Region 13 is proud to continue the ELAR Distinguished Speaker Series for ELAR educators. Throughout the year, a renowned and highly-acclaimed ELAR expert will deliver a workshop that prepares educators for the rigor and demand of the STAAR, AP courses, and post-secondary readiness. Come be inspired by some of the greatest minds working in the field of literacy research and rejuvenate your classroom practices!
This year we welcome these highly sought after presenters: Kylene Beers and Bob Probst, Kelly Gallagher, Jeff Anderson, Georgia Heard, Gretchen Bernabei, Stephanie Harvey, and Linda Christensen.
Writing Essays That Matter in Language Arts and Social Studies
In this session, Christensen creates a framework for exploring stories from marginalized voices often silenced by traditional textbooks and literature. Participants will experience a historical “tea party” that creates a mystery about an event, use primary source documents, such as photographs and eyewitness accounts, to revisit a historic moment. Together we will explore how writing poetry and essays can help students create a fuller history, understand how historical fiction works, and build consciousness about contemporary events.
Essay writing should be a journey of discovery, not a color-coded jigsaw puzzle. To become excellent writers, students need to be steeped in engaging work that connects to their lives and the world, that gives them opportunities to think, discuss, and grapple with big ideas. But essays do have a framework, a structure that students need to be familiar with: introduction, thesis, body of evidence, and conclusion. Essay writers employ tools that help the reader navigate the text, and students need to know how to use those tools as well: transitions, integrating quotes, and citing sources. In other words, essays have a set of conventions that most writers follow. Students need to be explicitly taught those conventions, so they can enter the academic world and feel comfortable there.
But students also must be taught that when they write essays, they should engage in the same kind of language play they use when they write poetry and narratives. While essays tend to be a more suit-and-tie style writing than what is typically referred to as “creative writing,” they don’t have to be stuffy. In this day-long workshop, participants will engage in the essentials of essay writing and revision.