Featured Speakers

Workshop facilitators include professors, curriculum trainers/coordinators, program supervisors, artists, authors, distinguished teaching fellows, NAIS Teachers of the Future, Fulbright Hays Scholars, NCEA Award Winners, DEN Star Teachers, National Board Certified Teachers, Google Certified Teachers, and Apple Distinguished Educators

Keynote Speaker

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John Hunter is a 4th grade teacher with Albemarle County Schools in Charlottesville, Virginia. Much attention has been brought to John Hunter's teaching because of his 2011 TEDtalk, which was named by TED and the Huffington Post as the most influential TEDtalk of 2011.

John Hunter believes that his fourth grade students can solve world peace, as well as develop strategies for solving nuclear disasters, oil spills, global warming, endangered species issues, mineral rights, water rights—a total of about 30 interlocking, real world problems. John sets The World Peace Game in motion and then guides his students through the critical and strategic thinking, collaboration, and negotiation processes needed to understand and develop solutions for these global issues. Hunter explains, "The World Peace Game is about learning to live and work comfortably in the unknown."

Over the course of the last 25 years, John has developed The World Peace Game, a multi-dimensional strategic board game that requires his fourth graders to solve world dilemmas that are environmental, geopolitical, financial, military, and every other layer he can think of combined. He uses his large scale game grounded in real world problems to teach his students critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, coordination, communication, research, negotiation skills, and the skill of synthesis, among other vital 21st century skills. His approach is to create a stimulating learning environment that excites, inspires, challenges, and supports students in their learning. Students learn to observe, connect, think, and construct meaning through inquiry, collaboration, and experimentation.

John's teaching approach is completely student-centered and aligned with an emphasis on 21st century thinking skills. The learning environment that he structures is dynamic, fast-paced, and intense which results in highly motivated and engaged students who take real ownership and interest in their learning.

Featured Speaker

Katie Wood Ray
Between her passion for elementary writing instruction and a love of children's literature, Katie Wood Ray found herself asking, "What if children were introduced to key qualities of good writing in the context of illustrations?" This question led to the research behind In Pictures and In Words. The answer was simple yet powerful: "The thinking students do while reading picture books can help them see the connection between what words and illustrations do to make meaning." As an author of bestselling Heinemann books such as Already Ready, Study Driven, About the Authors, and What You Know By Heart and as a member of Heinemann Professional Development Services, Katie has always given teachers resources and PD that transform writing instruction and help children discover a lifelong love of writing.

A former Associate Professor at Western Carolina University Katie is now a full time writer and researcher of the teaching of writing. With a particular focus on the study of writing craft, she leads teacher workshops and summer institutes across the nation related to the teaching of writing. Her professional background includes both elementary and middle school teaching experience and two years as a staff developer at The Reading and Writing Project, Teachers College, Columbia University. She was also the coeditor of the journal Primary Voices K–6, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Katie is also the author or coauthor of Spelling in Use: Looking Closely at Spelling in the Whole Language Classrooms (1996, NCTE), Wondrous Words: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom (1999, NCTE), and The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And They¹re All Hard Parts) (2001, NCTE). A frequent speaker at conferences and summer institutes around the country, Katie also has extensive experience teaching teachers in workshop and demonstration settings.

Sessions:
The Essentials of a Primary Writing Workshop 
In Pictures and In Words: Teaching the Qualities of Good Writing Through Illustration Study

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