Pittsburgh Bound

Following Nani's lead, I am doing my NCTE post. On November 17th I'll be heading for Pittsburgh for the NCTE National Convention . My school is paying my registration fees. They have also agreed to pay for a substitute to cover my classes for two days; this means I get paid even when I'm gone. YIPPEE!

Below is a list of workshops that I plan on attending (or if there are two, I'm considering attending). Any other educators coming? I'm sure Nani and I would love to meet up with other teacher bloggers.

THURSDAY: Arrive

FRIDAY:
RETHINKING THE CLASSICS: USING INQUIRY-BASED PRACTICES TO MAKE CLASSIC TEXTS MEANINGFUL
Teaching classics to urban high school students need not be a dispiriting task provided students have opportunities to explore the relevance of those texts to their lives.

HIGH SCHOOL MATTERS
Where do all the high school teachers meet? High School Matters! This fast-paced session will feature four mini-keynotes and over twenty outstanding teachers and writers providing roundtable presentations on myriad topics.

Nani and I will sneak out a little early and go share Shabbat in Pittsburgh. I'm arranging the details of that. :)

SATURDAY:
WHAT'S WORTH SAYING (AND WRITING) ABOUT A LITERARY WORK: LEARNING ACADEMIC DISCOURSE THROUGH LITERATURE WORKSHOP

READING OURSELVES, READING OUR STUDENTS: STRATEGIES FOR RESPONSE TO STUDENT WRITING
Teachers spend hundreds of hours responding to students’ writing, and yet we are often stymied by how difficult it can be for students to learn from our written responses

USING MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY TO TEACH WRITING
or this one which would probabally be more useful...
GRAMMAR: TEACHING SKILLS IN THE CONTEXT OF WRITING AND READING

TEXT SETS AND MULTIPLE BEST PRACTICES: GRAPES OF WRATH
Classroom demonstration of techniques using text sets and multiple best practices (including scaffolding, shared inquiry, multiple intelligences, and student choice)

SUNDAY:
Nani leaves before noon. I will try to do one workshop I think, depending how valuable the previous two days end up being. I don't leave until 6pm, arriving back in Cali 2 hours later in my super jet time machine! (aka time difference)