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Transform the High School ELA Classroom with Choice Reading
Monday, January 22, 2024 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EST
Presented by Cicely Lewis, School Librarian, Gwinnett County Public Schools (GA); Morgan Taylor, Instructional Coach, Lawndale High School, Centinela Valley Union High School District (CA); and Ronell Whitaker, ELA and LRC Curriculum Director, Community High School District 218 (IL)
Sponsored by Penguin Random House Education
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As educators, we know the value of literacy and the importance of creating a reading culture for students. However, many of our high school students haven’t become readers or do not see themselves as readers due, in no small part, to the books they are required to read, books of little interest or relevance. It is thus even more vital that space and time are provided for high school students to freely select high-interest books that focus on fostering and affirming students’ reader identities. This should include multiple reading modes from fiction to nonfiction stories and traditional formats to graphic novels at varying reading levels.
View this edWebinar with Cicely Lewis, educator, author, and 2020 School Library Journal Librarian of the Year, Morgan Taylor, high school English teacher, instructional coach, and co-founder of Little Classroom Library, and Ronell Whitaker, ELA and LRC Curriculum Director, to learn more about ways to equip high school educators with the strategies to go beyond the literary canon to incorporate a wide range of texts that represent different experiences, identities, and cultures we have in our schools. Unifying themes including belonging, identity, and resiliency will be discussed as well as ways for teachers to make connections to current curricula.
This recorded edWebinar is of interest to high school teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders.
About the Presenters
Cicely Lewis is an educator and author of Focus on Civil Rights Sit-Ins (History in Pictures) (Lerner Publications, 2022). She is currently the school librarian at Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia. Her award-winning Read Woke challenge won the MAE Award for Best Literature Program for Teens and she was named the 2020 School Library Journal Librarian of the Year. When she is not reading, you can find Cicely writing her bimonthly column in School Library Journal where she shares her book recommendations.
Morgan Taylor has been teaching secondary English for ten years and currently works as an instructional coach at Lawndale High School in California. She also co-founded Little Classroom Library, a grassroots organization that works to help public school teachers create their own classroom libraries and independent reading initiatives.
Ronell Whitaker is a high school English curriculum director at Community High School District 218 in Chicago with over 15 years of experience and is a champion for comics in the classroom. He is a founding member of the Lit-X teacher cohort. Ronell believes in comics, and he likes to think that comics believe in him.
Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.
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At Penguin Random House Education we believe that all children can learn to read. Access to books is the key to learning to read, to read proficiently, and with joy. It is our mission to foster a universal passion for reading by partnering with the greatest authors to create stories and communicate ideas that inform, entertain, and inspire students everywhere.
