San Antonio Writing Project's 4th Annual Conference

The San Antonio Writing Project's 4th Annual Conference is this Saturday, February 6th from 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at the UTSA downtown campus. Author Diane Gonzalez Bertrand is our keynote speaker and then our SAWP teacher consultants will be sharing their writing across the curriculum demonstrations. This event is open to the public. We look forward to seeing you there! Our program is listed below.

SAWP Conference Presenters-Session 1
Presenter Room Level Title Presentation Summary
Serena
Bahe
3.406 Late
elementary
through
secondary
Writers As
Reflectors and
Reflecting About
Writing
This research-supported presentation will demonstrate how
reflecting during and after the writing process creates clearer
understanding of ourselves as writers and a better finished piece.


Therese
Fleming
3.512 All The Cuentos
Project
Classroom demonstration of The Cuentos Project* at work. Stories
don't die, but their vessels do. So what? Well, pardner, then you're
left with a tall drink of imagination quenchin' nothin', a plate full of
history dust, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing." Get on board with this essential endeavor to
seek out and record the missing pages of world history. Put the
dousing rod in your students’ hands and get ready to make history.
You know you want to, yes you do. The train's leaving town, and the
only thing missin is YOU. Welcome aboard, pardner.
*boots and lariats optional, enthusiam and commitment required


Kelley
Meyer
3.528 Secondary To Grammar or
Not to Grammar
This workshop is designed to help integrate grammar and
conventions lessons into the context of the writing process.


Nora
Gonzalez
3.402 Elementary Shhhhhh.....Not
in this Class!
In this session participants will unearth the importance of interaction
and conversation for English language learners in a regular
elementary classroom. These activities promote interaction through
a variety of ways to include reading, writing, listening and speaking.


Lennie Irvin
and Frances
Crawford
3.520 All Celebrating
Writing for
Learning in All
Subjects: How to
Integrate More
Writing into
Your Curriculum
No matter your subject or grade level, writing is an important tool to
help your students learn. This presentation will discuss the important
role writing plays in learning, and it will introduce teachers to
concrete activities they can use in the classroom to get their students
writing more (without increasing their grading load considerably).
Participants will engage in a teaching demonstration of one such
technique that has been used successfully in the classroom.


Honor
Moorman
1.522 High
School
Navigating the
Digital
Landscape: 21st
Century
Research Skills
The new Research Strand of the ELAR TEKS requires that students
be able to gather information from electronic sources, use advanced
search strategies, and distinguish between reliable and unreliable
sources. But in the Age of the Internet, it is easy to find ourselves
adrift in the sea of information, drowning in the digital ocean that
engulfs us. In this session, we will get our feet on solid ground again
by exploring effective search tools and strategies, examining how
social bookmarking can be used to tag, save, highlight, annotate,
share, and organize online resources, and investigating the critical
characteristics to consider when evaluating websites.


Jeanette
Pierce
3.406 All Telling Their
Stories: The San
Antonio
Holocaust
Survivor Project
This presentation will share the history, creative process,
and curriculum product resulting from a three-year effort to record
the stories of San Antonio's Holocaust Survivors. The project is
nearing completion and the efforts of the small team of teachers to
retell our survivors' stories based on their videotaped interviews will
be featured. The original videotapes were created by Steven
Spielberg's Shoah Project which began after the release
of Schindler's List. The final curriculum unit and writing activities
will be published and included in the learning trunks shared by the
San Antonio Holocaust Memorial Museum with area schools.
Participants will have the opportunity to "test drive" some of the
activities and to discuss how we can connect these stories to the
lives of our students.


SAWP Conference Presenters-session 2
Presenter Room Level Title Presentation Summary


Pam
Piedfort
3.402 Elementary Revision in
Living Color
In this session participants will learn to use the power of students'
own self-selected writings and highlighters to teach revision and
editing.


Mike
Moran, Kelli
Wilder,
Janet Flores,
Lauri
Humberson
3.520 High
School
Classroom
Experiences with
San Antonio's
Big Read
We will share our experiences incorporating Tim O’Brien’s The
Things They Carried as part of The Big Read during the Fall 2009
semester. Presenters will describe sample assignments and discuss
working with administrators and the surrounding community.
Attendees will receive free teacher’s guides, reader’s guides, and
bookmarks.


Angelia
Hudson
3.528 Secondaryadult
From ELL to
American
Citizenship: A
Spiritual Journey
to Self-
Fulfillment.
Imagine driving along IH-10. On the horizon is the magnificent
structure of a rollercoaster, baked in hues of red, blue, yellow, and
green. Now visualize standing in anticipation of getting on the ride,
itching with excitement. With each movement of the ride you,
screaming with your hands in the air, feel the soothing reassurance
of the wind as the knowledge journey takes place. Welcome to the
world of ESL: Welcome to a journey to success for all.


Kalpana
Iyengar
3.536 All Kahani Project Kahani Project is a literacy endeavour modeled after the Cuentos project
where Indian and International students wrote family oriented stories. The
stories project the Indian ethos and help students explore their ethnicity,
culture, and country. It is a wonderful opportunity that enables students to
compose, share, and talk about the stories in an open mike session at the
Institute of Texan Cultures of UTSA.


Dan Kaderli Audit High
School and
Adult
PoePourri Kaderli presents a perspective on Edgar Allen Poe's life and work
through a masterful impersonation of him. It's a look at Poe's life
through his own eyes involving recitation of some his major works,
such as "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee," and some indirect
references to other poets, such as Keats and Shelley. The
performance also looks at how masterpieces get written, in Poe's
view.


Lisa
Kalinowski
1.522 Elementary Using Culturally
Relevant Texts
to Inspire
Writing
This session will provide teachers a research-based platform for
using multicultural texts in the classroom in various contexts as a
way to inspire writing. It will explore the introduction of texts with
familiar themes/characters, etc., as a bridge to broader writing
possibilities. The presenter will also make available a resource list
and ideas for classroom implementation.


Jennifer Hall 3.512 Secondary
and Adult
Showing vs.
Telling : Writing
Emotions with
Physicality
Student writing can be lifeless and liable to info-dumps. Yet these same
students run, jump, sing, dance, and otherwise move around every day. This
lesson is designed to bring that physicality and interest to student writing.