READing Conference 2019

5th Annual READing Conference

October 10th & 11th in Grand Junction, Colorado

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Register for CDE's 5th Annual Conference Oct. 10-11 in Grand Junction. This year's focus is on the implementation of evidence-based reading instruction for all K-3 students, including English learners, emerging readers, and struggling readers. Registration is free with priority for district literacy leaders, administrators, and educators. At minimum 12 renewal hours will be available for participation in both days of learning.

View 2019 Conference Program. We will have printed copies of the Conference Program for all participants, you do not need to print this program.

Speakers

This year we have another great line up of national literacy experts coming to Colorado to support our learning.

Keynote Presenters

Steve Dykstra, Ph.D.

Dr. Steven Dykstra is a psychologist from Milwaukee Wisconsin, where he does writing, speaking, and advocacy on the subject of reading and literacy. In his “day job,” he serves children and families with a wide range of mental health and other concerns, for whom challenges to literacy are often overlooked as both cause and consequence of their circumstances. Dr. Dykstra believes knowing and sharing the history of how we got to where we are will help take us to where we need to go by giving us new insights into why we choose and behave as we do. He relies on data, humor, history, anything and everything, but especially metaphor to help us see things in new ways.

Why Don’t They Understand How Wrong They Are?

Whichever side of the reading fence you’re on, it pays to take a moment and understand how our shared history put us where we are. We are all very much the product of other people’s choices, which set the stage for our own. In what promises to be wide-ranging, provocative, and (hopefully) two hours, Dr. Dykstra will take you back to early 19th century Boston, forward through the protests and unrest of the late 60’s, and up through modern brain imagining, with some side trips to human behavior science, math-free statistics, genetics, and bunch of other stuff. Half sermon, half treatise, and half group-therapy session (two hours is enough time for three halves) Dr. Dykstra will do his best to show us how we got here, where that is, and how we might find the courage to do better.

Thursday, October 10th - 8:30 - 10:30 a.m.

Recording now available

Margie Gillis, Ph.D.
Margie B. Gillis, Ed.D is a Certified Academic Language Therapist who became interested in reading while at the University of Connecticut where she studied with Isabelle Liberman. In 2009, Margie founded Literacy How, Inc. a non-profit organization, to provide professional development opportunities for teachers on how best to implement research-based reading practices in the classroom. As president of Literacy How and as a Research Affiliate at Haskins Laboratories, Margie creates new opportunities to empower teaching excellence. In 2010, Margie founded the Anne E. Fowler Foundation to continue to work of her mentor Anne Fowler. The Foundation supports scholarships for teachers for graduate work in reading and language development. She is the co-founder and former president of Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities, the former president of the CT Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, a board member of the Dyslexia Society of CT and New Alliance Foundation, and a professional advisor for Understood and ReadWorks.

One Teacher at a Time: Supporting Teachers’ Knowledge of the Science of Reading
Most teachers, even those who are content area teachers, are expected to teach their students reading skills; however, the vast majority of these teachers are unprepared and/or unsupported to accomplish this task. As a profession, we must consider how to better prepare and support teachers to teach reading. Solutions will be proposed to address teachers’ need for substantive learning opportunities to apply the science of reading.
Friday, October 11th - 8:10 - 9:15 a.m

See our complete list of presenters

Kristie Kauerz, Ed.D.
- Preschool through Third Grade in Colorado
Linda Farrell
- Decodable and Leveled Readers: Using Them Appropriately with Beginning Readers
- A New, Phonics-Based Approach to Teaching High-Frequency Words
- Lose the Rules: Teaching Multi-Syllable Words Made Easy
Margie Gillis, Ph.D.
- The Early Language and Literacy Initiative: A Play-based preschool program
- Literacy 101: What Every Administrator Should Know
- Grammar and Syntax: The Building Blocks of Comprehending and Writing Sentences
Nancy Mather, Ph.D.
- *Fundamentals of Dyslexia: Assessments
- *Fundamentals of Dyslexia: Interventions
Susan Hall, Ed.D.
- 10 Success Factors for Getting the Best Results From Your Literacy MTSS
- Fast Track Students to Read Multi-syllable Words in Five Minutes a Day
Steven Dykstra, Ph.D.
- The Place for Reading and Language in Psychosocial Development
- An Introduction to Statistics and Research for People Who Hate Math
William Van Cleave
- Syntax Matters: Developing Sentence Skills in Young Students
- Development Foundational Writing Skills at the Paragraph Level
- The Motor Component: Handwriting and Keyboarding in the 21st Century
- Word Smarts: Using Morphology to Develop Vocabulary and Spelling Skills
- Vocabulary: Valid, Viable, and Vigorous Instruction

*Session spans across multiple breakout times