Event Description
This workshop will equip middle school and high school teachers with essential tools and strategies to support all students, including those who struggle, with reading comprehension skills, vocabulary development, fluency, and other critical, life-long literacy skills. This session provides practical, research-based techniques that can be seamlessly integrated across content areas as teachers work to build confident readers who have the skills they need for life beyond their K-12 experience.
Participants will explore effective methods for:
Improving Reading Comprehension: Learn how to use targeted questioning, summarization, oral language, and scaffolding strategies to ensure students can navigate complex texts.
Building Academic Vocabulary: Learn techniques for teaching academic and content vocabulary that supports student understanding across all disciplines.
Improving Fluency: Explore guided practice, repeated reading, and other strategies to build reading speed, accuracy, and expression.
Engaging Struggling Readers: Foster student confidence and motivation through differentiated instruction and small group opportunities.
Assessment Strategies for Literacy: Discover how to identify specific reading challenges using formative and summative assessments. Learn how to interpret assessment data to inform instructional decisions and provide targeted supports that address individual student needs.
Teachers will leave this interactive workshop with actionable strategies to assess and address the needs of all students entering their classrooms. Participants will gain the confidence and skills to create a supportive environment for all readers, empowering students to succeed academically and beyond.
Your Presenter(s)
Danica Lewis
Danica Lewis has over 20 years of experience in schools, serving as a classroom teacher, an instructional coach, and later as a school and district administrator, including school building leadership, early childhood leadership, special education leadership, and curriculum & assessment leadership in urban and suburban schools. Danica led the implementation of standards-aligned instruction, assessment, and grading as both a district-level and building-level administrator. Danica facilitates powerful professional learning around literacy, standards-aligned instruction and assessment, rigorous teaching, data analysis, and professional learning community leadership. In 2017, the Wisconsin Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development recognized Danica as the “Instructional Leader of the Year” for the State of Wisconsin.