Session Highlights
First Lady Stacy Parkinson welcomed the group by talking about Banned Books, libraries, and her life-long love of reading. Susan Zimmerman, internationally known speaker and author provided the opening keynote/workshop on reading comprehension strategies. She did a wonderful job of breaking down the process into individual components such as visible and invisible ingredients; led us all in exercises illustrating those components; and provided valuable insights for teachers working with developing readers – not the least of which is reading should be joyful.
“Brain-based literacy instruction: partnering research with practice” was a session led by K-State’s own Dr. Laurie Curtis. She shared basic information and strategies for teaching and engaging students of all ages. Interesting tips that we can all use: Listening and speaking are “naturally” occurring systems- reading and writing are not! There is NO gene responsible for reading. Information is held for approximately 30 seconds unless continually rehearsed – or it is determined to be very important to the learner (we must be clear as to why students need to learn what we are teaching). Key factors in retaining information are: strong emotional content/low stress, multi-modal input, encoding into long-term memory through various pathways, must be relevant so it is retrievable.
The “Teaching ethical behavior instructional activities” session presented by Dr. Mirah Dow from SLIM put forth the following principles of information ethics: respect of intellectual property, respect for privacy, fair representation, and nonmaleficense. She presented example activities that librarians and/or teachers can use to foster ethical use of information.
Mark Tyler Nobleman was the afternoon keynote speaker who entertained us with behind the scenes stories of his books. His latest award-winning picture book is “Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman”.
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