Teacher/Librarain In-Service Examples
Teaching the Common Core with Young Adult Literature
The National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance held a conference called In Search of Wonder: The Common Core and More. This was a day long celebration of reading with well known authors such as Chris Crutcher, Katherine Paterson, Steven Kellogg, and Nikki Grimes. Tanya Lee Stone. The event was held on NEOEA Day and teachers and librarians were invited to participate in this in-service program.
One part of the conference was to provide professional development for the attendees with ideas and ways to incorporate these authors' writing into their curriculum. I was lucky enough to create a unit designed around the Common Core that could be used with Chris Crutcher and his books, specifically Period 8.
Information about the event can be found here.
A downloadable version of the guide that I created can be found here.
Photograph of Author Chris Crutcher © 2014 David Rzeszotarski
Photograph by Verdi Photography
Photograph by Verdi Photography
Creating a Writers Group Within Your School
The purpose of this workshop is to show librarians, media specialists, and teachers how to create a Writer’s Group with the students at his/her school. Students are using the written words as a way to express themselves and explore the world around them. Whether it is with poetry, short stories, song lyrics, graphic novels, fan fiction, or creative non-fiction, students are doing it and most schools don’t offer a lot of Creative Writing opportunity. Creating a writing group would provide a place where teens can come and brainstorm, write, share ideas and work. Participants will learn how to start their own writing group through firsthand accounts from my own experiences starting a group at my school. They will learn about how to start one up, how to attract writers to the group, ideas to get your group writing and talking with each other, and ways to share their work.
View the entire in-service with worksheets here.
In-Service Proposal:
Nice to Meet You – Connecting Your Students to the Authors They Love
Proposal Description:
Have you ever wished that your students could finish reading a book and talk to the author? Wouldn’t it be incredible to participate in a FaceTime conversation where your students could ask questions they wondered while reading? Imagine what insights your students could gain by not just discussing a book with each other but bringing the author into the conversation.
What if we told you it was possible? And that in fact, there are many MG & YA authors out there who love connecting with their readers.
In this presentation, YA & MG author Rachele Alpine and School Media Specialist Jodi Rzeszotarski will show you how to make it possible for your students to communicate with their favorite authors all while spending little to no money.
We’ll share real life examples of how we’ve “brought” authors to our students, provide ways that your students can use social media, e-mail, and even good old fashion snail mail to reach out and communicate with their favorite authors, and we give specific contact information of authors we know want to hear from your students!
Proposal Abstract :
Authors are often viewed as someone removed from your students. But what if they don’t have to be? We’ll show you how to connect your students to their favorite authors through social media, e-mail, and old fashion snail mail to continue the conversation about a book long after it’s finished.
In-Service Proposal:
Publishing a Book While Teaching: The Inside Scoop!
Proposal Description:
This session will tell you everything you wanted to know about becoming a writer from the real life experience of a YA & MG author. I’ll talk about the process from first sitting down and actually finding time to write while teaching, to getting an agent, selling your book, and the revision and marketing process. I’ll provide examples of my early pages of drafting, query letters to agents, my agent’s letters to editors, and plenty of other personal information that will help any teacher interested in publishing or hoping to connect their students to the world of book publishing. If you’ve ever thought about writing a novel or just wondered how a book makes it to the shelf, this session will explain it all!
Proposal Abstract:
If you’ve ever thought about publishing or just wondered how a book makes it to the shelf, this presentation will explain it all! You’ll learn how to find time to write while teaching and go through the process of getting an agent and selling your book to revising and marketing.