On April 25th-26th I had the privilege of presenting at the 2013 Saskatchewan Reading Conference in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. They have had the snowiest winter in history in Saskatchewan and there was still snow on the ground when the plane landed! The venue for the conference was a hockey rink – home of the WHL Moose Jaw Warriors. I made a lot of connections as I spend many hours in hockey rinks with my boys! This was a first for me, however, presenting a workshop in one! When I saw the back doors opening up during my presentation, I thought “Uh-oh – the zamboni is coming!” When I told my son Oliver about the venue the only thing he wanted to know was: “Was your face on the Jumbo Tron?”
The event was attended by over 300 teachers and several extremely well respected speakers with whom I felt privileged to be among – including Kylene Beers/Bob Probst (authors of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading) Sue Jackson (Scholastic’s National Literacy Consultant), David Booth (author of Reading Doesn’t Matter Anymore and MANY others!) Aimee Buckner (Author of Notebook Know-How), Kathy Cassidy (author of Connected From the Start: Global Learning int he Primary Grades) I was fortunate enough to attend Kylene and Bob’s presentation and am excited about trying some of these ideas out with my students when we are reading our novels for Lit. Circles.
Although my workshop sessions were focused on an Introduction to Reading Power, I was amazed at how many teachers already knew and were using some of the strategies in their classrooms. The response I received was extremely positive and many teachers were kind enough to come up to me and tell me personally how Reading Power had changed the way they thought about reading instruction. I could not have received a bigger compliment.
Thank you to Tana Arnott and Amanda Hassen and their team for all their hard work to organize this event. I look forward to visiting Saskatchewan again very soon!