $18.77

Chapters-Indigo online:  same as Amazon.ca

 

 

 

 

 

The Reading Zone: How to Help KidsBecome Skilled, Passionate, Habital, Critical Readers by Nancie Atwell

 

From Amazon.ca:  Long an advocate of frequent, voluminous reading in schools, the author draws on evidence gathered in twenty years of classroom teaching to make the case for reading workshop more powerful than ever. The book establishes the top ten conditions for making engaged classroom reading possible for students at all levels and provides the practical support and structures necessary for achieving them. 144 pages.

 

Amazon.ca:  CDN $15.15 (CDN $33.92 when purchased with The Book Whisperer -- see above -- with FREE shipping on orders of CDN $25 or more.)

Chapters-Indigo:  same as Amazon.ca

 

The Read-Aloud Handbook (7th edition, 2013):  by Jim Trelease

 

The classic million-copy bestselling handbook on reading aloud to children revised and updated

 

From Chapters-Indigo:  Recommended by "Dear Abby" upon its first publication in 1982, millions of parents and educators have turned to Jim Trelease's beloved classic for more than three decades to help countless children become avid readers through awakening their imaginations and improving their language skills. It has also been a staple in schools of education for new teachers. This updated edition of The Read-Aloud Handbook discusses the benefits, the rewards, and the importance of reading aloud to children of a new generation. Supported by delightful anecdotes as well as the latest research (including the good and bad news on digital learning), The Read-Aloud Handbook offers proven techniques and strategies for helping children discover the pleasures of reading and setting them on the road to becoming lifelong readers.

 

Amazon.ca:  CDN $18.77

Chapters-Indigo:  $13.00 

 

Thinking about buying one or more of these:

 

PRICING AND ACQUISITION:  Buying all three from Chapters Online is a $5.00 saving over Amazon.ca, with FREE shipping, as per instructions below.

 

Chapters-Indigo (see links for online ordering) instructs buyers:  To receive Free Shipping, please be sure that you select "Free Standard Shipping" when you make your purchase. Orders valued over $25 will not automatically receive Free Shipping.

 

*Parcels eligible for Free Standard Shipping, 1-9 business days, depending on warehouse location and shipping destination.

 

*VSB teachers/teacher-librarians/administrators:  These titles would all be eligible for Pro D funds as acquisitions for the school's Professional Collection with your school Pro D committee approval.

 

 


 

Further Reading on Reading and Krashen: 

 

 

VSTA TACKBOARD, December 2012: Reading and Poverty by M. Ekdahl 

Rdg & Poverty.pdf

 

BCTLA BookmarkFall 2008 (49:11)

Stephen Krashen, Keynote at IASL Conference, Berkeley  (see pages 10-11)

 

Stephen Krashen's 88 Generalizations on Sustained Silent Reading

 

Stephen Krashen's Website

 

 

More on Krashen: 

 

Wikipedia / Krashen

Krashen on Krashen

 

Follow Krashen on Twitter: @skrashen

Read Krashen:  Amazon Link to Books by Krashen

 

More on Reading:

 

A Serious Need to Collaborate to Consider a Reading Agenda

 

Excerpted from “Just a Little Thing: At the Heart of 21st Century Learning Must Be Reading”
By M. Ekdahl, May 2012, Treasure Mountain Canada (June 2012, Ottawa)
Online publication:  https://sites.google.com/site/treasuremountaincanada2/ekdahl

 

Theoretical Framing: Reading Driven by Inquiry, Joy, and Conversations

 

A look at reading theory generates important foci for consideration in building school library and learning commons programs as the hub for a renewed focus on learning and the creation of a culture of reading. 

 

Where, in theory, do we find the underpinnings for building of a culture of reading as the focus of a secondary school learning commons within a school community?  How do we co-design the learning contexts that these underpinnings envision? 

 

Educators, the research suggests, need to attend to “teaching students to read complex non-fiction texts … and to master informative writing,” begins Marge Scherer, editor, Educational Leadership (EL), in her introduction to the March 2012 issue, themed “Reading”; they need to read like a detective and write like a reporter (Coleman).  This particular EL issue, while filled with strategies for building a culture of reading in schools, is short on ways that teachers can work collaboratively with their teacher-librarians to construct meaningful “reading conversations.” 

 

How can teachers and teacher-librarians collaboratively construct such conversations?

 

Recent discourse in the field of reading deepens the connections for teacher-librarians amongst processes for learning, knowledge-creation, and community.  R. David Lankes argues for community-building and connection, as opposed to collection, development when he suggests “that a functional view of librarianship has led us to focus too much on collections and artifacts (books, web pages, and the stuff we can point to) and not enough time on our most basic collection: our communities.”   He draws on Conversation Theory and its implications for dynamic learning; that is, what is learned is a series of “tangles” or memory associations formed when participants engage in conversations that use common language and understandings to reach agreements or disagreements around new information that further shapes or re-shapes existing knowledge structures.  As reading prompts internal conversations, readers make sense of the resources and artifacts collected in the context of inquiry-based learning.  Teacher-librarians who understand how this works, suggests Lankes, construct learning as “participatory conversations”; they have something to contribute to the conversation. 

 

How will a learning community construct learning conversations such as these?

 

Teacher-librarians understand the need to work collaboratively with colleagues to attend to the joyfulness of reading, or such would be the implications of the recent study conducted by the Ontario-based research group People for Education; elementary-aged children surveyed reported a decline in interest in reading that correlates positively with the emphasis on the more traditional literacy strategies in classrooms and with the decline in numbers of teacher-librarians.  “We learn to do well what we learn to love” (Allyn 16). Richard Allington advises educators to eliminate worksheets and workbooks, using the saved funds to buy books that prompt student-centred reading and writing, literary conversations, and read-alouds (14).  Allyn suggests that we are all struggling readers in one context or another.  Yet, “reading enjoyment is not only associated with high student achievement.  Research shows that ‘engaged’ readers are also more likely to be socially and civically engaged as well.” (People 2).  In more concrete and corollary terms, poor adult readers have trouble finding and keeping work and completing day-to-day activities like reading and writing letters, email, and forms, as well as helping their own children learn (Allyn 18). 

 

How, in light of these understandings, might we re-think the Literacy agenda in our schools?

 

The field of reading theory is also beset by the new discourse of digital reading.  “Debate still rages about the extent to which reading in digital contexts is really new or different” (Biancarosa 25).  Research shows there is a loss of reading efficiency, possibly due to the added complexities in reading digital text, a non-linear reading experience that offers ready hyperlinking to definitions, background information, and other inquiry choices. 

 

It is going to continue to be important for students to have teaching for reading in each content area. 

 

If our adolescents are to meet 21st century expectations for reading, all students must have opportunities to learn specialized reading habits and skills.  In short, struggling readers who need basic skills instruction should receive it plus instruction in adolescent literacy …. Funding and accountability policies must anticipate the incorporation of disciplinary and digital literacy into reading instruction and practice. (Biancarosa 26)

 

Building skills and motivation to enable reading complex text will hinge on providing students with opportunities to practice fluency, understand vocabulary and sentence structures, including those that are domain-specific, to recognize the connections amongst and organization of ideas, and to develop background knowledge that is developmental, experiential, and cultural (Shanahan).

 

Another thread in the discourse of digital literacy worries about the impact of the digital environment on reading and learning; it is characterized by writers such as Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, and Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or Don’t Trust Anyone UNDER 30)

 

Will more technology in high school classrooms help? Not in the crucial area of reading. When teachers fill the syllabus with digital texts, having students read and write blogs, wikis, Facebook pages, multimedia assemblages, and the like, they do little to address the primary reason that so many students end up not ready for college-level reading. When they assign traditional texts -- novels, speeches, science articles, and so on -- in digital format with embedded links, hypertext, word-search capability, and other aids, they likewise avoid the primary cause of unreadiness.  (Bauerlein)

 

How can these threads in the reading discourse help to initiate and inform a critical look at the importance of an inquiry-based approach to reading as we integrate technology with teaching and learning here in our schools?

 

Stephen Krashen offers simpler sociopolitical analyses.  His is a strong and persistent voice advocating for narrowing the achievement gap by eliminating poverty and for diverting the costs of testing, monies paid to the publishing industry, to improving libraries in high-poverty areas.  To Krashen, the public’s faith in the skill-building approach to literacy is wrong:

… mastery of the components of language is acquired as a result of understanding what we read and hear. [The Comprehension Hypothesis, as opposed to the Skill-Building Hypothesis] claims that grammatical competence and vocabulary knowledge are absorbed as a result of listening and reading, and that writing style and most of spelling competence is the result of wide, self-selected reading.

 

Noted for his pithy common-sense approach to the promotion of reading and free choice, Krashen advises educators that reading improves with reading; reading anything improves reading; children are more likely to read if they have access to books; kids need to be immersed in opportunities to read and, in Krashen’s view, school libraries are the hottest tool in the literacy kit. The better the school library, the higher the reading scores. 

 

How can educators attend to the needs of reading students to optimize learning as they construct learning contexts that turn on the “light” to engage students with reading, reading to learn, and learning?

 

See also:  TL Special Blogposts

 

Am I Harping?  It's a Seasonal Thing

 

Stephen Krashen: Do Libraries Matter?

 

Lecture: New Reading? Ruptures and Discontinuities

 

For the Love of Reading

 

Still a Strong Performance by BC in 2009 PISA Results?

 

YSL4:  Reading (4th Your School Library International Online Conference)

 

 

Summer Institute, continued: 

 

Afternoon sessions feature booktalks (What's New?  What Due?) from Kidsbooks (separate elementary and secondary sessions) and would be of interest to teacher-librarians, teachers of Language Arts and English, ELL teachers, and more. As well, Stephen will host an informal afternoon group discussion session for those interested in looking more deeply at the highly political issues of reading and the research on the profound impact of poverty on reading and learning. (See also VSTA's December Tackboard attached).  Anti-poverty activists who are not system-based educators are also very welcome to register and attend as well.

 

If you are planning to attend or know others who are, register ASAP. Please forward this to any colleagues or others who might be interested.

 

For information and registration, go to:  

 

  • The VSB Pro D page (see Literacy or Learning & Development or Teacher-Librarians) OR 
  • The BCTLA webpage

 


 

 

The INSPIRATION SUMMIT / December 2012
FOCUS: Changing visions of libraries

Featured Speakers Ken Roberts and R David Lankes

 

"we need to move from collections to connections."                          

“Good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.“

 

Notes provided by Denise North illuminate TLs' thinking about site-based interpretations: 

      DNorth Inspiration Summit.pdf

 

Ekdahl / TL Special Weekly Report blogpost:  Inspiration Summit

        http://tlspecial.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-inspiration-summit-vancouver-wall.html

 

 


 

 

IASL 38th Annual Conference in Padua, Italy: August 2009

"School Libraries in the Picture: Preparing Pupils for the Future"

 

  • check details:    TLs Do Italy (May 8 09).pdf

     

  • newly posted information:  Workshop Day, August 31, another option for the Italian Grand Tour in conjunction with the 38th Annual IASL Conference for School Libraries around the world to be held in Padua in the late part of the summer:
     
    • On the IASL Workshop Day, Monday, August 31, to be held in Padua , as per pdf (above) of conference package options, you can see TL-ship field leaders Dr Carol Kuhlthau and Dr Ross Todd whose day-long session (2 workshops) is entitled Guided Inquiry.  As a member, pay $100 CDN (instead of the non-member $185 for the day), that price to include lunch, coffee breaks, materials and certificate of attendance.  The Workshops are limited to 50 registrants.

       

    • We here in Canada are IASL Zone A (developed countries) and membership dues enable IASL to promote and support school libraries in developing countries.  If you personally join, membership is $60 CDN.  Your Association or District can join as well, and name three people who can have the privileges of membership, for $115 CDN.  To join, check here.  

       

  • This information is additional to the pdf package -- "TLs Do Italy" -- of conference and holiday options.  More information will be sent out when the conference workshops and papers are announced.  Air Transat prices for European travel look pretty good for the season.  And Dr Ross Todd is looking forward to meeting the BC contingent! 
     
    For your information as well, the 75th Annual IFLA Conference is being held August 23-27 in Milan, Italy!  Some hardier TL-souls might like to take this in as well.

     

 

World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly

"Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage" / 23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy 

Some hardier TL-souls might like to take this in as well.

 

 

PLUS

 

BCTLA Conference / October 22 and 23, 2009, PSA Day

In the Olympic Venue City of Richmond BC

 

"Champions of Literacy"

 

 

 

  • Keynote speaker Roch Carrier; a national treasure and a champion of Canadian culture, has touched our hearts with books like La Guerre, Yes Sir!  He was a director of the Canadian Council for the Arts from 1994 to 1997 and served as  National Librarian of Canada  from 1997 to 2004. Carrier is an ardent supporter of  libraries and children's literacy.

     

  • The Thursday night wine and cheese will be at the Legacy Suite of the spectacular Richmond Olympic Oval so you can come and catch the Olympic excitement!  Take a tour of this inspiring and innovative building and meet the Olympic Mascots! See the Conference webpage and click on Venues to get more details.

     

  • The main conference is being hosted by Richmond Secondary School, located at 7171 Minoru Blvd., Richmond BC, V6Y1Z3

     

  • There'll be exciting workshops, inspiring speakers and great literacy displays from a variety of vendors.

     

 

Reserve October 22nd and 23rd of 2009 for your BCTLA Annual Conference Experience.

See you there!

 

 

 

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