The Conference of Independent Teachers of English
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Morning Session |
Afternoon Session |
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1. | Curious Conversations With advances in technology, we are finding ourselves in a conversation crisis. Hiding behind texts, emails and social media, conversational skills are the most important skills students are struggling to engage in, impacting how teachers teach and students learn. This interactive session will explore how using curiosity in real time conversations helps us to be open and non-judging so we can better understand each other, test assumptions, give quality feedback, thrive in conflict, and generate interactive discussions to improve the way students learn. Kirsten Siggins is the author of The Power Of Curiosity: How To Have Real Conversations That Create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding (Morgan James 2015). She works as a facilitator, coach, trainer, and speaker in leadership development and with young leaders through The Children’s Hospital Young Women Working Together Leadership Institute in Los Angeles. She is passionate about working with parents, teachers and teens sharing the Curiosity Skills to keep them curious and connected in all conversations. |
Outkast and Outcasting: Critical Literacy and the Multimedia Knowing of Others The current era has been labeled "post-truth" and "post-fact." While the strict accuracy of those terms might be debated, it's unquestionably a time in which media messages, in a variety of formats, contribute to what students understand, particularly about others with whom they have little contact. Critical literacy is an approach to troubling the sources of (mis)representation and collecting information from across formats and sources so that a more authentic understanding might be reached. The session will include a general, theoretical introduction to critical literacy as well as a practical lesson with resources, from music videos to canonical fiction, that you can bring back to your classrooms to invite students to question what they know about whom and how they've come to know. Jonathan Arendt completed his PhD at the University of Toronto after teaching in a variety of school contexts in the US South, from the rural to the suburban metro to a youth prison and the experiences informed his academic interest in the field of representation, particularly of the most socially vulnerable and stigmatized. Now in his fourth year at Crescent, he teaches Upper School English. |
2. | High Performance Public Speaking How do we nurture our students' ability to comfortably and confidently speak in public? This workshop approaches public speaking as an exercise in performance, applying dramatic techniques and rooting the quality of the message in the passions and interests of the student speakers. Tim Evans is a teacher, performer, director and all-round lover of life. He is a Middle School Drama educator who strives to create meaningful performance opportunities for his 160 students including public speaking competitions, air band championships, improv comedy showcases, theatrical productions and more. |
A Framework for Peer and Self Evaluations: How Constructive Criticism Can Improve Work Ethic and Collaboration in Your Classroom This workshop examines how to use peer feedback and self-evaluation as a means to success in your classroom. We will look at ways of effectively scaffolding peer evaluations into your classroom and leveraging safe conversations as a means to improve of the quality and intent within student work. We will provide a self- and peer-evaluation framework for teachers to use in their classroom in hopes that we can begin to shift the focus of students from the product to the process. Carson McGregor is a Media Arts and Geography teacher at Crescent School. His research into peer- and self-reflection was conducted as part of the 2015/2016 IBSC Action Research program. |
3. | The Difficult Conversation: Teaching Highly Charged Material Artist educators from the Studio 180 theatre company will work with you to help you generate discussion, encourage critical thinking, explore multiple viewpoints, promote empathy and inspire creativity among your students when teaching highly charged material. They will use engaging techniques like sociometrics (value proposition) exercises, hot seating and improvisation. Studio 180 Theatre launched in 2003 with the acclaimed Canadian premiere of The Laramie Project and have since evolved from an informal artistic collective into one of Toronto’s most respected independent professional theatre companies, responsible for the Canadian premieres of renowned international works like NSFW, Cock, Clybourne Park, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, Stuff Happens, Blackbird, The Overwhelming and Our Class. |
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4. | The Blues and the Sonnet: A Study in Closed Form Genres From Robert Johnson to Gary Clark Jr. and Petrarch to Seamus Heaney, we will look at how familiarity with the blues and its popular music derivations can open up a study of the sonnet. Participants will briefly discuss the histories of both forms as well as similarities in form and content. Participants will receive urls of classic blues performances and a package containing a selection of poems illustrating the history of the sonnet as well as some supporting materials. Colin Lowndes is the recently retired Deputy Headmaster of Crescent School and long time teacher of English at Upper Canada College and Crescent School. |
From Pen to Presentation: Students Orally Defending their Writing Being able to defend your writing means you are aware of its attributes, weaknesses, and potentials. This process of oral defence has a long tradition at the graduate school level, and has a useful application at the high school level. Oral defence conferences with a teacher (or a panel of teachers/students) empowers learners to explain what they are trying to say in their writing while receiving immediate feedback from the instructor; through oral self-assessment and metacognition, they also discover shortfalls in their thought-processes and writing style. This workshop will explore three approaches to oral defence of student writing: 1) Oral Thesis Defence, 2) Student-Curated Portfolio Conference, and 3) Panel Thesis Defence. Jeremy Johnston is the Subject Coordinator of the English department at Hillfield Strathallan College, where he has taught English and Classical Studies for 15 years. Jeremy is currently completing a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Pedagogy at Western University and in April 2016, he will also be taking a three month research sabbatical to investigate entrepreneurialism and innovation in the English classroom. |
5. | Checking Assessment off the List: Growing tired of rubrics? This dynamic workshop will explore a variety of ways to create checklists and chec-brics to record assessments and evaluations through observation and conversation. Using a checklist to stream your assessments will make for easier reading and more direct improvements in student learning. Technological tools and templates that align with Growing Success will be shared with participants. Ashleigh Woodward is Primary & Junior Division Lead Teacher at MacLachlan College. She is completing her M.Ed at OISE in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning and is an IB Educator Network member. She has worked with students from K-12 and this year is teaching grade 11 AP Language in addition to her grade 1 homeroom. |
Pen Pals No More: Feedback Via Conversations This workshop will focus on how to increase the quality and quantity of verbal feedback we exchange with our students. In particular, we'll explore techniques to enhance coaching conversations, writers' workshops, as well as tech integration and documentation of student learning in connection with feedback dialogue. Jennifer Goldberg teaches English at Havergal College, and is a feedback mega-nerd. Believing that feedback holds the promise of incredible opportunity and yet also the threat of much suffering, Jennifer has been fortunate to study the assessment cycle through Havergal’s Chair of Teaching and Learning program. She looks forward to this chance to share her ideas, and to hear others’ strategies for making feedback more effective and efficient. |
6. | Life On Both Sides Of The Fishbowl In this presentation, we will outline the "Fishbowl" assessment technique. This authentic and engaging model consistently gets rave reviews from students for the opportunity it gives them to demonstrate oral communication skills and curricular knowledge in an informal setting. Since it is an assessment using conversation and observation, it also helps come Ministry inspection time. Chris Jull is the Head of English at Crestwood Preparatory College. A Canadian literature nerd, he loves teaching Ondaatje, Michaels, Shields and Macdonald to his Grade 10-12 students. He also convenes the CISAA Curling leagues, moderates the Chess Club and leads Crestwood Voices, the staff-student chamber choir. This is Chris’s second time presenting at CITE. |
Flash Debates and Building Argumentation In this session, we will work through quick, fun and effective protocols that you can easily and adapt and use in your classroom the next day. We will focus on building argumentation skills through flash debates as participants practice protocols for debate and methods of coaching partner talk during those debates. They will learn strategies to focus students on seeking and analyzing evidence and logic. These debate protocols encourage students to state big, bold claims or positions, gather more specific details and quotes as evidence, ranking the evidence, and finally correlating evidence with reason. Ultimately, these skills support students in building argumentation in a low stakes, fun manner before we ask them to move to high stakes experiences like essays and exams. If we can’t say it, we can’t write it! Danielle Ganley is in her 21st year of teaching and has spent the last 15 as an English teacher at Holy Trinity School. Her current focus is building a culture of readers in a digital age. In recent years, Danielle’s roles have included building a senior school writing centre, an Ed-tech coaching position for Cohort 21, a professional growth coach, and an educational trainer for Apple Canada. |