The first weeks of school: Invitation to our Eastern Illinois Writing Project Institute Day

It's been a busy few weeks. I know that's an understatement, so I'm going to post a press release for our EIWP Institute Day:

Teachers, administrators and interested students are invited to attend the Eastern Illinois Writing Project Fall Institute Day Friday, October 12, 2018 on the campus of Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

The Eastern Illinois Writing Project will present the annual institute day, titled “Authentic Literacy Assessment Across Disciplines and Grades” from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

The 2018 Institute Day will focus on assessment and evaluation and highlight ways to authentically assess reading and writing across disciplines and grade levels in relation to the English Language Arts Common Core Standards. Teachers from across disciplines and grade levels will share teaching ideas in multiple breakout sessions, maintaining a “teachers teaching teachers” model to creatively meet the Common Core Standards.

To highlight this interdisciplinarity across grade levels, we are also pleased to announce our two keynote speakers, ROE Professional Development Coordinator, Katie O’Dell, and Professor of English Terri Fredrick.

Their interactive workshop will describe effective feedback and provide strategies for assessing students' writing effectively.

Terri Fredrick is a professor of English at Eastern Illinois University, where she teaches a range of courses, including one on Evaluating Students' Writing. She also publishes and presents on assessment of students' writing across disciplines.

Katie O'Dell is the Professional Development Coordinator at the Regional Office of Education #11. She also serves as the Area Coordinator for the English Language Arts Foundational Services grant and has presented several workshop sessions in the Balanced Assessment and ELA area. 

The Institute Day will also include teacher-driven presentations and workshops that allow both attendees and presenters to share effective ideas and confer with one another, emphasizing the belief that the best teachers of teachers are other teachers.

Workshops will include “Getting Gritty With It: Developing a Mindset for Success!,” “Google, Breakouts, and Scavenger Hunts,” “Using Digital Stories to Meet CCSS,” and “Writing to Learn in a Writing Across the Curriculum World.” These workshops will help teachers better meet their students’ literacy needs across the curriculum and grade levels, facilitating ways for students to explore argument writing at every stage of the writing process.

Our Institute Day will end with a catered luncheon and a Post Conference Luncheon Conversation. Please bring your questions and ideas from the keynote straight into this follow-up conversation. Here we can discuss some of the assessment and evaluation tools in more detail, connect more directly to your classroom practice, and look at more examples of student work. You will help make this session happen, so please come prepared to interact, learn some more, and create your own argument writing resources.

Participants can earn up to five Continuing Professional Development Units toward teacher certification renewal. All attendees will receive a certificate of completion.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is now open at https://castle.eiu.edu/easternnwp/machform/view.php?id=1232. The registration deadline is Oct. 9.

For more information or to inquire about being a presenter at the conference, please contact EIWP Director Robin Murray at rlmurray@eiu.edu.