Keith Polette's Topic Descriptions

Keith Polette's Topics

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This workshop will present practical ideas for implementing effective writing activities in the Language Arts classroom. This workshop will focus on how a literature-based, process approach to teaching writing can help all students become more successful, knowledgeable, and self-directed writers. As such, this workshop will present functional, ready-to-use "best practices" for teaching students to write sentences, patterns, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Since the workshop is grounded in the notion that we learn best by doing, workshop participants will engage in a number of writing activities throughout the day.

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On the Wings of Words: A Mindful Approach to Guided Reading

This powerful seminar will present practical ideas and strategies that will enable all language arts students to develop and strengthen essential literacy skills. This seminar will focus on how specific, literature-based activities can engender the love of reading and promote active learning. The specific areas to be addressed are: ways to build a strong vocabulary, strategies for critical reading of fiction and nonfiction, and techniques to enhance reading fluency through oral language development.

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Reading Nonfiction Critically and Research Without Copying

This workshop will present exciting, practical strategies that will help students learn to love reading nonfiction while becoming stronger critical readers. Additionally, this workshop will demonstrate specific ways to use informational books as the basis for research and writing activities that stop students from copying by encouraging them to use high level thinking skills.

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Creative Reading: Developing Essential Literacy Skills
with Innovative Activities

    This dynamic, interactive session will present a wealth of practical, classroom-tested ideas to help all language arts students strengthen their abilities to read creatively and effectively. This session will focus on how reading is a creative activity, one where readers generate powerful meanings.   Activities in this session will enable students to enhance essential literacy skills, recover the love of reading, develop higher order thinking skills, and discover new levels of confidence.
    Grounded in a synthesis of ideas presented in works by Jerome Bruner, Howard Gardner, Kieran Eigan, Langer, Jane Healy, Maxine Greene, Karen Gallas, Guy Claxton, and my own book, Read and Write It Out Loud (Allyn & Bacon, 2004), this dynamic, interactive session will present a wealth of practical, researched-based and classroom-tested ideas to help all language arts students strengthen their abilities to read creatively.
    Reading is a creative activity, one that, when done effectively, involves the confluence of both imagination and cognition. This workshop will define the essential features of creative reading and will then present specific, literature-based activities that guide students to developing creative reading skills.
    This session will also focus on how reading is a creative activity, one where readers generate powerful meanings.   Activities in this session will enable students to enhance essential literacy skills, discover the love of reading, develop higher order thinking skills, and discover new levels of confidence.

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The Pleasures & Power of Poetry

Need a boxcar-load of ideas to get your language arts students to develop and strengthen an appreciation and understanding of poetry? The focus of this workshop is on how to bring poetry to life, how to help students become involved readers of poetry, how to teach students to read-as-writers, how to use poems as “touchstone texts,” and how to teach students to create their own poems.

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The Joys of Nonfiction

Students often get bogged down when they tackle nonfictional texts. This workshops will demonstrate ways to enable all language arts students to develop the essential skills they need to read and write nonfiction. "Best practices" will also be shared in these areas: techniques for setting purposes before reading, strategies for developing comprehension, ways to write nonfiction, and methods to stop the copying when students write research reports

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Building Literacy Through Oral Language, Drama, and Storytelling

Put literacy on stage in your classroom! This workshop will show you how to help your students develop key literacy skills through oral language, drama, and storytelling. Because students become more literate when they internalize language presented in dramatic ways, they need clear access to those strategies that will help them do so. This workshop will focus on the following: ways to read aloud to students, how to teach students how to read aloud expressively, how and why to use drama in the classroom, techniques for introducing drama, techniques for improvisation, and strategies for storytelling.

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Dynamic Vocabulary Activities

This session will present a barrel-full of effective, dynamic, and divergent activities to help students build strong working vocabularies. Because the basis for reading and writing success rest on a strong foundation of words, students must have energetic and innovative ways to acquire and internalize new words. This session will provide examples of activities that will help student develop the strong linguistic foundations they need to become successful readers and writers of texts.

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Higher Order Literacy: G/T Language Arts Strategies

Spice up your G/T curriculum with higher order literacy! This fun, dynamic, and interactive workshop will deliver a plethora of ideas to help all G/T language arts students develop and strengthen higher order reading and writing skills. This workshop will focus on "exemplary practices" to help G/T students develop higher order thinking skills and engage in active learning. Specific areas to be addressed are: new ways to develop reading fluency, deep comprehension, writing skills, and vocabulary development.

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Clamor for Grammar!: Activities to Develop Writer’s Craft

The focus of this workshop is on teaching students to understand and use the 17 essential elements of grammar in their writing. When students consciously learn to use these 17 elements of grammar, they will develop the essential skills that will enable them to write consciously, powerfully, effectively, and confidently.

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Strategies for Struggling Readers

What to do when students become dazed and confused by what they are trying to read? Use new, explicit reading techniques that help struggling readers develop the skills they need to become independent readers. This workshop will demonstrate powerful, effective, and ready-to-use “best practices” to help all students become successful, critical readers. This workshop will also focus on the essential elements of successful reading, on cutting-edge techniques for promoting student success, and on ways to evaluate student achievement.

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Keynote Addresses:

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"How Students Think and What We Can Do About It!"
A fun and entertaining presentation on learning styles.

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"Expect Surprises, but Surprise Expectations!"
Being a teacher is full of surprises, but the most effective teachers constantly surprise their students. This keynote offers funny anecdotes from the teaching life and a few powerful examples of how we can best surprise our students.

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"What Story Are You From?"
Everyone has a story, and this very entertaining presentation focuses on the power of stories and how we can use them in the classroom to create a love of literacy.