BRES staff participated in a Literacy Workshop presented by nationally recognized professional development author and teacher Katie Keier, on creating literacy communities in our classrooms and supporting struggling readers. Katie’s created a workshop for our staff that combined the "Creating Literacy Communities" workshop and the "Making the Most of Your Time with Readers Who Struggle" workshop described below.
Creating Literacy Communities to Nurture and Expand Our Readers
Our classrooms are communities of readers and writers, mathematicians and scientists, artists and thinkers. We come together in the fall as a diverse group of learners and spend a year growing, discovering, exploring and redefining ourselves. This is exciting work we do! Without a strong community, it is nearly impossible to effectively teach literacy. So how do we make sure our classroom communities inspire, empower, motivate and support all learners - while teaching the important curriculum and standards that are required?
-structuring the classroom space to nurture and support our literacy learners,
-building community within a comprehensive literacy framework,
-supporting readers and writers identity and how teachers can help create literate identities,
-the power of read aloud, shared reading and interactive read aloud to engage children in conversations and thinking that builds community
-small groups and conferences that support and empower all readers and writers
-literacy across the curriculum