Accelerating Literacy through Play

When

1 Dec 2015 - 2 Dec 2015
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Asia/Singapore

Where

Hong Kong
Hong Kong, Kowloon

Event Tag

Overview
Play offers a natural opportunity for children to learn and develop literacy skills. Play-based activities encourage children to use literacy skills in situations that complement their real world and help them understand it.

This workshop will provide teachers with useful knowledge and effective strategies to use play in order to improve student skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Among other things, it will focus on the communities of learners specific to the participants and will use a variety of proven approaches to demonstrate how a play-centered environment encourages literacy growth.

Objectives
At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the unique literacy demands of the current generation of children
  • Integrate play-based activities into classroom practice to engage and motivate learners
  • Create play centers that support experimentation with reading and writing
  • Provide language-centered play environments that are crucial to literacy growth
  • Include exceptional learners in all aspects of the literacy program
  • Check for understanding and collect evidence of student learning
  • Participate in co-planning activities with learning teams to ensure program sustainability
  • Access professional development materials for highly successful literacy teaching

Outline
Day 1:
The workshop will begin with an overview of the compelling results of a play-based program and why we should pay careful attention to the inclusion of play in our classrooms. Topics that we will discuss include:

  • Ideas on how to design a play-based literacy program
  • Identifying best practices and developing innovative ways of implementing them
  • Supportive instruction on how to build play-based centers
  • Blending play-based learning and explicit instruction
  • Making and using props
  • Assessment of progress as a result of play-based literacy classrooms
  • Non-obtrusive methods for collecting evidence of student learning

Day 2:
The emphasis of this day will be on the use of children’s literature, and in particular, multicultural children’s literature, to facilitate literacy development through play.  Meaningful and enriching children’s books will be the focus for :

  • Presentation of classroom procedures such as  the use of story-maps and story boards to promote play-based activities and to reinforce newly learned ideas and concepts
  • Providing new ideas that can be transferred into play centers that will encourage the routines, functions and features of literacy
  • Play building through the exploration of story concepts such as  character development and point of view
  • Understanding literacy skills such as prediction and character dialogue through play strategies
  • Improving spelling, grammar, vocabulary, writing, speaking and listening skills through opportunities for creative play

Throughout the two days we will integrate the advantages of play in the development of literacy skills in relation to:

  • co-teaching
  • networking
  • special interest groups
  • professional association groups

Trainer’s Profile
Dr. Honey Halpern is a well respected teacher with many years of teaching experience in elementary, secondary and universities. She works as a literacy consultant and a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. Her courses include “Teaching Language Arts in the Elementary School” and “Language Across the Curriculum in Multilingual Secondary Classrooms”. She has worked as a consultant for the International School in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and most recently as a teacher trainer at StandTall Primary School in Kampala, Uganda.

Her Master’s in Education degree from McGill University and Doctorate from the University of British Columbia are both in Reading Education. Her commitment to good teaching practice is demonstrated through her  participation in professional associations. She is an active member of the editorial board of The Reading Teacher, is on the Executive of the British Columbia Literacy Council of the International Reading Association, and chairs the BC Exemplary Reading Award Program.

She is an enthusiastic promoter of positive reading habits for all ages and has spoken on this topic to many teacher and parent groups with great success.

She continues her literacy interests as an author of several articles published in national and international literacy journals. She has produced a brochure for teacher aides: Manual for Teaching Adolescent Non-Readers; as well as a pamphlet for the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation: Learning to Read and Write: Stages and Suggestions. A Guide for Parents of Young Children.

Methodology
This workshop invite teachers to ask questions and participate in their learning through shoulder to shoulder talk, problem solving in small groups and trying out some of the newly presented strategies. Participants are encouraged to share the challenges faced in the classrooms and trainer will attempt to address these issues through this workshop. To make sure that everyone acquires the necessary background knowledge to understand the rationale for the new approaches, a combination of Power Point presentations, YouTube videos and informal explanation in response to the specific needs of the participants will be used. Inquiry-based learning will be encouraged and supported

Target Audience
This workshop is designed for people involved in literacy instruction of children aged 3 to 10.

This workshop will be of interest to pre-service teachers, classroom teachers, resource teachers, librarians, administrators, curriculum consultants, special education teachers, and teaching coaches.

Investment
HKD6000.00/pax
HKD5500.00/pax if register by 1 Jun 15 1 Jul 15

Duration: 2 days, 12 hours
Closing Date: 1 Oct 15



Other Available Sessions
1 2 3