Penny Kittle is the author of "Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers" and "Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing." You are invited to join us and learn several reading and writing strategies that you can use with your students.
Recent research indicates that students are reading less as demands for literacy increase across all professions. Now is the time for the artful teaching of reading: to motivate all students to read independently; to create classrooms that inspire engaged, lifelong reading; and to teach the moves necessary to make sense of difficult texts.
When it comes to teaching young writers, how do we move students beyond the "flat and stagnant" writing that has become common in many schools? Our democracy demands engaged writers who craft voices that are heard and valued. The conditions we create in classrooms build trust in young writers, thus increasing their willingness to take risks. Daily writing deepens an understanding of tone, genre, and structure, building our students' stamina, fluency and "writerly" habits of mind. Most importantly, we seek to increase the likelihood that our students become lifelong writers.
How do we decide what and what not to teach? With increased expectations and so little time to meet them, the time is right for teachers to reflect professionally on the balance between process and outcome, or in the words of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Bob Seager, to carefully consider our "deadlines and commitments - what to leave in, what to leave out." Positioning our students closer to reading and writing excellence begins with decisions we make before, during, and after today's lesson. This session will explore those decisions, and how planning a volume of practice is the basis of artful teaching.