Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia College of Education is offering two all-day teacher workshops-one on Word Identification Strategy and the other on the Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy-Oct. 18-19 at Rivers Crossing on College Station Road. The workshops can be taken separately or in conjunction with one another.
The Word Identification Strategy Workshop on Oct. 18 will provide a series of steps that promote the successful reading of words. This workshop will offer a functional and efficient strategy to help challenged readers successfully decode and identify unknown words in their reading materials. The strategy is based on the premise that most words in the English language can be pronounced by identifying prefixes, suffixes and stems and by following three short syllabication rules. In a research study, students made an average of 20 errors in a passage of 400 words before learning this strategy. Having learned the Word Identification Strategy, students reduced their errors to an average of three per 400 words. Reading comprehension increased from 40 percent on the pretest to 70 percent on grade-level passages.
The Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy Workshop on Oct. 19 is designed to systematically teach the fundamental skills students need to be able to identify and paraphrase main ideas and details. The workshop contains lessons on paraphrasing words, phrases and sentences, as well as lessons on identifying main ideas and details in paragraphs and short essays. Specific instruction will include paraphrasing passages in which main ideas are not clear, as well as generalizing to standardized tests.
The workshops will be held from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. each day. The registration fee is $125 and includes a parking pass, refreshment breaks and instructor’s manuals, packets of training materials, as well as supplemental handouts and PowerPoint presentations sent electronically following the workshop to augment instruction. Successful completion of this workshop will provide 1 PLU for eligible participants. The workshops are instructed by SIM® Professional Developer Kathy Boyle-Gast of the College of Education’s department of communication sciences and special education.
For more information and online registration, see http://www.coe.uga.edu/events/.
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