9:30 am-10:40 am | Churchill A

Maximizing the Benefits of Sound Walls in the Classroom: A Practical Guide 

The incorporation of Sound Walls in classrooms has rapidly gained popularity nationwide. As this innovative educational approach becomes more prevalent, there is a growing need for educators to understand the correct way to implement them and harness their potential for enhancing phonics and spelling instruction.

In this session, we aim to equip you with the knowledge and tools required to effectively integrate your phonics lessons and spelling instruction with the Sound Wall throughout your daily teaching routines.

All attendees will receive a comprehensive implementation checklist, complete with detailed explanations on how to seamlessly align your phonics curriculum and spelling lessons with the Sound Wall. Join us to take a step closer to ensuring the success of this innovative educational practice in your classroom.

9:30 am-10:40 am | Jefferson Ballroom

The Many Facets of Reading Comprehension: Where Does Strategy Fit?

Reading comprehension is multifaceted and, as such, requires a multifaceted instructional approach. While teaching strategies is only one aspect of that instruction, is it important?  YES!  Teaching reading comprehension strategies has been shown to be effective, so what do we know about how that instruction looks?

This session addresses the need for brief instruction that engages students in strategic actions designed to develop monitoring skills and flexibility in navigating text in order to create that “mental model” of understanding. We'll examine: what leading experts have concluded about comprehension strategy instruction, what processes, when to teach, and how, and using the gradual release approach with a model lesson in teaching inference.

1:25 pm-2:25 pm | St. James Ballroom

Sounds of Play: Integrating Phonemic Awareness and Sound Walls in Early Childhood

This session will cover the importance of phonemic awareness. Attendees will come to understand why phonemic awareness is a vital component of early literacy and how it complements the natural play-based learning process. You will discover practical and engaging methods to introduce and practice the 44 speech sounds within the context of an early childhood classroom.

We'll explore sound walls in action and learn how to seamlessly integrate them into your teaching environment to reinforce phonemic awareness. This session will also cover scaffolding the learning process as we share techniques to support students as they progress in their phonemic awareness journey.

11:05 am-12:15 pm | Churchill D

Phonology, Cross-Linguistic Connections, and the English Learner

This session will focus on phonological cross-linguistic connections between languages, especially between English and Spanish, how confusion may exist for many, and how these confusions can manifest themselves in orthographic misrepresentations. Demonstrations will be facilitated through classroom sound walls. The same approaches and connections will be made using a consonant chart and the vowel valley in Spanish.

3:10 pm-4:20 pm | Jackson

Teaching Beyond Decodables  

Teaching beyond decodables, means understanding the importance of language to build foundational literacy skills, and integrating both sides of The Simple View of Reading as we teach (Gough and Tunmer, 1986). As we develop language, we give students pegs on which to hang their word recognition skills and when we build word recognition skills, we give students access to the words that will open them up to the world of comprehension. 

This interactive session will provide many examples of explicit activities that combine language with word recognition.

If Zap, the cat can lap his milk, then let’s teach the multiple meanings of the word lap and expand a young student’s vocabulary. If a story is about two friends, we will use paired readings about friendships to support the theme of the simple text, while expanding the language and building knowledge of the world.

We also know that language mediates social emotional learning, so as we develop language, we will learn to find SEL touchstones in the stories our students are reading. Addressing these touchstones deepens engagement and connection and leads to greater motivation, leading to the increased practice needed to make reading fun, meaningful, and effortless.

 Noon-1:15 pm | Churchill D

Moving Towards a Community of Effective Practices for English Learners  

We have over five million English learners in U.S. schools nationwide, all with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, making each learner's language acquisition journey unique. The instructional approaches and resources chosen must match the cognitive and linguistic workload faced by our language learners.

This session will focus on positioning instructional approaches based on the linguistic assets of our learners; the academic quality of instruction; utilizing valid assessments, and other data systems to respond to the strengths and needs of ELs and their communities; and ensuring the foundational reading skills are taught with adjustments and scaffolds.  

Questions?

Please contact us at sales@95percentgroup.com