This webinar will run from 12:00 pm - 3:15 pm ET / 9:00 am - 12:15 pm PT on Saturday, May 8, 2021 for a total of 3 credit hours.
Independent reading is more than achieving a certain level of fluency; it is more than comprehending complex texts; it is more than knowing what to do when vocabulary and syntax is a challenge. Independent reading is about independent thinking. It is the reading that helps us forge ourselves, become more than we thought we could become. Independent reading is about living an empowered life. In this session, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst, nationally-known literacy educators, will share strategies that do more than create students who can read a text independently; these strategies help engage students so that they become independent thinkers.
Using the science of cognitive diversity and the UDL paradigm, educators will learn to:
This session is for classroom teachers grades 3-12, literacy coaches, administrators, pre-service teachers, and teacher leaders.
Dr. Kylene Beers is currently an international literacy consultant and has served as the Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools for the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program, Yale University. She is the author of the best-selling When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do (Heinemann, 2002) and co-author with Robert E. Probst of Forged by Reading: The Power of a Literate Life (Scholastic, 2020); Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters (Scholastic, 2017); Reading Nonfiction: Stances, Signposts, and Strategies (Heinemann, 2015); Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading (Heinemann, 2013); When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do (Heinemann, 2002). She is co-editor (with Bob Probst and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice (Heinemann, 2007).
Kylene has written numerous articles that have been published in national educational journals including English Journal, Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, Voices from the Middle, School Library Journal, and numerous state journals. She has served on committees and boards with the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English and has been an invited keynote speaker to numerous national conventions including the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Middle School Association, the Association of Supervisors and Curriculum Directors, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Kylene currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Book Love Foundation.
Additionally, she has been a consultant to the National Governor’s Association Best Practices in Education committee. The former editor of the National Council of Teachers of English literacy journal Voices from the Middle, Kylene has served as Chair of the National Adolescent Literacy Coalition and as the 2008-2009 President of NCTE. In 2007, she was awarded the NCTE’s Exemplary Leadership Award, presented by the Conference on English Leadership, and in 2018, Dr. Beers received the Teachers Professional Book Award for Disrupting Thinking: Why HowWe Read Matters.
Robert E. Probst, Professor Emeritus of English Education at Georgia State University, has spent most of his career working on the teaching of literature and reading. He is the author of Response and Analysis (Heinemann, 2004), coeditor of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice (Heinemann, 2007), and co-author, with Kylene Beers of Forged by Reading: The Power of a Literate Life (Scholastic, 2020); Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters (Scholastic, 2017); Reading Nonfiction: Stances, Signposts, and Strategies (Heinemann, 2015), and Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading (Heinemann, 2013).
For the 1997 and 1999 editions, he was senior author of Holt, Rinehart and Winston’s middle and high school program, Elements of Literature and is now a senior author of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Into Reading (K-6) and Into Literature (6-12) national reading and literature series. He presents frequently at conventions, both national and international, and has served the National Council of Teachers of English in various roles, including membership on the Commission on Reading, on the Board of Directors of the Conference on English Leadership, and as column editor for Voices in the Middle. He is a contributing author to many state and national journals including English Journal, Voices from the Middle, Publishing Research Quarterly, Educational Leadership, and Journal of Reading(now Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.
In 2004 he was awarded the NCTE’s Exemplary Leadership Award, presented by the Conference on English Leadership, andin 2018, Dr. Probst received the Teachers Professional Book Award for Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the American Reading Company.
