Summer 2013 Workshops for Teachers

Writing is essential to communication, learning, and citizenship. It is the currency of the new workplace and global economy. Writing helps us convey ideas, solve problems, and understand our changing world. Writing is a bridge to the future. — The National Writing Project

The following summer 2013 workshops for teachers are open for registration. We are an NCLB-approved provider of Professional Development—school districts should contact us about group pricing. All workshops with over 15 contact hours will qualify for optional credit units from Sonoma State University (for an additional fee as noted below).

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TEACHING WRITING IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM
Grades 6-12
Instructors: M. Clare LePell & Katherine Suyeyasu
August 1–14
Monday–Friday
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Fee: $575
(3 optional credit units for $165*)

We all want our students to write more and to greater effect, but how do we make this happen? How do we build memorable and meaningful writing lessons that generate thoughtful content and address the needs of both our strongest student writers and our most struggling student writers? What are strategies for helping English Learners and for building students' skills that meet the new Common Core Standards? What about cultivating academic language in the classroom? And how do we do all of this without drowning in paper? In short, how do energize or re-energize ourselves as teachers of writing so that we can engage students in the power of the written word?

Join this two-week class led by veteran educators, M. Clare LePell and Katherine Suyeyasu, where we’ll address these questions and more. In a highly collegial setting:

• experience interactive teaching demonstrations that will give you new ideas and greater confidence in your lessons
• acquire hard and soft copies of specific instructional strategies for immediate use with your students
• write frequently and share your writing in small groups
• explore questions about the teaching of writing through discussions of selected readings
• develop lessons using your own curriculum and texts and ready to use in the fall.

Please note that there will be some homework assignments, including: reading articles, drafting personal writing, and developing curriculum. .

M. Clare LePell is celebrating her 25th year as a classroom teacher in Castro Valley and has been a BAWP Teacher Consultant since 1993. As the former head of a school/university partnership with a focus on adolescent literacy, Ms. LePell has developed secondary reading and writing curricula and led multiple professional development activities. .

Katherine Suyeyasu earned her Masters Degree in Educational Psychology from U.C. Berkeley in 1998. She currently teaches 7th and 8th grade Humanities Core at ASCEND K-8 in the Oakland Unified School District. During her fifteen-year teaching career, she has led district-wide professional development focused on writing, history, and math.

THE GRAMMAR WRITING CONNECTION
Grades 6-college
Instructor: Nelson Graff
July 15-19, 2013
9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m
Fee: $425
(2 optional credit units for $110*)

This course is recommended for teachers of grades 6 through college who are interested in thinking more about the relationship between the teaching of grammar and the teaching of reading and writing. Practical workshop exercises will address conventionally designated basics: parts of speech, the English verb system, joining sentences, expanding sentences, uses and abuses of passive voice, and punctuation with a purpose. We will also consider what is basic to grammar and writing. Bring your favorite grammar questions and a sample student essay full of errors! Discussion topics include: “grammar myths”; the role of rules; the connection between sentence crafting, style and voice; teaching grammar options without destroying ownership; the ups and downs of writing development, English Learners’ sources of error, and the psychology of correctness.

Nelson Graff teaches composition and prospective secondary and postsecondary English teachers at San Francisco State University. A BAWP TC since 2004, he also works with teachers around the state on teaching grammar, expository reading and writing, and teaching argument.

TEACHING WRITING IN THE COMMON CORE ERA
All Grade Levels
Instructors: Tracey Freyre & Mary Ann Smith
June 17-21, 2013 9:00 a.m. – noon
Fee: $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Please join us to look at some big ideas in the Common Core Standards for Writing, including integrating the language arts, providing for "range" in writing, and putting spirals into your curriculum. We will use two writing project tools during our exploration: the Writing Assignment Framework and Wise Eyes: Developing Prompts for Meaningful Student Writing. We will also remind ourselves of the role scaffolding plays in helping students tackle challenging reading and writing and explore specific scaffolding techniques. Tracey Freyre currently teaches Intensive English and Spanish for Native Speakers at San Mateo High School. She has served as a teacher trainer for both San Mateo Union High School District and Hayward Unified School District, as well as a teacher consultant for both the Bay Area Writing Project and the National Writing Project. She has taught in three different countries and has spent most of her teaching career working primarily with English learners.

A former middle and high school teacher, Mary Ann Smith directed the Bay Area and California Writing Projects. She also served as Director of Government Relations and Public Affairs for the National Writing Project. Over the years, she has co-authored books and articles about teaching and assessing writing with the help of her invincible writing group.

MAKING THE FACTS COUNT: INFORMATIONAL WRITING AND THE COMMON CORE
Grades 2-5
Instructor: Grace Morizawa
July 29–31, Mon-Wed
9:00 a.m – 1:00 p.m
Fee: $250
(Note: no credit units available)

This class is recommended for teachers of grades 2 through 5. The Common Core asks students to develop their capacity to build knowledge through their own life experiences and research so that they engage in writing as a complex thinking process. While this workshop will focus on informational writing, we will review the Common Core Standards for Writing including the three writing types and learn strategies to develop knowledge by scaffolding complex text and through oral language activities. Through an inquiry approach teachers can set the stage for promoting students’ thinking and writing. Teachers will learn strategies to teach students informational writing including research skills through modeling of lessons, reading research, writing themselves, and collaborating with each other. Teachers will also have the option to create their own classroom Wiki. If possible, please bring laptops or tablets. .

Grace Morizawa taught grades K-5 in the Oakland Unified School District for over 20 years. She developed the writing curriculum for a national reform group then became a principal in San Pablo before retiring. Grace became a BAWP Teacher Consultant in 1988. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in the Leadership for Equity and Education Program at UCB.

MAKING MAGIC HAPPEN: CREATING YOUNG WRITERS WITH THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS AND THE SIX TRAITS MODEL
Grades K-2
Instructor: Michelle Kellman
July 22-26, 2013
9:00 a.m. to noon
Fee: $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Does your students’ writing bore you? Does it bore your students? Are you looking for some magic element that will help children generate joyful, expressive, and effective writing? This course is for K-2 teachers with a basic understanding of the writer’s workshop model who want to take their students’ writing to a new level while meeting the demands of the Common Core standards for writing. Using the fabulous book, Creating Young Writers: Using the Six Traits to Enrich Writing Process in Primary Classrooms (3rd Edition) by Vicki Spandel, we will learn how to help students develop ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions in their writing. For each trait, we’ll analyze mentor texts and student samples, read about and practice instructional strategies, and apply the trait to the three Common Core genres: opinion, informative/explanatory, and narrative. Participants will leave with a wealth of lesson plans and practical tools for making magic happen in their classrooms. Please come with your own copy of the book, which is available from Pearson (2011) on Amazon for $25-$36.

Michelle Kellman is an ELD Coach in Hayward and has sixteen years’ experience as a K-3 classroom teacher and a coach of teachers. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and former Project GLAD trainer and has taught workshops in instructional strategies for English learners and in using oral storytelling to develop students’ writing.

MAKING WRITERS’ WORKSHOP COME ALIVE
Grades 2-5
Instructors: Page Hersey & Marion Wallach
July 8-12, 2013
9:00 a.m. to noon
Fee: $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Implementing a writers’ workshop approach in the classroom develops students who see themselves as writers and understand the power and purpose of writing. Writers’ workshop creates an environment to generate narrative, opinion, and informative pieces as defined in the California Common Core Content Standards. But where does the classroom teacher start? How to conference? How to develop mini-lessons based on students’ needs? This four day professional development will address these questions as we walk through the process of creating a community of writers. There will be time for whole group writing and sharing as well as small group work dedicated to grade-level collaboration. New and veteran teachers will find ways to breathe life into writers’ workshop.

Page Hersey, Ed.D. has worked as an educator in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 15 years as a classroom teacher, literacy specialist, and teacher educator. Page is also a passionate human rights educator and works to integrate global and local issues of human rights and social justice into her work with teachers and students.

Marion Wallach is retired after teaching grades 1-4 in the Oakland Public Schools for 38 years. She has served on numerous curriculum development committees and has worked with student teachers and mentor teaching programs. Marion has been a leader in BAWP's elementary program and developed its first summer program focused on elementary teaching.

OPINION WRITING
Grades K-2
Instructor: Siu-Mui Woo
July 15-16, Monday–Tuesday
9:00 a.m.– noon
Fee: $150
(Note: no credit units available)

This workshop is recommended for K-2 teachers interested in learning, sharing, and collaborating on ways to improve the teaching of opinion writing for young writers, particularly English Language Learners. Participants will be introduced to: • Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in opinion writing • Strategies that support students' extending their writing • Connections among oral language, reading and writing across the curriculum • Lesson demonstration on response to literature • Use of mentor text to teach opinion/persuasive writing • Stages of writing development for ELL and strategies for teaching writing to ELLs.

Siu-Mui Woo has been a primary grade teacher in Oakland for more than 25 years before becoming a literacy coach. She incorporates her personal experiences as an English learner in her approach to teaching literacy, drawing on the strengths and needs of E.L. learners. Since 2011, through BAWP, she has been working with teachers from various school districts and providing them with practical strategies to use in teaching writing and literacy development.

SUMMER WRITING WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS
All Grade Levels
Instructor: Meredith Pike-Baky

June 17-24
9:00 – noon (UC Berkeley campus)

August 5-9
9:00 – noon (Marin County)

Fee: $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Come spend a week of mornings writing, sharing, reflecting, reading, and revising. Become a better writer and a better teacher of writing. This workshop offers rich opportunities for teachers at all grade levels and any writing experience level to explore a range of writing genres and practical, classroom-tested writing strategies. The workshop fosters a warm and encouraging community of writers where participants read inspiring models, collaborate in small groups and collect ideas and materials for teaching. This year we’ll highlight approaches that align to the Common Core Standards. The Writing Workshop for Teachers sits solidly on the Bay Area Writing Project’s belief that teachers become better teachers of writing by writing themselves. Participants contribute to an in-class anthology to be compiled and distributed at the end of the workshop. Join us at one of two workshop opportunities to frame your summer!

Meredith Pike-Baky has been involved in English language education for most of her career, planning and conducting programs for teachers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and more recently in Rwanda, Burundi and Singapore. Meredith created the Writing Workshop for Teachers out of her love of writing and belief in the power of teachers’ writing and telling their stories.

THE TIME WE HAVE: WRITING FAST, WRITING SHORT
Open to all grades
Instructor: Marty Williams
August 5–9, 2013
9:00 a.m. – noon
Fee $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Always wanted to write prose poems and flash fiction, perfect the blog-length essay, or even revive the art of letter-writing? Join other teachers this summer with writer Marty Williams to read a handful of contemporary writing in various short forms, to play with the juxtapositions of prose and poetry, essay and fiction, and to write, write, and write. The emphasis will be on experiments with language to produce fresh, raw work that surprises us in its direction, topic or form. Many of the activities and exercises in the class can be translated into classroom teaching at all levels.

Marty Williams is a Bay Area poet and writing workshop teacher of many years. A BAWP Teacher Consultant and Affiliate of Amherst Writers and Artists, Marty teachers ongoing workshops with ...a thousand words... and Room to Write. A former high school and middle school teacher and literacy coach, Marty is working on a manuscript of poems about the places she lives: Oakland, California, and Kenai Lake, Alaska.

ESSAY WRITING FOR TEACHERS
Grades 6-12
Instructor: Meredith Pike-Baky
August 12-14
9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Fee: $250
(Note: no credit units available)

Reading and writing nonfiction have taken on greater urgency with the Common Core Standards. It follows, then, that reading and writing essays have assumed a role of prominence in the curriculum. Explore this versatile and provocative form as it embraces explanation and argument and produce an essay of your own during this three-day workshop in August. The course will provide an in-depth study of the essay and a range of engaging examples and approaches to reading and writing what Phillip Lopate refers to as “exercises in doubt.” You will leave confident of what essays are with a collection of engaging strategies to teach them.

ALL ABOARD FOR TRAVEL WRITING: GATEWAY TO SENSE-DRIVEN WRITING
Instructor: Perry Garfinkel
July 22-25
Mon-Thurs
9:00 a.m. – noon
Fee: $275
(Note: no credit units available)

Using in-class exercises and “assignments” both around campus and at home or “on location,” this week will introduce teachers to the elements of travel writing that are fundamental to all great writing – offered in a style that’s fun, informative and highly adaptable. Valuable for the classroom or for one’s own summer travel journals or (dare we dream) publication, teachers will “model” after the masters of travel writing (from Marco Polo to Mark Twain to modern day), then draw from their own senses as they go “on the road,” filing very short pieces over the days of the course.

Perry Garfinkel has been a contributor to the New York Times since 1986. He’s also written for National Geographic Magazine and many other publications; and is the author/coauthor/ghostwriter of 10 books, including his “Buddha or Bust,” a national bestseller in 2006. Arthur Frommer called his “Travel Writing for Profit and Pleasure” the “definitive work in the field” at the time. He’s also been an editor: was among a group that launched New Age Journal in the ‘70s and was launch editor in chief of EcoTraveler Magazine in the ‘90s. http://www.perrygarfinkel.com/

DIGITAL STORYTELLING IN THE COMMON CORE CLASSROOM
Grades 4-10
Instructor: Stephanie Robillard
July 8-12
Monday-Friday
8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Fee: $425
(2 optional credit units for $110*)

[Please Note: This workshop is to take place at Westlake Middle School, 2629 Harrison Street, Oakland, 94612]

Come and spend a week digging into digital storytelling and the Common Core. Digital storytelling is the art of using multimedia to communicate ideas/concepts/stories. Learn how to teach your students to use digital tools to meet the Common Core standards of researching and building present knowledge, producing and distributing writing and presenting knowledge and ideas. In this workshop, we will use Mac/PC based applications as well as various web-based tools that will allow participants to produce digital stories. By the end of the week, you will have a digital trove of treasures to share with your students and colleagues.

Stephanie Robillard is a teacher/librarian at Westlake Middle School in Oakland. She completed the BAWP Summer Institute in 1997.

MAKING A SCENE
Open to All Grade Levels
Instructor: John Levine
July 29-August 2
9:00 a.m. – noon
Fee: $300
(1 optional credit unit for $55*)

Have an idea for a movie or a play? This course focuses on the building blocks of dramatic writing — character, plot, dialogue, and conflict. Through writing exercises and feedback sessions, participants will craft and develop a series of scenes and get started on their own scripts. At the end of the week-long workshop, we'll have an informal reading of your work. Besides having a lot of fun, you will take away an increased "bank" of instructional strategies and effective materials for classroom use as well as an increased confidence as writers and teachers of writing.

John Levine teaches composition, public speaking, and creative writing in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley. His plays have been staged in theaters across the country, from California to Alaska to New York, and have been published in a number of anthologies.

*All optional credits are provided through Sonoma State University’s School of Extended Education. Payments for the units must be paid to Sonoma State, so please do not bundle the registration fee and the credit unit payments together. Enrollment forms for the units will be available on the first day of class and you may pay with a check or credit card at that time.