North Carolina Reading Association Conference 2014

On March 18th, I led a workshop at NCRA called, “A Writer’s Toolbox and How to Apply It In the Classroom.” Here’s the official description:

See inside author Shannon Hitchcock’s Writer’s Toolbox. Learn how to use an idea folder, writing prompts, and even an egg timer to engage your students. Shannon will touch on all parts of the writing process: idea generation, first drafts, revision, fact checking, proofreading, and how to be a successful critique partner. She will share how professional writers approach these tasks and how those strategies can be adapted for the classroom.

Another favorite workshop was “Exploring Untold Stories of WWII through Text Sets,” taught by grad student, Emily Roderique and Dr. Jeanne Swafford both from UNC Wilmington. A text set is a collection of resources, (articles, photographs, brochures, websites etc), focused on a common topic, theme, or anchor text. Emily says text sets have some great advantages:

1. They give reluctant readers access to a variety of interesting texts and texts of varying levels of difficulty.
2. Text sets foster collaboration among teachers, (cross-disciplinary projects).