This was a backup session for me; apparently they canceled my session on LDCs and English Language Learners. That happens.
Our presenter was Kelly Philbeck from Kentucky. Her materials can all be found at her website, www.kellyphilbeck.com. Kelly’s session wasn’t focused on LDCs or CCSS per se; she was all about improving writers’ craft, especially at the secondary level.
To get things rolling and get us into something engaging, we read and listened to Beyonce’s song Halo. We focused on a graphic organizer that directed us to “Claim it” (notice and underline examples of literary devices) “Name it” (identify the name of each device) and “Explain it” (tell why she used that particular device). I didn’t particularly care for the song, but the activity was fun.
After that we looked at a piece of informational text to analyze text features. We read an article on holiday spending and found features such as subtitles, text boxes, fonts and sidebars. We used the same template (Claim it, Name it, Explain it). This was helpful in my context; I could see using it to help kids not only use these features in their writing, but to use and understand them in their reading. Text features are an area my kids frequently struggle with.
Finally we turned to evidence, a problem area for a lot of kids. We ask them for it, unaware that many students don’t know what evidence really is. What we’re talking about isn’t concrete enough; they tend to think of crime scenes. Kelly showed us a resource from the CCSS website in Appendix A that lists of 25 different types of evidence.
For a back-up session this was pretty good. Kelly was a talented presenter and her website has a TON of great resources.