This one-day event is an opportunity for districts within the Ingham ISD service area to share examples of innovations in strategies, practices, and structures they have used related to teaching and learning during the 2008-09 school year. We anticipate Ingham districts will showcase work in the areas of differentiating instruction, sound classroom assessment practice, content area instructional techniques, literacy practices, and instructional technology, to name a few. This event will be led by practitioners, teachers-teaching-teachers, and administrators-supporting-administrators. If you would like to share a program being used in your district, please contact Kathy Dewsbury-White, 517.244.1254.

LIFT SSR 6-12 In this series, participants will learn how to observe and assess struggling readers in grades 6-12 and how to plan and implement a literacy program that will help these readers succeed. They will examine and be trained to use a range of assessment tools that are useful in determining the literacy growth of struggling secondary students. Up-to-date research on struggling readers will be linked to classroom models of instruction that differentiate and provide support to all students in the classroom while focusing on those who need additional help. Participants will learn both large and small-group methods. The focus of the instruction at this level is on comprehension. Most of the readers at this level are beyond the level of early reader; they tend to have difficulty with complex and content-specific vocabulary and decoding longer words. The special problems of students who have speech and language deficits and of students who are English language learners will be woven in as well.