Strengthening Students' Writing Skills While Significantly Decreasing Grading Time (Grades 6-12)

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As technology and learning continue to change faster and faster, it gets more difficult to make writing meaningful for our students, and to combat apathy and disengagement. Amidst to it all, we often find ourselves – buried once again in stacks of papers – feeling like we are spending more time on our students' work than they are. In this seminar, you'll learn numerous practical ways to turn that around! You will discover practical ways to drastically reduce your grading time while making your feedback more strategically effective. Paired with this, you will learn new and innovative methods for taking your students' writing to the next level with daily, easy-to-use instructional techniques that will work in your classroom. Joel Clements, acclaimed national writing expert and experienced secondary level ELA teacher, will demonstrate dozens of ways to strengthen the writing skills of all students in Grades 6-12. You will learn how to more effectively implement peer feedback, discussion techniques and student conferences in your class time that will give your students the immediate feedback they need to revise and improve their writing on the spot.

Joel will share dozens of new and innovative ways to reduce your paper grading load while increasing your students' writing skills. From your struggling students to your more advanced writers, these tools work! Join Joel for a day filled with dozens of practical and doable strategies to strengthen your writing instruction and see powerful results!

Teaching writing is really hard. I know. That's not a bold statement or a dazzling catchy opener to draw you in. As a hook? Not so great. But that's what it comes down to, isn't it? It can be frustrating, exciting, overwhelming, profound. In fact, if one thinks about it too much, on a logical level? Teaching someone else to write well is, well, impossible. And yet we do it. Every day.

And the blessing/curse of it is that it's also deeply important. Writing is communication and critical thinking. It's the cornerstone of education and the bedrock of a functioning society. Nothing less.

And because it is so big, and because we are asked to do so much, we can get locked into patterns of teaching that overwhelm us – and they start to hurt us and hurt our students. So much of what we do as teachers puts unnecessary strain on us and our students. And so, we must revisit them. We can find ways to refine our practice and spark new life into it. To create kinetic, creative lessons; to give meaningful feedback; to create critical thinkers; to develop students with critical agency.

And to do it without burying ourselves in work at home.

In this seminar, that's what we're here to do. To ask those challenging questions and look at strategies and resources to revitalize and enhance what we already do. Because teaching writing is fun. And challenging. And profound.

My goal is that you will return to your classroom with a wealth of practical strategies and tools for assigning and assessing writing to significantly improve your students' writing and greatly reduce the time you spend grading papers.

I look forward to meeting you at the seminar. The day will be packed with exciting new practices, strategies and perspectives that will enable you to teach and assess writing in creative new ways.

P.S. You will also receive an extensive digital resource handbook filled with practical, proven strategies, outstanding resources and time-saving digital tools you can use immediately.

Educators Serving Grades 6-12: English/Language Arts Teachers, Classroom Teachers, Content Area Teachers, Literacy Coaches, Special Education Staff and Administrators

Extensive Digital Resource Handbook Each participant will receive an extensive digital resource handbook giving you access to countless strategies. The handbook includes:

For in-person seminars, registrants will also receive a printed copy of the resource handbook as long as their registration is received in the BER office at least 15 calendar days before the event.

Share Ideas This seminar provides a wonderful opportunity for participants to share ideas with other educators interested in enhancing the writing skills of their students.

Consultation Available Joel Clements will be available for consultation regarding your questions and the unique needs of your own program.

Semester Credit Option Up to four graduate level professional development credits are available with an additional fee and completion of follow-up practicum activities. Details for direct enrollment with University of Massachusetts Global, a nonprofit affiliate, will be available at this program.

Meet Inservice Requirements Participants of both the Live Online Seminar and those completing the Recorded Version online can receive a certificate of participation that may be used to verify five continuing education hours. State CEUs are available for both versions of the course. For specific details, visit www.ber.org/ceus.

What you'll learn

• New and innovative strategies to dramatically reduce time spent grading while giving meaningful, specific feedback
• Practical, ready-to-use methods and techniques for assigning and evaluating student writing that maximize student involvement and autonomy
• Dynamic, powerful strategies to engage 21st-Century students and make writing more meaningful
• Effective, hands-on tools for the age of AI and making the ethical use of AI meaningful for us and our students