2019 CISC Leadership Symposium

How can we meet today’s academic goals and engage kids in a literacy workshop model inspired by real-world texts and authors?

In a word, inquiry.

Participants will notice and note through activities that show exactly how to use an inquiry mindset to bolster the way students can read like readers and read like writers. 

Drawing from Sara’s books, Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to teach Social Comprehension and Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry, participants will also do the practical work to help students to amplify voice and learn the targeted social skills and habits to help us comprehend social issues and participate in relevant, transparent conversations.

If we can commit to approaching this work as the lead learner, teaching with curiosity and modeling vulnerability rather than rigid certainty, we can build habitats of trust where kids (and adults) participate in a learning discussions, and where expression, identity, and social literacy matter.

Together we will be immersed in, and create, a workshop model built around choice, agency, identity, small-group collaboration, and critical thinking. We will walk out with a toolbox filled with teaching strategies and structures in instruction and discourse.

Audience: All elementary and secondary, leadership