Building a classroom culture that values every student’s voice is essential for creating a meaningful literacy experience.This session explores how educators can embrace identities as readers and writers, using literacy as a powerful tool for self-expression, community connection, and skill-building.
We will explore educators’ new ideas about reading, analyzing, and writing nonfiction. Old strategies mislead classes: the 5-paragraph essay oversimplifies nonfiction. We will discuss the goals, structure, and development of complex modern essays, including scholarly articles. Participants will receive handouts with essay structures, lesson plans, and nonfiction writing assignments for students.
The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) has many free eResources to support all citizens in the state. In this session we will pair nonfiction eResources (including articles, images, maps and video clips) in MeL with examples from the culturally diverse MISelf in Books title lists to build upon student learning and understanding.
The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) is a statewide online library service managed by the Library of Michigan, offering Michigan residents free access to a vast collection of digital resources like full-text articles, ebooks, and databases.
Diverse works inspire empathy and good student writing. We will analyze poems by women, Hispanic, Native-American, Black, Arab-American, and Asian-American poets: Alberto Ríos, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mong-Lan, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Hayden, etc. We will discuss what makes a poem outstanding. Participants will get handouts with poems, lesson plans, and a bibliography.
