Collaborative Classroom’s staff of experienced educators presents at conferences nationwide, often in partnership with district leaders and our own cadre of professional learning consultants.
If you have questions about a specific conference below, please contact us. To learn about our public institutes, observation days, and webinars, please click here.
June 12 • Center Valley, PA
Session: Architecture of a Literacy Conference
Despite the challenges, teachers know that they should be conferring with all their students. In this workshop, participants will deepen their thinking around conferring, will bolster their confidence with conferring, and will experience practical tools that support their one-to-one conferences with students. They will do this through reflective thinking, conversations, and observations of real recorded literacy conferences.
Presenter: Jonette Marcus, Collaborative Classroom
June 13 • Columbus, OH
Session: Learning Walks: Job-Embedded Professional Learning to Sustain Instructional Initiatives
Major shifts in professional learning are necessary to implement 21st century instructional practices. In this session, we will explore Learning Walks: a job-embedded professional learning strategy that calls forth and sustains change, helps maintain long-term momentum of instructional initiatives, cultivates community, and encourages risk-taking. Hear from an Elementary Principal and Curriculum Director who have experienced the long-term effects of this strategy and leave the session with the resources necessary to facilitate learning walks.
Presenter: Wendy Sadd, Collaborative Classroom
June 21–22 • Las Vegas, NV
Click here to learn more about the ILA Intensive!
Session: The Work Before the Work: Uncovering and Addressing Biases Before Engaging With Culturally Diverse Text
This session will encourage participants to examine their cultural framework and how this framework impacts how they engage with culturally diverse text. Attendees will preview and deconstruct major themes within culturally diverse text and how uncovered biases can affect their text delivery, interaction, and crucial conversations with students. Presenters will share a model for addressing uncovered biases, an ongoing self-study and reflection resource, and key strategies to use when approaching culturally diverse text.
Presenters: Tamera Slaughter, MA and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Classroom Libraries as Windows and Mirrors: Ensuring Diverse, Representative Books for our Students
As U.S. schools become increasingly diverse, while at the same time issues are more & more polarized, it is essential for students to have access to texts that reflect shifting demographics. In this interactive session, participants will work in small groups to review & apply current research as they evaluate a range of children’s books. Additionally, participants will examine lessons that apply best-practice strategies through the lens of diverse literature as the foundation of K–6 reading and writing instruction, gaining the tools necessary to support them in their own classrooms.
Presenter: Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Building Equity Through Powerful Literacy Instruction
A commitment to access and equity starts with the individual and is enacted daily through interactions between and with our students. Participants who attend this session will utilize discussions, lesson experiences, classroom video and reflection to examine how culturally responsive teaching practices can enhance our literacy instruction and support access and equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Presenters: Claire Riddell, MEd, and Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
June 24–27 • Miramar Beach, FL
Keynote: Transforming Teacher Practice: Writing Curriculum as Professional Learning
Current practice often divorces the “what” of curriculum from the “how” of professional learning. In this keynote, we will unpack the research on how writing professional learning partnered with a writing curriculum will support impact, equity, and access for all students.
Presenter: Marisa Ramirez Stukey, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Transforming Teacher Practice: Experiencing the Writer’s Workshop as a Learner
In order to facilitate authentic and impactful writing instruction, teachers must see themselves as writers. Educative curriculum allows teachers to hone their skills as both a teacher of writing and a writer. Also, as teachers cultivate their own writing voice they are better able to appreciate what the students are asked to do during writing workshop. This session will allow participants to experience a writer’s workshop lesson and reflect on how the experience shapes their instruction.
Presenter: Sheila Roberts-Veatch, Collaborative Classroom
June 27 • Nashville, TN
Session: Getting to the Heart of Literacy: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning and Powerful Literacy Instruction
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is not an “add on” to an already overflowing agenda. SEL is best woven into the very fabric of how our students learn to read and write as well as how they respond to literature and each other. Literacy is, at its heart, both a social and an emotional transaction. This session builds on the SEL core competencies from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and links those competencies directly to specific best practices in literacy, including but not limited to student choice, classroom discussion, self-reflection and self-assessment, and competency building (Yoder, 2014). Participants will engage in interactive lessons that utilize teaching practices which exemplify how we can focus on SEL while simultaneously providing rich literacy instruction. Additionally, we’ll utilize classroom videos to ask participants to collaborate, plan, and reflect on how to create classrooms communities in which students work together, push each other’s thinking, respond in thoughtful ways to literature, and expository text, and write with passion and voice.
Presenter: Linda Rourke, Collaborative Classroom
October 2–4 • Chicago, IL
Click here to learn more about the SEL Exchange Conference!
Session: Harnessing the Power of Children’s Literature for Academic and Social Emotional Growth
With a heightened focus at the national, state, and district level on social emotional learning, it is becoming increasingly important to equip educators with the knowledge and tools to integrate academic and social learning through their literacy block. This session will help educators better understand 1) how children’s literature can be expertly used to build classroom community and 2) assist students in connecting with literature as a way to cope with life’s challenges, learn empathy, and inspire students to be change makers.
Presenter: Kristy Rauch, MA, Collaborative Classroom
October 10–13 • New Orleans, LA
Booth 426
Click here to learn more about ILA 2019!
Session: Literacy in a Collaborative Classroom: Integrating Social, Emotional, and Academic Development for Deep Learning and Meaningful Engagement
This interactive session will share a model for literacy instruction that supports both the academic and social development of students. We will explore how to build learning experiences that enable the deep thinking and meaningful engagement that are foundational in a truly collaborative classroom. The workshop will examine a pedagogy, developed and tested over the past four decades in classrooms nationwide, that places student thinking at the heart of literacy instruction.
Presenter: Peter Brunn, MA, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Equity and Access in a Collaborative Classroom: Creating Independent Learners Through Early Literacy Instruction
This interactive session offers culturally responsive approaches that build our youngest students’ literacy independence and encourage inquiry and collaboration. Equitable access to essential instruction (explicit and systematic phonics, comprehension and vocabulary) supports the literacy development of our youngest readers. We will examine the underlying pedagogy that helps teachers build strong meaningful relationships with and among students so that students can access rigorous literacy content.
Presenters: Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Redefining Literacy Professional Learning
Professional learning is essential for teachers to shift practice to address the literacy needs of students. Learn the research-based characteristics of powerful literacy professional learning that will support teachers in actually enacting new practices. Consider the ways small shifts in how you think about professional learning can provide maximum impact. Participants will engage in collegial conversations, reflect on current practice and create an action plan for using this information in the setting in which you work.
Presenters: Isabel Sawyer, PhD, and Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Building Equity Through Powerful Literacy Instruction
A commitment to access and equity starts with the individual and is enacted daily through interactions between and with our students. Participants who attend this session will utilize discussions, lesson experiences, classroom video and reflection to examine how culturally responsive teaching practices can enhance our literacy instruction and support access and equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Presenters: Claire Riddell, MEd, and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Facilitating Student Talk, Thinking and Interaction: Strategies to Increase Student Engagement, Build Classroom Community, and Deepen Comprehension
Join us for a rich learning session centered on teaching all students how to access, apply, and make sense of information through facilitating conversation, thinking, and interaction. Participants will explore practical strategies and techniques that support the development of a strong community and support teachers in the use and refinement of facilitation skills, so that classrooms are safe, connected learning communities where students lead the talking, thinking, interaction and learning. Participants will be guided through an interactive learning experience designed to support students’ reading comprehension and build a sense of community while facilitation techniques are demonstrated and experienced.
Presenters: Jolynn Bernard, MA, Collaborative Classroom, and Megan Randolph, Lake County (Florida) K–5 Manager of Curriculum and Instruction
Session: SEL Meets PBL: Building a Community through Authentic Learning and Performance Tasks
We believe the role of social-emotional learning is essential to core literacy instruction. We will examine and experience teaching practices that support the intentional development of social-emotional competencies. These teaching practices will support students’ development as readers, writers, and critical thinkers. We will make deliberate connections to SEL teaching practices and the essential elements of inquiry-based learning to support the social and academic growth of the student. Voice, choice, revision, reflection, in-depth inquiry, authenticity, and more make significant impact when paired with the structures of social-emotional learning.
Presenters: Maria Arnett, MEd and Mary Tavegia, Collaborative Classroom; Peyton Anderson, PBL Specialist, and Lisa Micou, SEL Specialist, Chesterfield County Public Schools
December 9–11 • St. Louis, MO
Session: Partnering with Your Curriculum: A True Learning Center for Adults and Children
Discover how one school district created a new way of shaping schools to impact student achievement. Learn how the district shifted leadership roles, adopted a rich curriculum resource, and offered thoughtful professional learning to its teaching staff. Hear the data gathered to inform their work. Create a plan for supporting curriculum resources with professional learning in your setting.
Presenters: Isabel Sawyer, PhD and Maria Arnett, MEd, Collaborative Classroom; Dr. Kelli Cedo, Hampton City Schools