2AB. Motivating Reluctant Readers with the CCSS: Creating Units and Selecting Texts that Engage Readers

Description: This session will explore how to use inquiry-based unit plans to engage students in the middle grades with the Common Core State Standards. It will focus on combining a variety of texts, YA literature, and related real-world resources such as newspaper and magazine articles, music, data, studies, photos, and videos to create an integrated unit. Examples of units and student work willbe shared, and all examples are guaranteed to be framed around topics, issues, and questions that matter to adolescents and the world.

Presenter: After nine years of teaching every grade from third to eighth, Steve is been a professor of teacher education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.  He teaches primarily in the graduate programs, as well as a course on young adult fiction for the English Department.  Steve has also done wide consulting in the Chicago Public Schools; presents nationally; has published in many education journals; and conducts teacher workshops on literacy, literature, and social studies for Boundless Readers in Chicago.  Steve’s newest book Caring Hearts & Critical Minds: Literature, Inquiry, and Social Responsibility, will be published in the fall from Stenhouse Publishers.  His previous books are Being Good and A Democratic Classroom.  Steve lives in Chicago with his wife, Laura, his son, Max, and their dog, Sadie.