Presenters
Meet the 2022 Choctaw Nation Professional Learning Conference Keynote Speaker, Adam Dovico:
Adam is an accomplished teacher, principal, college professor, author, and speaker who has spent his career working with schools and educators across the country on building school culture, engaging students, and figuring out what you can do for kids! He spent the early part of his career in North Carolina as an elementary school teacher in both rural and urban settings. From there, he had the opportunity to teach at the renowned Ron Clark Academy (RCA) in Atlanta. In addition to teaching at RCA, he served as the first School Implementation Specialist, which allowed Adam to travel across the country to conduct professional development in the form of keynote speeches, workshops, and model lessons.
After working in K-12 education for a decade, Adam transitioned to the collegiate level to serve as the Clinical Professor in the Department of Education at his alma mater, Wake Forest University. While there, he not only worked on building the next generation of teachers, but also had the opportunity to publish articles and book chapters on a variety of education topics. Currently, Adam resides in Greensboro, NC, where he lives with his wife, Jaclyn, and two children, Ryder and Maddox.
Adam has three books, When Kids Lead (2020), The Limitless Classroom (2017), and Inside the Trenches (2014). He is often brought to school districts for his unique stories, wacky costumes, sense of humor, and practical ideas, which have made him a favorite among kids and adults of all ages!
Keynote: Adam Dovico
Addicted to School
One of the most dangerous phrases in education today is “because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” It can be heard echoed through the hallways and classrooms of schools across the country. As a result, the recycling of traditional approaches to schooling have isolated, oppressed, and created boredom for so many of our students. What if schools dared to break the script of what schools can do? What if students were addicted to coming to school? Join Adam’s keynote as he shares his journey of how he created a school that kids and staff were excited to come to each day. You’ll walk away with easy to implement ideas and motivation to begin your school’s transformation!
Administrative Workshops led by Keynote Speaker, Adam Dovico:
Session 1: Coaching Models for School Leaders
Session 2: When Kids Lead
Bold. Courageous. Innovative. Thoughtful. All leadership characteristics that we attribute to great adult leaders in our society. It should be unsurprising then that we have children in our classrooms, teams, and clubs with those very same traits. However, oftentimes these virtues go unnoticed or remain hidden. As adults, we have the ability to cultivate, empower, and refine these skills in our children to create powerful young leaders. Learn from Adam ways to build these leaders in your classrooms and schools so that we provide them the opportunities to become even better adult leaders.
Session 3: D@t@ is NOt a 4 - Letter Word
An exciting session centered around data? It can’t be! But it’s possible when Adam shows you that data is not a boring or scary word. Join in on a conversation around ways to facilitate conversations, instructional improvements, and student-led activities around data!
************************************************************************************************************************
Teacher Workshop Presenters:
Dan St. Romain is a national independent educational consultant who provides staff development and
consultative services to educators and parents working with children at all developmental levels. Dan is
passionate about helping individuals shift their perspective on discipline, understanding the best ways to
provide support given the challenges posed in today’s society. After receiving his master’s degree in education, Dan worked in both private residential and public school settings, as well as at the Region 20 Education Service Center in San Antonio, Texas. His work as a self - contained behavior unit teacher, educational diagnostician, behavior consultant, and director of a learning
resource center has afforded him experience at all levels, in both general and special education settings. Dan is
now enjoying retirement after having worked in the school system for the past 30 years. Dan’s overwhelming strength is his skill as a presenter. Although his sessions are exceedingly interactive, his greatest asset lies in his ability to offer participants rich insight into the connectedness between educational practices and student behavior.
Check out his website at: https://danstromain.com/.
Sessions:
Cultivating Character in Kids: Shaping Critical Behavioral Skills in the Early Grades
“You’re so mean!” “You can’t play with us!” “That’s not fair!” Each year, educators are dealing
with more behavior problems in the primary classrooms. In this interactive session, participants will
learn quick and easy ideas for teaching behavioral skills in the areas of social, emotional and ethical
development using fun visuals, children’s literature, simple chants and engaging activities.
Positive Behavior Principles
Although behaviors in the school system have changed a great deal in the past few decades, our
strategies for supporting those behaviors have not. By examining all the information we have
learned about the brain, we are in a better position to design effective interventions. In this fastpaced
session, participants will learn nine principles for positively shaping the behavior of our
students.
Literature, Language and Life Skills
Although our inclination is to teach the way we were once taught, as times change, so must our
strategies. In this fast-paced interactive session, participants will have fun examining how social,
emotional, ethical and cognitive skills can be taught through the use of literature and interactive
reading strategies.
************************************************************************************************************************
Kim Adsit, a former Teacher of the Year, taught kindergarten for 30 years. She has been a national presenter for more than 20 years where she focuses on sharing curriculum and strategies that incorporate child-centered activities. Kim has been selected as an Expert Teacher, and she serves as a teacher mentor. She has a Specialist Degree in Early Childhood Education as well as an At-Risk Endorsement. Kim has authored many teacher resources that are available on the teacherspayteachers.com website and shares the KinderGals blog with her daughter.
Sessions:
ABC’s and 123’s
Kim shares a creative idea-a-minute approach for teaching ABCs and 123s with songs, puppets, and lots of games and activities that will help you differentiate your instruction and help your children master early skills quickly. Plus, learn how to document each child’s progression through these skills to ensure that ALL students are learning.
Dice, Cards, and Dominoes
Ready to have your kiddos learning when they think they are playing? Trying to figure out a cheap, easy way to create games? Do you want to have games with only a few rules so that your kiddos can play independently? In this session, Kim will share a plethera of easy games that use only cards, dice, and dominoes. She will show you how you can teach the same game format to all everyone and easily change the standard to meet the needs of all of your individual learners.
Don’t Wait! Early LITERACY Intervention Aid for Kindergarteners
Wondering what to do when you have tried everything including standing on your head and your kids still don’t get it? In this session Kim will share her favorite intervention strategies for sight words, letter recognition, and foundation skills in literacy. She will also share how she organizes individual tutorial bags for her students so that each child has ownership of the standards they are learning. You will leave this session well equipped with a new bag of tricks for all of your struggling learners!
************************************************************************************************************************
Brooke Brown is a National Board Certified Early Childhood Teacher with 18 years of teaching experience in Kindergarten through third grade. She is currently a Gifted Resource Coordinator for early childhood students, teaching Gifted and Talented, math and literacy enrichment, and STEM. Brooke is a former district Teacher of the Year and has a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership. She creates original teaching resources as the owner of Teach Outside the Box®, is a product developer for hand2mind, and is the inventor of STEM Bins®. Brooke is passionate about STEM, coding and robotics, Makerspaces, hands-on literacy, and purposeful play for elementary students. She lives in Norman, Oklahoma with her husband, Andy, and two children, Ellie and Beau. Learn more about Brooke on teachoutsidethebox.com.
Sessions:
STEM: Start to Finish
Check out the Engineering Design Process in action! This session will include low prep STEM Challenge ideas for elementary teachers and will feature a walkthrough and hands-on experience with a STEM challenge. Learn management secrets, differentiation tips, and key instructional components for an engaging, enriching, and stress-free STEM lesson. Teachers will also explore play-based engineering strategies with STEM Bins!
Start with a Storybook: STEM Made Simple
Bring your literacy block to life with STEM challenges! Learn how to integrate rich read alouds with STEM and incorporate engineering with STEM Bins into your literacy centers. Teachers will participate in a Storybook STEM challenge and explore creative storytelling with STEM Bins.
************************************************************************************************************************
Dan Finkel is the Founder and Director of Operations of Mathforlove.com. This is what he says about math.
"After completing my PhD in mathematics at the University of Washington, I decided that teaching math is the most important contribution I can make to the world. I’ve devoted much of my life to understanding and teaching the motivation, history, aesthetics, and deep structure of mathematics. Math is a maligned and mistreated subject, often mis-taught, often misunderstood. My goal is to give everyone the chance to fall in love with mathematics. Whether you excel or struggle, whether you’re a teacher or student, parent or child, if you want to learn what math is really about, I can help."
Sessions:
Mathematical Openers
Starting class with a 5 - 10 minute opener is a simple change, but it can have profound consequences. Learn how Number Talks, teacher-led games, Unit Chats, Counterexamples, and other routines can encourage students to begin thinking the moment they walk into the room.
Mathematical Games in the Classroom
Games in the classroom are a win-win proposition. They encourage a playful engaging experience with mathematical ideas, and can motivate skills practice and exploration of deeper concepts. Learn a range of ways to use games in the classroom, and explore a collection of games at the level of your students.
Rich Tasks and Transformative Mathematical Experience
Beautiful mathematical experiences can change a student’s life: once students see mathematics as a subject involving autonomy, creativity, and power, they (and you!) will never want to go back. How do we make these experiences accessible to students? What does it take to make deep mathematical thinking a regular part of your classroom? In this workshop, we’ll explore how rich tasks can create opportunities for authentic mathematical adventure; we’ll even try some ourselves!
************************************************************************************************************************
Adam Peterson is an educator, something he says with pride every time he says it! He spent a decade in the classroom before he took a chance and left the classroom to work full time helping teachers, schools, and districts create positive, engaging, play driven learning spaces! He also runs his own classroom teaching children of various ages. He is a TEDX speaker and best selling author and spends much of his spare time writing. He is a husband to the best wife in the world and dad to two amazing kids. He loves coffee, movies, traveling, being outdoors, music, and hanging with his pal, Auggie, their whippet. You can read more about Adam at adampetersoneducation.com.
Sessions:
Teach, Play, Learn!
Ever feel like you're bogged down with curriculum, standards, and new manuals? Well, never fear, Adam is here! Using tried and true methods, Adam will have you laughing, moving, playing, and learning as you explore new ways to make your learning standards more fun than ever before. With simple tweaks and classrooms hacks to board games, card games, and more, you can have your students of any age learning through play in so many ways.
Model, Motivate, Write, Repeat!
From tried and true techniques to publishing books with your students, this session has it all ! Adam uses personal classroom experiences to give you all the help you need to create engaging lessons that will excite your students about writing. Through easy modeling, engaging motivational activities, and simple, creative books, your students will be ready to write like never before!
Whoa! What Happened To Our Classroom?!
What?! Wow! Awesome! Those are words every teacher loves to hear, right? Adam's love of teaching combined with his creativity, had his students saying this quite often. Whether it's for a class party, book review, or to boost engagement, Adam's room flips are sure to excite even the most reluctant learners. Take a trip through a wild forest, go on a Pokemon hung, explore a bat cave, and more in this fun learning experience.
************************************************************************************************************************
Tammy Daniel is a reading specialist and national literacy consultant. She has twenty-eight years of experience in education, working as a classroom teacher, reading interventionist, and literacy coach. She understands the obstacles teachers are facing with meeting the needs of each student and knows the joy that comes when students become proficient and avid readers. That joy drove Tammy to step out of her classroom and enter the classrooms of others to offer support, knowledge, and resources to help her fellow teachers who are challenged with students with reading difficulties. Tammy has spent the past nine years working directly with teachers and administrators on implementing effective literacy instruction based on evidence-based practices. She is a National LETRS Trainer and a Board Member for The Reading League Oklahoma Chapter. Tammy’s diverse background in early childhood, elementary, and middle school education inspires her commitment to helping all students learn to read and read well. The dedicated work of fellow teachers inspires her, and it is her passionate mission to empower educators as they work together to diminish illiteracy in America.
Sessions:
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: The Road to Orthographic Mapping
Learning to read is hard for many children. Some students learn how to read easily, while others struggle with reading even basic words. This workshop will provide information about how reading develops in the brain and effective strategies that lead to proficient reading. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how word reading skills develop through phonemic awareness and systematic phonics instruction.
Sight Words: Beyond Flash Cards
For many students, learning sight words can be a labor intensive and frustrating task. This workshop will provide information that can help answer why some students struggle to recall words automatically, even after extensive practice. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how words are permanently stored and retrieved, as well as ways to help students develop a sight vocabulary that leads to greater word reading and fluency.
Reading Big Words: How to Connect Decoding and Vocabulary Instruction
Reading words with several syllables can be a stumbling block for many students. This leads students to resort to various strategies that are ineffective, such as guessing, skipping, or hoping someone will provide the word. This workshop will provide information on how to help students read multisyllabic words. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how to teach students to decode big words and how to connect the learning to a simple vocabulary routine.
************************************************************************************************************************
Danny Brassell is a professor in the Teacher Education Department at California State University-Dominguez Hills, highly-sought national speaker and founder of The Lazy Readers’ Book Club (www.lazyreaders.com), Google’s #1-ranked site for cool “short book recommendations.” He is the author of over 50 journal and newspaper articles and eleven books, including A Baker’s Dozen of Lessons Learned from the Teaching Trenches. His television show People Make a Difference airs throughout Greater Los Angeles and on YouTube. Danny helps parents and educators inspire kids to love reading and achieve more. Danny has taught students ranging from preschoolers to rocket scientists, and he has worked with some of the world’s leading literacy experts, including: Stephen Krashen, Jim Trelease, Tim Rasinski, Lori Oczkus, Ruth Culham, Richard Gentry, Diane Lapp, Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, Jim Flood, Alan Sitomer, MaryEllen Vogt, Steve Layne, Valerie Ellery, Kelly Gallagher, Smokey Daniels, Frank Serafini and Donalyn Miller. During his time as a classroom teacher, reading tutor, non-profit leader, professor and educational administrator, Danny has incorporated his “reading secret” philosophy to great avail, including: • Training over 10,000 parents, volunteers and community leaders in a one-on-one approach to assist struggling and reluctant readers. • Consulting with top school districts on ways to boost student achievement and community morale. • Delivering presentations to promote reading to audiences, companies and business professionals from all over the world. Today, Danny is "America's Leading Reading Ambassador" and shares his incredible 20+ years of education experiences and success model to empower leaders, teams and audiences to achieve extraordinary results. Danny's keynotes and presentations have earned a reputation for being high energy, (sometimes theatrical) enthusiastic, creative, applicable and highly motivating. You can read more about Danny at https://dannybrassell.com/.
Sessions:
75 Reading Strategies in 75 Minutes
Discover 75 ways to get your students to read! Danny demonstrates fun activities you can use throughout
the day to motivate and inspire your students to become more proficient readers. You’ll learn how to
transform your classroom into a literacy center. And, discover the secrets to helping all students develop
a lifelong passion for reading.
Dare to Differentiate: 50 Terrific Teacher Tricks
Reinvigorate your passion for teaching! Join Danny in this eye-opening session to learn 50 terrific tricks
successful teachers have used to stimulate students’ interest in learning. You’ll learn how to incorporate
standards without sacrificing fun. And, leave with new songs, games and activities you can immediately
put to use in your classroom.
Comprehension That Works!
Comprehension is what reading is all about! Learn how to foster students’ comprehension by showing
them how to: focus on relevant information, interpret it and integrate it with what they already know. You’ll
learn how to create an instructional environment that promotes risk taking and involves students in a
variety of real reading situations – and meets standards. Your students will learn to focus on meaning as
thoughtful readers.
Adam is an accomplished teacher, principal, college professor, author, and speaker who has spent his career working with schools and educators across the country on building school culture, engaging students, and figuring out what you can do for kids! He spent the early part of his career in North Carolina as an elementary school teacher in both rural and urban settings. From there, he had the opportunity to teach at the renowned Ron Clark Academy (RCA) in Atlanta. In addition to teaching at RCA, he served as the first School Implementation Specialist, which allowed Adam to travel across the country to conduct professional development in the form of keynote speeches, workshops, and model lessons.
After working in K-12 education for a decade, Adam transitioned to the collegiate level to serve as the Clinical Professor in the Department of Education at his alma mater, Wake Forest University. While there, he not only worked on building the next generation of teachers, but also had the opportunity to publish articles and book chapters on a variety of education topics. Currently, Adam resides in Greensboro, NC, where he lives with his wife, Jaclyn, and two children, Ryder and Maddox.
Adam has three books, When Kids Lead (2020), The Limitless Classroom (2017), and Inside the Trenches (2014). He is often brought to school districts for his unique stories, wacky costumes, sense of humor, and practical ideas, which have made him a favorite among kids and adults of all ages!
Keynote: Adam Dovico
Addicted to School
One of the most dangerous phrases in education today is “because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” It can be heard echoed through the hallways and classrooms of schools across the country. As a result, the recycling of traditional approaches to schooling have isolated, oppressed, and created boredom for so many of our students. What if schools dared to break the script of what schools can do? What if students were addicted to coming to school? Join Adam’s keynote as he shares his journey of how he created a school that kids and staff were excited to come to each day. You’ll walk away with easy to implement ideas and motivation to begin your school’s transformation!
Administrative Workshops led by Keynote Speaker, Adam Dovico:
Session 1: Coaching Models for School Leaders
Session 2: When Kids Lead
Bold. Courageous. Innovative. Thoughtful. All leadership characteristics that we attribute to great adult leaders in our society. It should be unsurprising then that we have children in our classrooms, teams, and clubs with those very same traits. However, oftentimes these virtues go unnoticed or remain hidden. As adults, we have the ability to cultivate, empower, and refine these skills in our children to create powerful young leaders. Learn from Adam ways to build these leaders in your classrooms and schools so that we provide them the opportunities to become even better adult leaders.
Session 3: D@t@ is NOt a 4 - Letter Word
An exciting session centered around data? It can’t be! But it’s possible when Adam shows you that data is not a boring or scary word. Join in on a conversation around ways to facilitate conversations, instructional improvements, and student-led activities around data!
************************************************************************************************************************
Teacher Workshop Presenters:
Dan St. Romain is a national independent educational consultant who provides staff development and
consultative services to educators and parents working with children at all developmental levels. Dan is
passionate about helping individuals shift their perspective on discipline, understanding the best ways to
provide support given the challenges posed in today’s society. After receiving his master’s degree in education, Dan worked in both private residential and public school settings, as well as at the Region 20 Education Service Center in San Antonio, Texas. His work as a self - contained behavior unit teacher, educational diagnostician, behavior consultant, and director of a learning
resource center has afforded him experience at all levels, in both general and special education settings. Dan is
now enjoying retirement after having worked in the school system for the past 30 years. Dan’s overwhelming strength is his skill as a presenter. Although his sessions are exceedingly interactive, his greatest asset lies in his ability to offer participants rich insight into the connectedness between educational practices and student behavior.
Check out his website at: https://danstromain.com/.
Sessions:
Cultivating Character in Kids: Shaping Critical Behavioral Skills in the Early Grades
“You’re so mean!” “You can’t play with us!” “That’s not fair!” Each year, educators are dealing
with more behavior problems in the primary classrooms. In this interactive session, participants will
learn quick and easy ideas for teaching behavioral skills in the areas of social, emotional and ethical
development using fun visuals, children’s literature, simple chants and engaging activities.
Positive Behavior Principles
Although behaviors in the school system have changed a great deal in the past few decades, our
strategies for supporting those behaviors have not. By examining all the information we have
learned about the brain, we are in a better position to design effective interventions. In this fastpaced
session, participants will learn nine principles for positively shaping the behavior of our
students.
Literature, Language and Life Skills
Although our inclination is to teach the way we were once taught, as times change, so must our
strategies. In this fast-paced interactive session, participants will have fun examining how social,
emotional, ethical and cognitive skills can be taught through the use of literature and interactive
reading strategies.
************************************************************************************************************************
Kim Adsit, a former Teacher of the Year, taught kindergarten for 30 years. She has been a national presenter for more than 20 years where she focuses on sharing curriculum and strategies that incorporate child-centered activities. Kim has been selected as an Expert Teacher, and she serves as a teacher mentor. She has a Specialist Degree in Early Childhood Education as well as an At-Risk Endorsement. Kim has authored many teacher resources that are available on the teacherspayteachers.com website and shares the KinderGals blog with her daughter.
Sessions:
ABC’s and 123’s
Kim shares a creative idea-a-minute approach for teaching ABCs and 123s with songs, puppets, and lots of games and activities that will help you differentiate your instruction and help your children master early skills quickly. Plus, learn how to document each child’s progression through these skills to ensure that ALL students are learning.
Dice, Cards, and Dominoes
Ready to have your kiddos learning when they think they are playing? Trying to figure out a cheap, easy way to create games? Do you want to have games with only a few rules so that your kiddos can play independently? In this session, Kim will share a plethera of easy games that use only cards, dice, and dominoes. She will show you how you can teach the same game format to all everyone and easily change the standard to meet the needs of all of your individual learners.
Don’t Wait! Early LITERACY Intervention Aid for Kindergarteners
Wondering what to do when you have tried everything including standing on your head and your kids still don’t get it? In this session Kim will share her favorite intervention strategies for sight words, letter recognition, and foundation skills in literacy. She will also share how she organizes individual tutorial bags for her students so that each child has ownership of the standards they are learning. You will leave this session well equipped with a new bag of tricks for all of your struggling learners!
************************************************************************************************************************
Brooke Brown is a National Board Certified Early Childhood Teacher with 18 years of teaching experience in Kindergarten through third grade. She is currently a Gifted Resource Coordinator for early childhood students, teaching Gifted and Talented, math and literacy enrichment, and STEM. Brooke is a former district Teacher of the Year and has a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership. She creates original teaching resources as the owner of Teach Outside the Box®, is a product developer for hand2mind, and is the inventor of STEM Bins®. Brooke is passionate about STEM, coding and robotics, Makerspaces, hands-on literacy, and purposeful play for elementary students. She lives in Norman, Oklahoma with her husband, Andy, and two children, Ellie and Beau. Learn more about Brooke on teachoutsidethebox.com.
Sessions:
STEM: Start to Finish
Check out the Engineering Design Process in action! This session will include low prep STEM Challenge ideas for elementary teachers and will feature a walkthrough and hands-on experience with a STEM challenge. Learn management secrets, differentiation tips, and key instructional components for an engaging, enriching, and stress-free STEM lesson. Teachers will also explore play-based engineering strategies with STEM Bins!
Start with a Storybook: STEM Made Simple
Bring your literacy block to life with STEM challenges! Learn how to integrate rich read alouds with STEM and incorporate engineering with STEM Bins into your literacy centers. Teachers will participate in a Storybook STEM challenge and explore creative storytelling with STEM Bins.
************************************************************************************************************************
Dan Finkel is the Founder and Director of Operations of Mathforlove.com. This is what he says about math.
"After completing my PhD in mathematics at the University of Washington, I decided that teaching math is the most important contribution I can make to the world. I’ve devoted much of my life to understanding and teaching the motivation, history, aesthetics, and deep structure of mathematics. Math is a maligned and mistreated subject, often mis-taught, often misunderstood. My goal is to give everyone the chance to fall in love with mathematics. Whether you excel or struggle, whether you’re a teacher or student, parent or child, if you want to learn what math is really about, I can help."
Sessions:
Mathematical Openers
Starting class with a 5 - 10 minute opener is a simple change, but it can have profound consequences. Learn how Number Talks, teacher-led games, Unit Chats, Counterexamples, and other routines can encourage students to begin thinking the moment they walk into the room.
Mathematical Games in the Classroom
Games in the classroom are a win-win proposition. They encourage a playful engaging experience with mathematical ideas, and can motivate skills practice and exploration of deeper concepts. Learn a range of ways to use games in the classroom, and explore a collection of games at the level of your students.
Rich Tasks and Transformative Mathematical Experience
Beautiful mathematical experiences can change a student’s life: once students see mathematics as a subject involving autonomy, creativity, and power, they (and you!) will never want to go back. How do we make these experiences accessible to students? What does it take to make deep mathematical thinking a regular part of your classroom? In this workshop, we’ll explore how rich tasks can create opportunities for authentic mathematical adventure; we’ll even try some ourselves!
************************************************************************************************************************
Adam Peterson is an educator, something he says with pride every time he says it! He spent a decade in the classroom before he took a chance and left the classroom to work full time helping teachers, schools, and districts create positive, engaging, play driven learning spaces! He also runs his own classroom teaching children of various ages. He is a TEDX speaker and best selling author and spends much of his spare time writing. He is a husband to the best wife in the world and dad to two amazing kids. He loves coffee, movies, traveling, being outdoors, music, and hanging with his pal, Auggie, their whippet. You can read more about Adam at adampetersoneducation.com.
Sessions:
Teach, Play, Learn!
Ever feel like you're bogged down with curriculum, standards, and new manuals? Well, never fear, Adam is here! Using tried and true methods, Adam will have you laughing, moving, playing, and learning as you explore new ways to make your learning standards more fun than ever before. With simple tweaks and classrooms hacks to board games, card games, and more, you can have your students of any age learning through play in so many ways.
Model, Motivate, Write, Repeat!
From tried and true techniques to publishing books with your students, this session has it all ! Adam uses personal classroom experiences to give you all the help you need to create engaging lessons that will excite your students about writing. Through easy modeling, engaging motivational activities, and simple, creative books, your students will be ready to write like never before!
Whoa! What Happened To Our Classroom?!
What?! Wow! Awesome! Those are words every teacher loves to hear, right? Adam's love of teaching combined with his creativity, had his students saying this quite often. Whether it's for a class party, book review, or to boost engagement, Adam's room flips are sure to excite even the most reluctant learners. Take a trip through a wild forest, go on a Pokemon hung, explore a bat cave, and more in this fun learning experience.
************************************************************************************************************************
Tammy Daniel is a reading specialist and national literacy consultant. She has twenty-eight years of experience in education, working as a classroom teacher, reading interventionist, and literacy coach. She understands the obstacles teachers are facing with meeting the needs of each student and knows the joy that comes when students become proficient and avid readers. That joy drove Tammy to step out of her classroom and enter the classrooms of others to offer support, knowledge, and resources to help her fellow teachers who are challenged with students with reading difficulties. Tammy has spent the past nine years working directly with teachers and administrators on implementing effective literacy instruction based on evidence-based practices. She is a National LETRS Trainer and a Board Member for The Reading League Oklahoma Chapter. Tammy’s diverse background in early childhood, elementary, and middle school education inspires her commitment to helping all students learn to read and read well. The dedicated work of fellow teachers inspires her, and it is her passionate mission to empower educators as they work together to diminish illiteracy in America.
Sessions:
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: The Road to Orthographic Mapping
Learning to read is hard for many children. Some students learn how to read easily, while others struggle with reading even basic words. This workshop will provide information about how reading develops in the brain and effective strategies that lead to proficient reading. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how word reading skills develop through phonemic awareness and systematic phonics instruction.
Sight Words: Beyond Flash Cards
For many students, learning sight words can be a labor intensive and frustrating task. This workshop will provide information that can help answer why some students struggle to recall words automatically, even after extensive practice. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how words are permanently stored and retrieved, as well as ways to help students develop a sight vocabulary that leads to greater word reading and fluency.
Reading Big Words: How to Connect Decoding and Vocabulary Instruction
Reading words with several syllables can be a stumbling block for many students. This leads students to resort to various strategies that are ineffective, such as guessing, skipping, or hoping someone will provide the word. This workshop will provide information on how to help students read multisyllabic words. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of how to teach students to decode big words and how to connect the learning to a simple vocabulary routine.
************************************************************************************************************************
Danny Brassell is a professor in the Teacher Education Department at California State University-Dominguez Hills, highly-sought national speaker and founder of The Lazy Readers’ Book Club (www.lazyreaders.com), Google’s #1-ranked site for cool “short book recommendations.” He is the author of over 50 journal and newspaper articles and eleven books, including A Baker’s Dozen of Lessons Learned from the Teaching Trenches. His television show People Make a Difference airs throughout Greater Los Angeles and on YouTube. Danny helps parents and educators inspire kids to love reading and achieve more. Danny has taught students ranging from preschoolers to rocket scientists, and he has worked with some of the world’s leading literacy experts, including: Stephen Krashen, Jim Trelease, Tim Rasinski, Lori Oczkus, Ruth Culham, Richard Gentry, Diane Lapp, Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, Jim Flood, Alan Sitomer, MaryEllen Vogt, Steve Layne, Valerie Ellery, Kelly Gallagher, Smokey Daniels, Frank Serafini and Donalyn Miller. During his time as a classroom teacher, reading tutor, non-profit leader, professor and educational administrator, Danny has incorporated his “reading secret” philosophy to great avail, including: • Training over 10,000 parents, volunteers and community leaders in a one-on-one approach to assist struggling and reluctant readers. • Consulting with top school districts on ways to boost student achievement and community morale. • Delivering presentations to promote reading to audiences, companies and business professionals from all over the world. Today, Danny is "America's Leading Reading Ambassador" and shares his incredible 20+ years of education experiences and success model to empower leaders, teams and audiences to achieve extraordinary results. Danny's keynotes and presentations have earned a reputation for being high energy, (sometimes theatrical) enthusiastic, creative, applicable and highly motivating. You can read more about Danny at https://dannybrassell.com/.
Sessions:
75 Reading Strategies in 75 Minutes
Discover 75 ways to get your students to read! Danny demonstrates fun activities you can use throughout
the day to motivate and inspire your students to become more proficient readers. You’ll learn how to
transform your classroom into a literacy center. And, discover the secrets to helping all students develop
a lifelong passion for reading.
Dare to Differentiate: 50 Terrific Teacher Tricks
Reinvigorate your passion for teaching! Join Danny in this eye-opening session to learn 50 terrific tricks
successful teachers have used to stimulate students’ interest in learning. You’ll learn how to incorporate
standards without sacrificing fun. And, leave with new songs, games and activities you can immediately
put to use in your classroom.
Comprehension That Works!
Comprehension is what reading is all about! Learn how to foster students’ comprehension by showing
them how to: focus on relevant information, interpret it and integrate it with what they already know. You’ll
learn how to create an instructional environment that promotes risk taking and involves students in a
variety of real reading situations – and meets standards. Your students will learn to focus on meaning as
thoughtful readers.