Making ‘data–‐driven’ decisions is considered a best practice, but not all data is created equal. What is being measured and how it is measured determine what conclusions can be drawn from reams of charts and graphs.
Hazel Dick & Janice Van Dyke
CIRR Past President & Reading Recovery Trainer, Central Division
Join Early Years educators as they explore the process of inquiry based learning in Kindergarten. Comprehension strategies, such as, asking effective questions and making connections will highlight how to make the link between honouring student wonderings while focusing on enhancing literacy strategies.
Presenters: Melissa Seco & Jan Samulewitsch
TDSB
What have we learned about the dark side of pattern text and low writing vocabularies? This session will explore why time is the essence for moving students out of pattern texts and into story books. The features of simple story books and the behaviours that students need to control in order to build a literacy processing system will be discussed. The same urgency exists for writing a greater number of words and how this supports problem solving in reading and writing.
Presenters: Barb Cassar & Paul Cousineau
Reading Recovery Teacher Leaders, TDSB
A case study of one EAL student ‘Cris’ in his first 10 Reading Recovery lessons and the considerations that led to accelerated progress to Level 3 texts and beyond right from the start. These considerations are also applicable to first literacy lessons in a grade one classroom.
Presenter: Holly Cumming
Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, Winnipeg School Division
As children begin to construct complex problem solving systems in reading and writing, the information that they see and hear must be integrated with what they know in ever changing ways. In this session we will explore the ways that the visible information is integrated with the invisible information.
Presenter: Allyson Matczuk, Reading Recovery Trainer (Western Division)
Canadian Institute of Reading Recovery
Throughout the lesson Reading Recovery children engage in constructive activity- with letters, sound sequences, words, phrases, and sentences – always in the service of creating and discovering meaning. Meanwhile their active brains are constructing networks for linking and retrieving literacy information. How can we interact with children’s visible behaviours in ways that facilitate the ‘in-the-head’ construction of literacy processing systems?
Presenter: Ann Ballantyne
About Ann: Ann Ballantyne is a Reading Recovery Trainer from New Zealand who has worked in several different education systems. Ann recently retired as Director of the Reading Recovery project at New York University. She continues to be engaged with National Reading Recovery in NZ and is currently based in Vancouver as part of the Mountain–Pacific Trainer and Teacher Leader team.
At the 2015 CIRR Reading Recovery & Early Literacy Conference, Charles will provide both evidence and stories that illustrate the critical importance of adapting to the individual differences of learner while noting the remarkable value of reflective practice of educators. His keynote will build on his work as early learning advisor and co-author of the recent book he wrote with his teenaged daughter.
Based on his upcoming book, Charles will provide a lively interactive opportunity to explore and apply leadership lessons from his career in the public sector. Charles will provide examples relevant to anyone in a position to support the development of others and provide leadership for the improvement of individual or organization improvement.
Charles E. Pascal is an internationally recognized educator with expertise in early and higher education, public policy, leadership/organizational development and strategic philanthropy. He has published extensively in the fields of psychology and education.
His 2009 seminal report to the Premier of Ontario– With Our Best Future in Mind–is informing policy and practice in early child education within and outside of Canada.
A former Ontario deputy minister, including stints in education, social services and the Premier’s Council on Health, Charles became the head of the Ontario Council of Regents for the province’s colleges. He is currently Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE/University of Toronto where he is coordinator of the PhD. Program in Early Learning.
Charles and his teenage daughter, Tai Pascal Notar, have recently published their book, Too Far from Perfect: A Father-Daughter Conversation about Public Education. www.toofarfromperfect.com. He is currently working on a book on leadership to be published in 2015.
Charles has also received recognition from many organizations to date, including five honorary diplomas and doctorates.
What is ‘Flexibility ‘ from the perspective of Clay’s literacy processing theory? Why do beginning readers need to learn to be flexible problem solvers as they read and write continuous texts? What is the teacher’s role in fostering flexibility in problem solving? These are question to be explored as we learn together and apply principles of teaching to promote accelerated learning.
In 30 years of research and 30 years of teaching children, Reading Recovery educators have learned a great deal about effective teaching in early literacy. At this year’s milestone celebration it is important to review and build understandings of the research foundations of Reading Recovery while also focusing on what we have learned about teaching. We are continuing to refine our teaching effectiveness both in Reading Recovery and primary classrooms based on understandings of Clay’s theory of literacy processing and the knowledge we have gained from our personal teaching experiences.
Mary Fried is an author and a trainer of teacher leaders in the Reading Recovery Center at The Ohio State University. Trained by Marie Clay and Barbara Watson during the original 1984-1985 pilot study of Reading Recovery in the U.S., Mary has been actively engaged in teaching, presenting, conducting research, and writing about Reading Recovery for more than 25 years. Mary is also a trainer for Literacy Collaborative and the Principal’s Academy for Leadership. Her teaching of children in Reading Recovery for the last 10 years has been immersed with teaching English language learners.