 Most of our workshops can be presented
in a multi-day, full-day and half-day format. We also
offer follow up sessions where your teachers can refresh
and fine tune what they've learned. Browse our on-site
workshop offerings and let us know which ones interest
you.
Workshop Leaders
Our workshops are led by dynamic, award winning teachers and
writers. Get to know our
presenters.
Workshop Descriptions
Getting Them to Write
Learn strategies to motivate reluctant writers while stimulating
advanced students to stretch their abilities to reach a new
level. You will practice anxiety-reducing exercises such as un
graded journal writing that kids want to do, writing for
different audiences (historical, literary & mythological figures
as well as those from pop culture), imaginative interviewing,
quirky book reactions, creative writing (memoir, flash fiction
and poetry), etc.
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Teaching Writing for Test Takers
Teachers will learn to create and customize their own picture
prompt and persuasive writing topics. This skill-based workshop
will also share useful techniques to help students generate
multiple ideas for writing essays and other standardized test
preparation, revision strategies, points for editing and
polishing essays and a pain-free grammar blitz. Well, almost
pain-free. Superb preparation for ASK, HSPA and the SAT!
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Writing Teachers, Writing Students
(Grades K-12)
Cross-listed workshop: English, Elementary & Across the Curriculum
This workshop will encourage teachers to become practicing
writers for their own professional development so they
become better teachers of writing. In addition, it will offer
approaches for evaluating student writing, paper management
strategies and will conclude with a plan to build a writing
friendly school by creating a community of teachers who write.
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Poetry Workshop for Teachers
This workshop will trigger your imagination and stimulate your
memory to compose poems through varied in-class exercises. You
will learn to appreciate the difference between merely telling
and infusing details into a narrative poem that makes your
writing meaningful, satisfying and true. You will also learn
strategies for revising your work, which you can use with
students.
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Fiction Workshop for Teachers
The best teachers of fiction are those who also write.
Stimulating discussion about the art of fiction as well as
various writing exercises will encourage you to explore the
challenges of moving a story and/or its characters towards the
undiscovered country of resolution and revision. With these
concepts, you will be able to lead writing and literature
students into appreciating fiction from the writer's
perspective.
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Evaluating Student Writing
This workshop will present an overview of how to read and
respond to students' writing. Topics include creating
incrementally structured assignments, alternatives to numerical
and letter grades, group editing and peer critiquing, making
writing fun and handling the paper load. Teachers will leave
with handouts, ideas and enthusiasm for having their students
write more and better.
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Getting Them to Revise
"Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what one is
saying." John Updike
This workshop uses writing samples from high school students and
insights from well-known writers which will give you the
ammunition you need to have your students understand that
revision (literally "re-seeing") is essential to good writing.
The full day workshop offers more writing opportunities to
practice the revision strategies introduced.
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Poetry and the Core Curriculum
Cross-listed workshop: English & Across the Curriculum
Learn how to use poetry in subjects such as art, music, social
studies, math and science to increase reading comprehension and
critical thinking skills. This workshop will assist teachers to
add excitement and creativity to their classes while
strengthening subject matter proficiency.
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Contemporary African-American Poets
A survey of the black poets who came into prominence after
Langston Hughes, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton,
Rita Dove, Robert Hayden, Yusef Komunyakaa and Marilyn Nelson,
as well a look at a younger generation including Elizabeth
Alexander, Cornelius Eady, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Terence Hayes,
Tim Seibles and Tracy Smith.
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Breaking Through the Abstract
Like photo sensitive paper, writing becomes vibrant when
illuminated by the radiance of the five senses: sight, sound,
smell, touch, taste. Teachers will practice applying concrete
language to reveal the mysteries of the intangible world.
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Getting Them to Think
Critical and creative thinking are valuable skills that do not
always find a place in the standard curriculum. Teachers in this
workshop will sample a variety of visual and text based
exercises they can use to help students think imaginatively and
evaluate information in a systematic and logical manner both in
and out of the classroom. Topics will include analyzing media
and advertising, interpreting metaphor and figurative language
and learning to interpret the world they live in.
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Getting Them to Read
The ability to read well is the most important skill we can
provide for our students. In addition to the many practical
benefits of good reading, it's a passport to almost the entirety
of world cultures. But in an increasingly electronic age, good
reading skills are difficult to come by. This workshop will
provide useful, interesting materials and strategies to
encourage students as they develop the reading skills they need
and help you motivate them to want those skills.
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Teaching the Literary Essay
Too often, this staple assignment in so many English classrooms
feels like factory work for all involved. Why are the bulk of
student literary essays–even competent ones–so boring and
unoriginal? Why do so many young people write in the same
stilted, counterfeit voice, faking their interest, when we know
they have recognizable voices and real concerns? How can we help
them avoid the magnetic pull of the plot summary? How can we get
beyond all the contention over grades? This workshop is devoted to rethinking the literary essay in all its
facets. Teachers will be shown 10 practical keys for getting
students to write about the literature they are reading with
more depth, authenticity and enjoyment.
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Writing Strategies for Poor Achieving and Special Needs Students
This is a workshop for teaching literacy, critical thinking,
composition and creative writing to students who have low
academic self-esteem, limited vocabulary, emotional trouble, or
learning disabilities. Teachers will practice a battery of
proven techniques, exercises and models to get these kids
excited about writing.
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Creative Writing for Special Needs Students
This is a workshop for teaching creative writing to students who
have low academic self-esteem, limited vocabulary, emotional
trouble, or learning disabilities such as ADHD. Educators will
be shown a battery of proven techniques, exercises and models to
get these kids excited about writing. These are not formulas for
cookie cutter responses, but rather smart ways for teachers to
structure, sequence and modify assignments to foster authentic
creativity in special needs students.
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Succeeding With Literature Circles
In this hands-on workshop, teachers will learn how to
incorporate literature circles into their language arts
classrooms and why this strategy motivates and aids students to
become more competent life-long readers. Several models of
literature circles will be demonstrated. The workshop is based
on the book, Succeeding with Literature Circles, by Inservice
Solutions presenters Charlotte Jaffe and Barbara Doherty.
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The Poetry of War
Cross-listed workshop: English & History
The American poet Wallace Stevens wrote, "In the presence of the
violent reality of war, consciousness takes the place of the
imagination." This workshop will examine war poetry from Homer's
Iliad to the present day, with a special eye on changes in the
way war affects "consciousness"–personally and nationally. The
session is
suitable for teachers of literature, creative
writing and social studies. In a full-day version we will consider Stevens's idea
about the poetry of war as it applies to contemporary American
poetry, much of which seems to involve personal trauma. Nearly
all writers have a war–an overwhelming subject that is as hard
to enter as it is to escape.
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The Glamour of Grammar
Instead of going over old, tired rules, use grammar as a form of
problem solving and watch your class discover for themselves the
ways their own language works. This workshop will suggest a
framework for using grammar instruction to help students write
better and provide practical techniques for putting theory into
action. The word glamour is a medieval variation of grammar,
connecting learning with magic. Inspire an interest in language,
and all sorts of glamorous things may happen.
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Overcoming Writer's Block
This workshop demonstrates four foolproof techniques that
empower students at any level to excel as writers. Students will
begin writing in "clear, concise, organized language that varies
in content and form for different audiences and purposes."
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Making Schools Plagiarism-Proof
Cross-listed workshop: English & Across the Curriculum
Can plagiarism be prevented without turning teachers into
investigators and prosecutors? Yes. Can an educational community
take steps to inoculate itself from the epidemic of plagiarism
now sweeping schools? You bet. This is a sobering session on
what schools don't want to face about plagiarism, why honor
codes have become a joke and what can be done about it. It's
also a workshop on resourceful pedagogy, where educators will be
shown assignments resistant to academic dishonesty, which lead
students toward their best selves.
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Teaching Research Through Memoir Writing
Cross-listed workshop: English & History
Research papers sound dreary, but not when the subject is self
and family. Here's a way to teach skills such as interviewing,
use of media and Internet sources and ways to integrate direct
and indirect quotes with grace and accuracy–all while providing
assignments that make students care deeply about what they write
and how readers respond.
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Writing Your Way into History
Cross-listed workshop: English & History
The past becomes real through first-person stories. This
workshop will show how to make history come alive through
first-person journalism that makes writers and their readers
feel as if they were in another time and place.
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Reading and Writing Across the Content Areas
Cross-listed workshop: English & Across the Curriculum
This workshop will provide teachers with reading and writing
strategies that stress effective learning across all content
areas. The presenter will emphasize pre-reading, during-reading
and post-reading activities which will engage all levels of
students. In addition, teachers will make curriculum connections
by applying writing skills across content areas such as
mathematics, social studies, physical education, science, art
and music. By applying these strategies, content area teachers
will be able to better prepare students for reading and writing
on state and standardized tests.
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Teaching Tolerance Through Shared Writing
Cross-listed workshop: English & Across the Curriculum
The best way to understand "other" is to hear life stories of
those unlike ourselves. This workshop provides strategies for
writing and sharing our lives in ways that teach first-rate
writing skills, including revision, while promoting tolerance
that will strengthen classroom solidarity.
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Perspectives on Media
Cross-listed workshop: English & Across the Curriculum
Show your students how media filters information and
as a result requires critical evaluation rather than blank
acceptance. Approach video, print, Internet and other forms of
media using strategies that will help students appreciate bias
and understand the machinations of persuasion.
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Browse our other workshops
Ready to reserve your next inservice?
Call 888-887-2105 to request a quote or
click here.
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