What are you doing this summer?

ADVANCED INSTITUTE, JULY 9-13
Like Summer Institute, AI provides the time to do the reading, talking, and writing that leads to professional growth.  During AI, morning reading groups will discuss one of the professional texts listed below.  In the afternoon, we will write, respond in writing groups, and revise.  Join facilitators Jenny Smithson, Betsy Duckworth, and Joy Dewing for a week of summer renewal!

CHOOSE A BOOK
Choose one of the following books when you register:
1) Appleman, Deborah & Michael Graves. Reading Better, Reading Smarter: Designing Literature Lessons for Adolescents. Grades 6-12.  2) Taberski, Sharon. Comprehension from the Ground Up: Simplified, Sensible Instruction for the K-3 Reading Workshop. Grades K-3.  3) Vopat, Jim. Writing Circles: Kids Revolutionize Workshop. Grades 4-12.

WHO:
All Teacher Consultants are invited.

WHERE:
Ball State University campus.

WHEN:
July 9-13, 2012
9:00 a.m.—3:00 p.m.

WHY:
Professional growth and renewal. (Earn 25 PGPs!) Community.  Fun.

HOW MUCH?
$75.00

REGISTER ONLINE
http://iwp.iweb.bsu.edu/consultants/ai.htm

Summer 2010 Advanced Institute: Teaching with Technology

During the week of Monday, June 14, through Friday, June 18, the first of this summer's IWP Advanced Institutes offered teacher consultants the opportunity and support to explore various technologies and incorporate these new tools into their lessons and classrooms for the coming school year. "Teaching with Technology" was attended by Becky Thibodeau (TC 2005) and Gail Gayda (TC 2009), and was co-taught by Casey McCardle (TC 2008), Matt Hartman (TC 2007), and Alena Bogucki (TC 2007).

Throughout the week-long workshop, attendees learned about and experimented with blogs, Prezi, PowerPoint, Google Calendar, Weebly, and delicious. Here are links to some of the projects created by the "Teaching with Technology" participants: check out Becky's innovative Movie Maker log, and website; and, see the neat wordle art on Gail's blog, and the class website she is preparing for the new school year.

"Teaching with Technology" Advanced Institute
Front Row - Gail (TC 2009) and Becky (TC 2005)
Back Row - Alena (TC 2007), Casey (TC 2008), and Matt (TC 2007)

Upcoming Advanced Institutes for Summer 2010

Advanced Institute I - Teaching with Technology

Occurring Monday, June 14 through Friday, June 18, this Advanced Institute offers the opportunity to get better at using computer technology in your classroom. If you find it hard to dedicate time to really learn how to use software or to figure out what to do with it, now is your chance to learn! Come play around with the technology, get comfortable with it yourself, and learn ways to use it with your students. We will start with tools as familiar as Microsoft Office, and then explore other tools such as Google Docs and movie-making software. No experience is required.



Advanced Institute II - Problem-solving the Writing Workshop: The How's and Why's

Occurring Monday, July 12 through Friday, July 16, this Advanced Institute will allow participants to explore the roots of common issues in the Writing Workshop spanning all grade levels. You will investigate and share what has worked for you and what you would like to improve in your own classroom's Writing Workshop.

Summer 2009 Advanced Institute: The Study of Craft

Using text from your own classroom, we will analyze the craft, read like writers, and develop lessons. Our text, What You Know By Heart by Katie Wood Ray, will guide our journey for the week. Our goal comes directly from Katie, “We need to know, by heart, what it is we are trying to teach when we are teaching writing.” Come “muck around” with the text you are familiar with and find new practical applications for the classroom.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Primary and secondary teachers came together for a week of conversation, learning, and sharing. Each teacher, the scope of experience ranging kindergarten to twelfth grade, eager to take Katie’s words, “know, by heart, what it is we are trying to teach when we are teaching writing” and apply it to our classroom curriculum.

The first day blossomed into rich discussion surrounding the contents of the book, What You Know By Heart. Writer’s notebooks, our own writing, and a clear understanding of choice dominated the morning conversation, while the afternoon gave way to the difficult concept of craft study thinking vs process study thinking. One participant made the analogy of heart vs standard. When looking at writing and curriculum it is useful to look at craft and understandings as synonymous, where you want to go – the outcome and strategies and process are how you get there – the authors purpose and thought process.

By the end of the day we realized the rough work ahead of us. Thinking about how we think does not always make for particularly easy curriculum development. “A line of thinking that begins with telling the stories of our writing experiences and ends with the development of writing curriculum that we can actually envision our students using in their work” became our mantra for the task before us. We would do all of this hard work keeping in our heart something we did know as teachers of writing, “there is no single, right, and magical process for writing.”

Enter Wondrous Words into our week.

To begin this hard work of analyzing the text we use in our classroom, we needed to look at chapters 9 and 8 from Wondrous Words. From these chapters came our guides and references for the mucking around we would do. In order to look at text, we needed to know what we were looking for. Knowing our classroom and our hearts as teachers, we began by looking at the “craft terms” Katie lays out in her book. By utilizing her list, we each made a list that would benefit our own work.

Next, we used three picture books, Night in the Country, Grandpa Never Lies, and Canoe Days to help us transition from “craft thinking to process thinking” according to Katie. This actually was harder than we thought. Realizing the illustrator puts his own spin on the story with pictures, we found it easier to work with the text minus the pictures first, identify the craft and then pull the book with the illustrations in later.

A suggestion was made for a fieldtrip to the Muncie Public Library. This gave us the opportunity to look at other books, see the craft, and discuss the use in the classroom. We were reading like writers! Although many of these books contained a wealth of craft, we knew our task remained – use the books in your classroom!

Mucking around with our own texts – finally!

The purpose of this Institute for each of us was the same, yet different. Yes, we wanted to take the text we use with our class, analyze the craft, read like writers, and develop lessons for those texts, yet the lessons were what set us apart. Keeping Katie in mind and how she uses text, we envisioned ourselves “pulling this book (our classroom text) out to show a ‘writing move’ to a student.” Then we began crafting our own lessons for our own classroom. Fingers flew across keyboards as each participant typed text and made charts of craft in each text.

Occasionally interruptions of “ah ha” moments would happen. Tammy noted, “There will be reading going on in the writing workshop as your students learn to read like writers.” Shirley made the analogy of an orchestra conductor, “you can bring it all together when you are the conductor, bringing the reading and the writing part together.” Alena commented, “We can include the speech and reading strategies and standards. We listen to the different pieces practicing.”

Submitted by Tammy Taylor and Linda Valley