• How to design a reading and writing poetry unit of study focused on process and craft in which writers revise up a storm right from the start.
• How poetry can be the groundwork for generating meaningful writing topics and developing fluency and stamina in a range of other genre.
• How to focus on comprehension strategies to help students understand and respond to literature and complex text through close and careful reading of poetry.
• How to design a sequence of efficient and effective writing mini lessons which will show how to teach reading through writing, and writing through reading.
• How to give strategic conferences with questions like, “What small moment are you trying to rewrite?” “Whose work are you trying to emulate?” “Have you thought of using this word instead?”
• How in conferences and small group work you can tuck familiar poems and other short texts under your arms to teach young writers how to be specific and exact so that their particular voices ring out from the page.
• How to read powerful mentor poems and short texts that model the qualities you will want to foster in your students’ work.
• How to design thoughtful reading mini lessons using poetry.
• To become more informed readers of our children’s writing and more observant of their strategies as readers and writers.
• How to use “visual craft sheets” in mini lessons and as a reference for students.
• How to prepare young writers to make surprising connections and comparisons – the groundwork for figurative language that is not forced or formulaic. How to plan for practical writing assessment and celebratory publishing at the end of the unit.

In addition to a PowerPoint presentation, teachers will work frequently in pairs and small groups to reflect, discuss and interact with the material presented. The workshop will be interactive and hands-on.

All Educators K-8

Georgia Heard is a founding member of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project where she worked as senior staff developer in the New York City schools for seven years. For the past twenty years, Georgia has been a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, a consultant and visiting author in school districts throughout the U.S, Canada and around the world. She is the author of numerous professional books on teaching writing including her most recent A Place for Wonder: Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades (Stenhouse, 2009) and Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School (Heinemann,1999) which was cited by Instructor Magazine as “One of the Ten Best Books Every Teacher Should Read.” She has also authored many children’s books including her most recent Falling Down the Page: A Book of List Poems (Roaring Brook Press, 2009).

• A Place for Wonder: Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades (Co-author Jen McDonough, Stenhouse, 2009)
• Climb Inside a Poem: Reading and Writing Poetry Across the School Year (Heinemann, 2008)
• The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques That Work (Heinemann, 2000)
• Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School (Heinemann, 1999)
• Writing toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way (Heinemann, 1997)
• For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry (Heinemann,  1996)

• The Arrow Finds Its Mark: Found Poems (forthcoming Roaring Brook Press, 2012)
• Falling Down the Page: A Book of List Poems (Roaring Brook Press, 2009)
• This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort (Candlewick, 2006)
• Songs of Myself: An Anthology of Poems and Art (Mondo, 2000)
• Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky: Animal Poems (Boyds Mills Press, 1999)