ESL Symposium  Post-Conference Literacy Workshop
Friday, June 2nd, 2006 from 2:00-4:00 pm
at the Jane S. McKimmon Center, Raleigh
 

Constructing Comprehension through Nonfiction Reading and Writing (K-8)


Georgia Thompson is a literacy coach in the Dallas Independent School District with twenty-eight years experience in education. She is an experienced K-8 classroom teacher as well as a trained reading recovery teacher.  Thompson is a Texas-certified Master Reading Teacher who holds principalship certification and has been the director of training in the Reading Department of the Dallas Independent School District . She is currently working on her doctorate in Supervision, Curriculum and Instruction.

Since most of the text we encounter at any given time is nonfiction, success in daily living is dependent upon the ability to comprehend nonfiction and functional text. Because of these real life demands, students need to expand their repertoire in comprehension strategies and build literacy skills with nonfiction text (Duke, 2004).

To this end, students need to become aware of the organizational patterns and features of text as these discourse features make text accessible and enable the learners to negotiate meaning. Young students can learn from informational text (Duke & Kays, 1998, Moss, 1993), respond to informational text in sophisticated ways (Donovan, 1996; Oyler & Barry, 1996) and conduct research using informational text in the primary classroom (Duke, 2003).

In this workshop, participants will learn to identify text features and organizational formats to assist in comprehension of nonfiction text in a differentiated classroom. This make and take, interactive workshop will include visual displays of student work and products.

Certificates of credit for additional renewal credits will be available to participants at the end of this workshop.

This post-conference workshop is available at no additional charge to the first 50 paid symposium registrants to sign-up.
Sign-up information is included in the symposium confirmation letter emailed to participants once full symposium payment has been received.

This workshop is now full.