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BAYLOR UNIVERSITY ELEMENTARY CONFERENCE Grades 2-6
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SESSION 8:30-11:00 AM
Reading Across Genres: Ways to Seek Meaning In and Between Texts
Tanny McGregor
We want our students to comprehend deeply while reading, making
meaning of the text. Their thinking doesn't have to stop there,
however. When students discover the "red threads" that run through
and between texts, their learning stretches far beyond the page and
into their lives. How can we encourage and support this kind of
extended meaning-making? On a practical level, how does this look
in our lessons? This session offers up a menu of options than span
text types.
#BUTAIR2015
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Conference Agenda
Registration 7:45-8:30 Paul and Jane Meyer Conference Center
1621 South 3rd Street
Second Floor, Rm. 250
Fruit, Pastries, and Coffee
Visit our exhibitors, meet old friends, and make new ones! Books
by Tanny McGregor, Sylvia Vardell, and Mark Ludy on sale at the BU
Bookstore exhibit.
Greetings & Announcements 8:30–8:45 Keynote Session
8:45–11:00
Tanny will sign books at 11:00 and 1:30 at the Author Signing
Table at the Baylor Bookstore
exhibit in the lobby of the Meyer Conference Center.
Lunch Break 11:00-12:30
A variety of restaurants are available near campus on Interstate
35 and in downtown Waco. Please take time during lunch to discuss
what you have learned so far about reading and writing with
informational text and how you will put it to work in your
classroom.
For those who do not want to bother with driving and hunting for
a new parking space, the following dining choices are available
within easy walking distance in the Bill Daniel Student Center
(BDSC):
Chick-Fil-A
Einstein Brothers Bagels
Mooyah Burgers & Fries
Panda Express (Chinese)
Freshii (Healthy Salads, Smoothies, etc.)
Afternoon Breakout Sessions 12:30-1:30 and 1:45-2:45 These
sessions will take place in the Bill Daniel Student Center (BDSC),
the School of Education (MMSci),
and the Meyer Center. See the map in the Afternoon Breakout
section for directions to the BDSC and MMSci.
Conference Evaluation & Certificate Pick Up at Meyer Center
3:00 - 3:30
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TAIR-A Proud Heritage and a Promising Future!
In November, 1946, the annual meeting of Texas State Teacher’s
Association convened with some 10,000 teachers and administrators
in attendance. Of those 10,000 teachers, only 20 attended the
Reading Sectional meeting. In order to address the apparent
indifference and apathy of Texas teachers concerning the pressing
problems in teaching children to read, these 20 teachers banded
together and elected Jewel Askew chairperson. They charged Ms.
Askew with planning a program to attract teachers to the TSTA
Reading Sectional meeting.
Cognizant of the fact that teachers of reading throughout the
state needed an organization which would provide an opportunity for
them to hear outstanding people in the field of reading, Jewel
Askew become acquainted with current research, materials, and
people to share successful instructional strategies at the
sectional meeting.
In 1947, 100 people were identified as reading leaders by
Superintendents of every school system in the state with 500 or
more students. These individuals agreed to undertake leadership
roles at the next conference by being discussion leaders,
consultants, or recorders during the Reading Sectional meeting.
On November 25, 1948, these same 100 participants met in
Dallas,Texas to discuss the seriousness of the problems they faced
in trying to improve reading programs in the schools across the
state. These problems were presented from the conference platform
the next morning, and a motion was made that a reading association
be organized. The audience members who were willing to support such
an organization through membership dues were asked to drop their
names and one dollar into a hat. 375 people responded and became
the charter members of the present Texas Association for the
Improvement of Reading (TAIR).
The First Annual Conference of Texas Association for the
Improvement of Reading was held on the campus of Sul Ross State
College in Alpine, Texas, in November 1949. The goal was set to
provide a reading conference that cost no more than $50 and was
within 200 miles of every teacher in the state.
Sul Ross University also hosted the second TAIR Conference, with
the University of Houston, Texas Southern University and West Texas
State University joining Sul Ross in offering TAIR conferences by
1952, and Pan American University and Southern Methodist University
in 1953. By 1970, TAIR Conferences were offered across the state on
13 different campuses.
TAIR conferences continue to serve Texas educators by offering
the opportunity to hear speakers relate the latest research in
reading methodology and reading assessment, authors of children’s
literature speak on the process of writing, and Texas teachers
present the effective strategies used in their classrooms.
The initial goal of the charter membership of TAIR to hold a
reading conference within reach of every teacher has been achieved.
Because of the support of outstanding teachers and administrators
and the dynamic leadership at both the state and local levels, TAIR
will continue its mission to teach all children of Texas to read.
TAIR – a proud heritage, a meaningful present, a promising
future.
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Afternoon Breakouts At A Glance (Some sessions are offered at
both breakout times to allow more flexibility in your choices.)
12:30-1:30 Breakout Titles and Locations
(Some sessions are offered at both breakout times to allow more
flexibility in your choices.)
Metacognition: The Transformative Power of Reflective
Thinking
Tanny McGregor in Meyer Center 250
Bringing Children’s Worlds & Literacy to Their Fingertips
Through 3-D Graphic Organizers
Judith Youngers in MMSci
Vocabulary and App Smashing Jessica Rogers and Sherry McElhannon
in MMSci
Featured Author: Is Poetry the “Liver” of Literature? Yes and
No!
Sylvia Vardell in the BDSC
Featured Author: Communicating Through Pictures and Words
Mark Ludy in the BDSC
Getting It Right with Writing Mini-Lessons
Angela Neal in the BDSC
Developing Writing Skills Through the Use of Mentor Text
Shay Garland in the BDSC
Creative Writing Shirley Strong in the BDSC
Featured Author: Flipping the Reading Classroom for Increased
Engagement and Achievement
Gina Pasisis in the BDSC
Behavior Management in the Classroom
Abby Hodges & Madison Cloud in the BDSC
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1:45 – 2:45 Breakout Titles and Locations (Some sessions are
offered at both breakout times to allow more flexibility in your
choices.)
Bringing Children’s Worlds & Literacy to Their Fingertips
Through 3-D Graphic Organizers
Judith Youngers in MMSci
Vocabulary and App Smashing Jessica Rogers and Sherry McElhannon
in MMSci
Featured Author: Is Poetry the “Liver” of Literature? Yes and
No!
Sylvia Vardell in the BDSC
Featured Author: Communicating Through Pictures and Words
Mark Ludy in the BDSC
Actively Engaged in Learning Lillian McEnery in the BDSC
Independent Reading: No Fake Reading Allowed
Melinda S. Butler in the BDSC
Children's Literature, Grades 2-6 A.J. Pitts in the BDSC
Bullying, Harmful Jokes, and Other Unnatural Acts:
Teaching for Human Kindness in the Elementary Classroom
Karon LeCompte, Lauren Bagwell, Mollie Musgrove in the BDSC
Top Ten Differentiation Practices In Reading Susan Johnsen in
the BDSC
Art, Poetry, and All That Jazz
Tanya Clark and Peggy Pritchett in the BDSC
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Maps & Directions for Afternoon Breakout Session Locations
Directions to Breakouts in MMSCi (School of Education)
We have located the two sessions in this building because of the
need for tables and reliable internet access. The School of
Education is housed in the south wing of MMSci, on your left as you
face the building from Fountain Mall. MMSci GL15 & GL16, where
these two sessions will take place, are located in the basement of
the School of Education To find these “buried treasures”, enter the
building and proceed to the lobby outside the dean’s office. Then
take the stairs or elevator in the School of Education wing down to
the SOE Learning Resource Center. (There is a staircase at the end
of the wing nearest the Fountain Mall, but the doors to access the
basement are locked for security reasons.) Proceed through the LRC
to the classroom area. GL 15 will be your left and GL 16 will be on
your right. These two sessions are well worth the effort of finding
them! School of Education (MMSci)
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(BDSC) Bill Daniel Student Center
Meyer Conference Center, Paul Foster School of Business and
Innovation
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BDSC Floor Plans
Bill Daniel Student Center (BDSC) Second Floor
Bill Daniel Student Center (BDSC) Third Floor
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Afternoon Breakout Sessions
Keynote Speaker’s Breakout Presentation Metacognition: The
Transformative Power of Reflective Thinking
12:30-1:30
Meyer Conference Center, Rm. 250 Tanny McGregor Do you want to
foster metacognition in your classroom? Do you need ideas to help
students make these abstract concepts visible and concrete? Let's
spend an hour exploring how to merge research and practice in
engaging ways students will love. Your students have brilliant
thinking. Let's help them reflect upon it and enable them to share
it with the world!
Tanny will sign books at 11:00 and 1:30 at the Author Signing
Table at the Baylor Bookstore exhibit in the lobby of the Meyer
Conference Center.
Bringing Children’s Worlds & Literacy to Their Fingertips
Through 3-D Graphic Organizers
12:30-1:30 & 1:45-2:45
MMSci Ground Level, GL 15 Judith Youngers, Dinah Zike
Academy
Children are knowledge and skill architects, building conceptual
structures through physical experiences. Ideally, we as educators
are designers or architects who help children design knowledge for
themselves. The connection between touch and understanding is
deeply instinctual, beginning in infancy and continuing, in varying
forms, throughout our lives. Experiments have found that touch is
as important as vision for learning and retaining information.
Using collaborative projects with simple envelopes, this session
will show how to help young children build portfolios for learning
that help bridge home and school, as well as word building,
comprehension, and hands-on bookmaking. You leave with a half dozen
examples that you construct onsite plus ideas to grow on!
Vocabulary and App Smashing 12:30-1:30 & 1:45-2:45
MMSci Ground Level, GL 16 Jessica Rogers and Sherry McElhannon,
Literary Fusions
Strong vocabulary is key to student success in all subject
areas. Using the vocabulary standards and versatile iOS apps,
teachers will learn to help students strengthen their content area
vocabulary by interacting with new words in an authentic
environment in order to build a strong foundation for instruction.
This session will help participants understand the vocabulary
standards, the basics of combining two or more apps to create a
more meaningful product, and provide practical ideas to help
teachers app smash their way to a stronger vocabulary for their
students.
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Featured Author: Is Poetry the “Liver” of Literature? Yes and
No! Sponsored by the Baylor School of Education Learning Resource
Center
12:30-1:30 & 1:45-2:45 Beckham Room, 2nd Floor, BDSC Sylvia
Vardell, Texas Women’s University
Poetry offers a rich tradition that begins on the playground and
with Mother Goose and is meant to be heard, to be shared aloud and
talked about, providing a social connection as well as a language
experience and a bridge from oral language to reading and writing.
Poetry deepens comprehension by providing vivid imagery and sensory
language and offers an emotional and experiential connection. This
session will provide guidance in how to share poetry with children
and teach the skills within the curriculum as well in a variety of
playful, meaningful, and participatory ways.
Sylvia Vardell will sign books from 2:45 to 3:00 at the author
table near the Baylor Bookstore sales area on the second floor of
the Bill Daniel Student Center.
Featured Author: Communicating Through Pictures and Words
Sponsored by the Baylor Bookstore
12:30-1:30 & 1:45-2:45
Baines Room, 2nd Floor, BDSC Mark Ludy
There is power in pictures and there is power in words.
Harnessing this power is the worthy pursuit of the communicator. -
Allow yourself the opportunity to be encouraged and challenged in
this presentation by Illustrator, Author and Publisher of Picture
Books, Mark Ludy (Creator of 'The Flower Man' & 'Noah; A
Wordless Picture Book'). His unique perspective and stories alone
are worth the price of admission. Not one to miss!
Mark Ludy will sign books from 2:45 to 3:00 at the author table
near the Baylor Bookstore sales area on the second floor of the
Bill Daniel Student Center.
Featured Author: Flipping the Reading Classroom for Increased
Engagement and Achievement
12:30-1:30
Cowden Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Gina Pasisis, Connally ISD &
Scholastic Have you ever wanted to duplicate yourself so that you
could simultaneously support one student in finding the main idea
while demonstrating an inference-making strategy to another? Come
learn how an iPad or smartphone will allow you to do just that. In
this session, we will explore how flipping your lessons can provide
differentiation that will lead to higher engagement and
achievement. You will learn simple ways to record mini lessons that
students can watch at home, in stations, or anytime they need to
observe you thinking aloud while employing a reading strategy.
Gina Pasisis will sign books from 1:30-1:45 at the author table
near the Baylor Bookstore sales area on the second floor of the
Bill Daniel Student Center.
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Behavior Management in the Classroom 12:30-1:30
White Room, 2nd Floor, BDSC Abby Hodges & Madison Cloud,
Baylor University As teachers, we strive to help our students learn
in a positive, productive classroom atmosphere, but this can be
very challenging. The proposed presentation will present some easy
to implement strategies that will help to make your classroom a
more positive and effective learning environment. We will cover
topics such as the four functions of behavior, the principles of
good classroom rules, effective transition times, and other
behavior management techniques such as self-monitoring. These
strategies will help to alleviate some of the stress associated
with behavioral challenges in the classroom.
Getting It Right with Writing Mini-Lessons
12:30-1:30
Houston Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Angela Neal, ESC Region XII A
mini-lesson is one essential component in the Writing Workshop
framework. During this session, participants will explore a variety
of lessons and learn about the different components of an effective
mini-lesson. Participants will also learn strategies and techniques
for teaching mini-lessons to help students become confident,
successful writers.
Developing Writing Skills Through the Use of Mentor Text
12:30-1:30
Lipscomb Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Shay Garland, ESC Region XII
Teach your students how to become writing superstars by showing
them how to imitate the professionals. Every piece of text your
students read is a writing lesson waiting to be explored. Join me
in a hands-on, interactive session where we delve into a variety of
texts that will allow your students to begin looking at reading
with a new lens: a writer's eye.
Creative Writing
12:30-1:30
Claypool Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Shirley Strong, ESC Region XII
Creative writing is an excellent way to expand students’ thinking
and develop their academic strengths. It allows students to
stimulate their imagination, clarify their thinking, and explore
tools of artistic expression while engaging in unique academic
writing tasks which foster the development of style. Come to this
session to learn various creative writing assignments that will
challenge and grow your students as emerging writers.
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Actively Engaged in Learning 1:45-2:45
Fentress Room, 2nd Floor, BDSC Lillian McEnery, University of
Houston-Clear Lake Join us in a hands-on session that will provide
participants with creative and meaningful ways to invite students
into the learning process. Come ready to cut, fold, and share your
ideas for extending upon basic activities that can be adapted to
suit various grade levels and subjects. We will explore the use of
graphic organizers, foldables, flip books, and active matching
activities within the context of various genres. Each participant
will leave with a simple model toolkit for use in various content
areas.
Independent Reading: No Fake Reading Allowed 1:45-2:45
White Room, 2nd Floor, BDSC Melinda S Butler, Humble ISD &
Sam Houston State University This presentation will present
independent reading as an integral component of Reading Workshop.
It will include ideas and suggestions for developing reading
stamina, eliminating fake reading, building and organizing
classroom libraries, and supporting student choice. Additionally,
the role of the teacher during independent will be discussed. This
presentation will provide a window into real public school
classrooms where independent reading occurs.
Children’s Literature Grades 2-6
1:45-2:45
Lipscomb Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC A.J. PItts, ESC Region XII Ready
to update your go to books for reading and writing instruction?
Join us for a review of newly published books as well as a few old
treasures. Participants will leave with an extensive list of book
titles that can be used in daily instruction.
Top Ten Differentiation Practices in Reading 1:45-2:45
Cowden Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Susan Johnsen, Baylor University
What are the top ten instructional practices that are effective in
differentiating instruction in reading? How might teachers
implement these practices in their classroom? This presentation
will highlight these differentiation practices and provide
classroom examples that will help teachers address the needs of
advanced and gifted students in reading.
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Bullying, Harmful Jokes, and Other Unnatural Acts: Teaching for
Human Kindness in the Elementary Classroom
1:45-2:45
Houston Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Karon LeCompte, Lauren Bagwell,
and Mollie Musgrove Baylor University
Bullying and harmful acts by human beings are complex problems.
A common image of bullying might be of a physically intimidating
child beating up a smaller classmate. While that is still
considered bullying, it's important to know that bullying behaviors
can be much more multifaceted and varied than historical
stereotypes. Much bullying, in fact, involves a group against an
individual seen as different. In this session, we offer a
demonstration of strategies using children’s literature and poetry
that encourage young students to recognize acts of kindness and
accept that differences are part of the beauty of our human
family.
Art, Poetry, and All That Jazz
1:45-2:45
Claypool Room, 3rd Floor, BDSC Tanya Clark and Peggy Pritchett,
Midway ISD This session will demonstrate how art, poetry, and music
can deliver content and develop academic language of ELLs in a
meaningful context of integrated disciplines that simultaneously
appease cognitive and emotional parts of the brain. Visual arts and
music, historically strongly intersected in their influence on the
human mind, are particularly critical and effective in creating
non-threating opportunities for the development of all four
language modalities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Picasso and Matisse can stimulate an intellectual reflection and
provide a first connection with text, whether it is a Greek myth,
Aesop’s fable, or a Shel Silverstein poem.
Conference Evaluation & Certificate Pick Up
Meyer Conference Center 3:00 - 3:30 Please fill out the
conference evaluation form and sign to document your afternoon
attendance at the
conference. We would appreciate it if you would return your name
tags for recycling as you turn your form in. You may then pick up
your certificate and head for home.
Thank you for coming to TAIR!
We hope you enjoyed it and plan to return next year!
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Who is at Baylor TAIR this year?
Anderson-Shiro CISD
Aquilla ISD
Arlington ISD
Axtell ISD
Baylor University
Belton ISD
Bruceville-Eddy ISD
Chilton ISD
China Spring ISD
Connally ISD
Copperas Cove ISD
ESC Region XII
Groesbeck ISD
Harmony Public Schools
Hays CISD
Hillsboro First Baptist Church
Houston ISD
Humble ISD
Itasca ISD
Keene ISD
Killeen ISD
Lampasas ISD
La Vega ISD
Lewisville ISD
Literary Fusions
Lorena ISD
Mart ISD
McGregor ISD
Melissa ISD
Mesquite ISD
Mexia ISD
Midway ISD
Orenda Charter School
Rapoport Academy
Robinson ISD
Round Rock ISD
Salado ISD
Sam Houston State University
Second Baptist Church School, Houston
St. Mary’s West
Texas Juvenile Justice Department
Troy ISD
Texas Women’s University
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Vikan Middle School, Brighton, CO
Waco Baptist Academy
Waco ISD
West ISD
