2018 Annual Literacy Conference for Teachers Attracts +350 Southern California Educators

The UCI Writing Project held its 24th Annual Literacy Conference for K-12 Teachers on December 6, 2019, at the UCI Student Center. The 2018 theme was "Creating Engaged Learning Experiences for Readers and Writers." Over 350 educators from Southern California attended for a day of keynote presentations, breakout sessions, reconnecting, and networking.

The conference opened with a welcome from Dean of the School of Education Richard Arum and from conference host Professor Carol Booth Olson, Director of the UCI Writing Project.

​The morning keynote was delivered by Cris Tovani: "Ramping Up Engagement: Capturing the Mind, Heart, and Drive of Students."

​After a refreshments break, participants had a choice among eight workshop offerings, followed by lunch:

• Rethink, Revise, RENEW: Using a Thinking Framework to Critically Examine, Renew, and Authenticate Our Practice as Teachers of Student Writers, Grades K-8, with Shawna Coppola
• Agents of Imagination: Using Poetry to Trigger Students’ Imagination, Develop Their Ability to Read Complex Text, and Inspire Them to Write Their Own Poems, Grades K-12, with Carol Jago
• Thinking Tools for Young Readers and Writers: Strategies for Teaching Narrative, Informational, and Argumentative Writing, Grades 2-8, with Angie Balius, Emily McCourtney, and Mary Widtmann
• Teaching Reading or Teaching Content – What’s the Right Balance? Strategies to Help Students Access Increasingly Complex Text, Grades 4-12, with Cris Tovani
• From Theory to Practice: Teaching the Conversations of Grammatical Choices, Grades 4-12, with Gretchen Bernadei
• Go Beyond the 4 Cs and Encourage the 5th C: Curiosity and Sustained Inquiring for Student-Centered Learning, Grades 4-12, with Heather Wolpert-Gawron
• The Six Academic Writing Assignments and How to Improve Them through an Academic Writing Assignment Framework, Grades 6-12, with Jim Burke
• Creating and Cultivating a Culture of Argument and Civic Literacy, Grades 6-12, with Beth Rimer

The afternoon keynote address was delivered by Ralph Fletcher: "Re-energizing the Writing Classroom by Lifting the Chill and Re-igniting the Spark."

Afternoon workshop options included the following: 

• Rewriting Redefined: Broadening What Kind of Writing “Counts” in School by Honoring the Compositional Work of Students, Including Multimodel Forms of Composition, Grades K-8, with Shawna Coppola
• Strategies for Teaching and Writing a Memorable Memoir, Grades 4-12, with Ralph Fletcher
• Thinking Tools for Young Readers and Writers: Best Practices for Engaging Students and Promoting Higher Literacy, Including the Mystery Trash Challenge, Grades 2-8, with Angie Balius; Projects by Emily McCourtney and Mary Widtmann
• Kernel Essays for Autonomy: Teaching Students to Become Self-Regulating Designers of Their Writing, Grades 4-12, with Gretchen Bernabei
• ​Leveraging Project-Based Learning to Engage Students in Rigorous Narrative, Informative, and Argumentative Writing, Grades 4-12, with Heather Wolpert-Gawron
• The Book in Question: Why and How Reading is in Crisis and Strategies for Helping Reluctant Readers Engage with Texts, Grades 6-12, with Carol Jago
• The Expert Project: Going Deep in a Year-Long Investigation of One Topic Using Multiple Text Types, Grades 6-12, with Jim Burke
• Elevating Student Voice and Choice in Writing Informed Arguments for Solution-Based Civic Action with the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP), with Beth Rimer

The 25th Annual Literacy Conference for Teachers will be held in December 2019 at UC Irvine.