Reader's/Writer's Workshop for Middle and Secondary Classrooms

Learn about highly successful instructional strategies that will inspire your teaching and help you motivate all types of learners in your classroom. Your presenter, Ken Symanski, doesn't claim to have all of the answers, but has had great classroom success. He's been refining his approach to teaching middle school English for 15 years. Through constant revision, he's developed a teaching style that combines Six Traits, Nancie Atwell's Reader/Writer Workshop model, Jeff Anderson's sentence imitation exercises, along with his own ideas and experiences. All of this is blended in with examples from the classics, young adult literature, children’s literature, photography, popular music, and film.

Long before your presenter became an English teacher, Ken Symanski, was hooked on writing. As a junior high school student, he served as editor of his school newspaper and also wrote "novels" in spiral notebooks. As a adult, he’s worked as a music journalist for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram; performed as a champion slam poet of the Eau Claire Running Water Poetry Slam; and written profiles, features, and reviews for Volume One and Wisconsin West magazines. He is also the author of Blue Light Special--a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

In his own classroom, Szymanski uses what one administrator referred to as the “Tom Sawyer method” for teaching writing. By sharing his own writing experiences and modeling the process, Szymanski motivates students to join in the “fun.” Through weekly Reader and Writer Workshops, his students discover who they are, where they come from, and where they are going...all through the written word.

In the most practical way he can, he will take you through writing activities that have helped him to reach both reluctant and aspiring writers and readers. He will show you how he uses Reader Workshop to help students read like writers…and Writer Workshop to help students write like readers. This will be a hands-on presentation taking you through every step of the writing process. You will be doing the activities. You will be reading. You will be writing. In this session--like in Szymanski's classroom--everyone is in it together.

Participants will gain knowledge in:

• A learning environment that inspires learning in an English Language Arts Classroom for all types of learners.
• Effective instructional strategies including Reader's and Writer's Workshop.
• Inspirational resources that support engage your students.

Lunch Provided