This one-day workshop is designed for elementary teachers, instructional coaches, literacy coaches, administrators, after-school specialists, tutors, and anyone else who would like to better understand how children learn to read and how to put conditions and teaching in place to support positive reading development. It is especially important for educators to understand for themselves about complex processes of learning to read as the topic gets politicized in media and schools begin make big changes to their literacy curricula.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Learn about the research-based, five-part framework for teaching reading
• Examine and practice the five-part framework
• Analyze their own teaching across the framework
• Design learning opportunities for students to use critical literacy
• Understand the shifting political context of "teaching reading" over the last 20 years;
• Create a concrete plan for individualizing reading instruction for “struggling” readers and enhancing literacy for all students.

Workshop Facilitator: Stephanie Jones

Jones is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia in the Mary Frances Early College of Education. Her research focuses on social class and poverty with an emphasis on creating justice-oriented and classsensitive curriculum, teaching, classrooms, and schools. She is co-director of the Red Clay Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and is author or co-author of more than 50 publications including books, articles, book chapters, and newspaper editorials. Her most recent co-authored book is Writing and Teaching to Change the World: Connecting With Our Most Vulnerable Students, which she wrote with practicing K-12 teachers in Georgia.