Detailed Agenda

(click down-arrows for detailed session information)

Monday, August 1

Taste of the South breakfast buffet.

It’s The Teaching Not the Technology: An Effective Guide to Blended Learning

Jim Warford

Jim Warford

Has your school or district invested lots of time and money putting technology in the classroom only to find that instruction often still looks the same? How can you get a better return on your investment?

This session will explain why it’s about the delivery not the device. It will give you a guide for how teachers can use the new tools more effectively, while increasing student engagement and learning.

Imagine Learning
Luis Oviedo · Target Audience: All Attendees
Breakwater Room
Company Description: Imagine Learning provides award-winning educational software to more than 100,000 students in schools across the United States and around the world. Students receive one-on-one instruction through hundreds of engaging activities specifically designed to meet their individual needs. Imagine Learning English is the language and literacy solution.
Abstract: Imagine Learning English is an educational software program that delivers powerful, individualized, and engaging language and literacy instruction to English learners, students with disabilities, struggling readers, and students in early childhood education. You will see how the program differentiates instruction for every student with engaging and exciting activities and texts. You will also see examples of data reports, which can be used by administrators and teachers to track student progress or inform classroom instruction. Come and see why Imagine Learning English is the language and literacy solution.


Interactive Notebooks for Language Arts
Jenifer Palmer, Dawn Smith & Marta Henriksen · Target Audience: Upper Elementary/Middle School Teachers
River Run Room
When students create Interactive Notebooks, they are putting the information they are learning into composition notebooks. This allows them to make connections and organize these topics in their brains in a different and more meaningful way than just listening to a lecture. They can use these notebooks as a tool to better allow them to find success in the classroom. Come and join us in this make and take session.


Mindset and the Classroom (Book Talk)
Terri Bissonette · Target Audience: All Attendees
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
How does mindset effect a learner’s motivation, perseverance, and resiliency? What can teachers do to encourage and build a growth mindset in students? This session will first explore how mindset can affect student beliefs about themselves, their environment, and their future. Then, we will discover ways to create a classroom that fosters the development of a growth mindset for all students.


Students as Teachers!
Sarah Lutz-South Dakota Teacher of the Year · Target Audience: K-5 Elementary Teachers
Howe Room
This presentation will include engaging activities that promote higher-order thinking and collaboration for all students. Learning is meaningful when students take ownership of their learning while communicating and problem solving with their peers.


Teaching Students Who Are Not Permanently Housed
Laura Johnson Frame · Target Audience: Teachers, McKinney-Vento Liaisons, Title I Directors, School Administrators
Glass Room
Each year, more than 2200 students in South Dakota are identified under the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness; many more go unidentified. Students experiencing homelessness live in a world of many stressors and trauma – moving from place to place, loss of relationships, loss of belongings, inadequate living locations, lack of privacy, lack of clothing, unstable and inadequate food supply, and loss of the family unit, etc. Do you have a student who meets the statutory definition? Teachers will learn how to identify students, what services should be offered and what the law requires.


Transitioning from Teachscape to Frontline Technologies’ My Learning Plan: Observation & Appraisal Management System
Matt Gill, Jolene McGregor & Timothy Jarotkiewicz · Target Audience: All Attendees
Wheeler Room
The purpose of this session is to provide an overview of Frontline Technologies’ My Learning Plan: OASYS (MLPOASYS). MLPOASYS allows districts to complete their evaluations online through a secure platform and will provide districts with rich reports. Frontline Technologies recently acquired Teachscape, so the evaluation plans should remain similar to previous years. Please join us for a look at this easy-to-use, new and improved platform.

Biggest Bang Theory: Strategic Application of Technology
Nicol Reiner · Target Audience: All Attendees
Glass Room
It is not so important in education to ask “What works?” because the answer is “nearly everything.” Instead, it is much more valuable to ask “What works best?” In this session we will examine the researched based factors and influences that most significantly enhance student achievement. We will then explore opportunities to leverage the power of technology to do more (effectively and efficiently) of those things that “work best”. Although this session can be geared in all academic areas, the focus of this session will be on math.


Catch Up and Keep Up with Do the Math-Building Strong Foundations and Math Relationships
James Strayer – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
Catch up and keep up with Do the Math-Building Strong Foundations and Math Relationships. Designed by Marilyn Burns, HMH’s Do The Math is about helping students build strong fundamental math skills and making connections to concepts and relationships. Key critical skills are taught in a full suite of 13 modules to help kids catch up and keep up using strong interactive activities and teaching practices. “I do, we do, you do,” is an important part of the process along with paired learning, engaging modeled activities, and progress monitoring. Come see how Do The Math and Do The Math Now can really connect with teaching and learning.


Language and Cultural Difference vs. Disability: How School Practitioners Can Make an Accurate Distinction (Book Talk)
Jean Larson · Target Audience: Classroom Teachers, Administrators, Counselors, School Psychologists, ESL Teachers, Special Education Teachers
Wheeler Room
When a culturally linguistic diverse student struggles in school, how can school practitioners make an accurate distinction between a learning disability and a cultural or language acquisition difference? This session will introduce school professionals to the research and methodology of Dr. Catherine Collier’s Separating Difference from Disability. This process emphasizes the cultural and social history of the student while supporting structured collaboration and comprehensive documentation among teachers of struggling English Learners. Enhance your instructional intervention efforts by expanding your knowledge of this framework and explore the seven steps that are clearly outlined for determining English Learner strengths and needs.


Hands-on/Minds-on: 21st Century Skill Development through Art and Science
Rose Ann Hofland · Target Audience: Afterschool Professionals, Elementary Teachers or Administrators
Breakwater Room
Join us for a conversation about the value of hands-on art and science learning for students in our programs and schools. Three main topics will be covered: 1) Creating successful community partnerships in schools and afterschool programs; 2) Art and science engagement for elementary age students; and 3) Resources and new ideas for art and science integration in the classroom.


The Truth: Improving School Climate Leads to Academic Success
Stephanie Weideman & Pat Hubert – School Climate · Target Audience: K-12 Teachers and Administrators
Howe Room
Most educators don’t need to rely on research to know that schools that promote a common understanding of behavior expectations, have teachers who are able to effectively manage classroom behaviors, and provide students with a safe learning environment are more likely to be successful. However, for those who remain skeptical, a new study conducted by NYU shows that “significant gains in key measures of a school’s climate, like safety and academic expectations, can be linked to the equivalent of an extra month and a half of math instruction and, in some cases, a 25 percent reduction in teacher turnover.” In other words, a sustained investment in school climate is likely to yield favorable results. In this session, participants will learn ways educators can collaborate to develop common behavioral understandings and encourage positive classroom management. Strategies, tools and activities will be shared.

Building Your Toolkit for Family Engagement (Session 1 of 2)
Lori Laughlin · Target Audience: All Attendees
Breakwater Room
Family engagement is critical to student and school success! This session will provide resources and ideas that will allow participants to explore opportunities associated with meaningful family engagement. Specific topics will include communication, linking to learning, and helping families to understand and use the curriculum of the home to support their child’s learning.


Dialogue Not Monologue
Nicol Reiner · Target Audience: All Attendees
Glass Room
What kinds of learning experiences will prepare our students for the future? Research tells us that the complex and diverse skills that will be needed by our students are learned through discourse and social interaction. Current classroom observation research shows that teachers often talk 70-80% of the time in the classroom. What opportunities can we provide to both create a classroom environment where student discourse is robust and increase the amount of quality student discourse? Although this session can be geared in all academic areas, the focus of this session will be on math.


I am sure glad we implemented this new initiative! said NO Teacher….EVER! Tips for implementing an RtI structure that will not leave you wishing you could retire!
Pat Bruinsma · Target Audience: Elementary, Secondary, Administration
Wheeler Room
This presentation will provide essential elements of implementing an RtI Structure. We will discuss what is RtI, how to identify key components for a successful initiative and maintain integrity as you move through the implementation stages.


Is Your School Bully-Proof? Bully Prevention and Intervention
Pat Hubert & Stephanie Weidemann · Target Audience: All Attendees
Howe Room
This session will provide research, systems and examples of implementing effective bullying prevention within your school. A systems framework, explicit social skills instruction, and re-definition of the bullying construct will be emphasized to focus on the social attention among students on building an appropriate and positive school climate.


Schoolwide Session
Betsy Chapman · Target Audience: Schools currently running a Schoolwide program or those that have questions about moving from a Targeted Assistance Title I Program to a Schoolwide Title I Program
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
Is your school interested in going schoolwide with your Title I program? Perhaps your school has had a Title I schoolwide for many years and nothing seems to ever change. Either way, this session will have something for you! Attendees will leave the session knowing the benefits of switching to a schoolwide Title I program for the 2017-2018 school year, how to keep your program current and maximize the benefits of a schoolwide system, and best of all, how to implement a system that will help ALL of the students in your school with schoolwide system reforms.


We all Talk About Teaching; Let’s Learn More About it! (Book Talk)
MaryLou McGirr · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
The combination of rigorous procedures for teacher performance and the higher standards for student learning creates a need for improved teaching practice. One of the most power mechanisms for the improvement of teaching is professional conversations. This session is a book review of Danielson’s Talking About Teaching and focuses on informal professional conversations. Find out who teachers are most often having informal conversations with. Learn what it is teachers need to be talking about to improve their practice. An example: Chapter 2 tackles, What Causes Learning? How are Students Motivated? What is Intelligence and How Do Students’ Views Influence Their Action?

Building Your Toolkit for Family Engagement (Session 2 of 2)
Lori Laughlin · Target Audience: All Attendees
Breakwater Room
Family engagement is critical to student and school success! This session will provide resources and ideas that participants can use to explore opportunities associated with meaningful family engagement. Specific topics will include communication, linking to learning, and helping families to understand and use the curriculum of the home to support their child’s learning.


Digital Library- How Does This Free, Easy-To-Use Smarter Balanced Resource Differ from Other State Standards Resources
Matt Gill & Virgina Colgan · Target Audience: All Attendees
Howe Room
The Digital Library is an online collection of high-quality instructional and professional learning resources contributed by educators for educators. These resources are aligned to state standards and help educators implement the formative assessment process to improve teaching and learning. It also allows educators to share their expertise with colleagues across the country. Come to this session and learn the ins and outs of this great, free resource available to all SD educators.


Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – Be in the Know
Shannon Malone & Jordan Dueis · Target Audience: All Attendees
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
The Every Student Succeeds Act, P.L. 114-95, officially replaces NCLB as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. US Department of Education notes that the law intends for States to transition to ESSA in 2016-17, with interventions based on new accountability systems starting in the 2017-18 school year. The law ends current ESEA Flexibility waivers by Aug. 1, 2016. Join us for this session to be in the know about ESSA.


iLit (Inspire Literacy)
Mike Limmer & Madeline Doerhoff
Wheeler Room · Target Audience: All Attendees
iLit is a comprehensive reading intervention program for students in grades 3-12 that allows districts to truly empower teachers and engage students. This technology driven program has a suite of program options allowing schools to target students reading 2 or more levels below grade level, English Language Learners, and students needing to address specific skills gaps. iLit boasts a highly diverse student library of 3000 books that range all the way to Below Reader, 46 different language translations, embedded SIOP notes, and is 100% aligned to College and Career Standards. Most importantly, iLit gives teachers and administrators access to powerful and actionable data daily.


iPads to Support All Learners
Ceci Estes, Jo Holzer & Koreen Hammel · Target Audience: Elementary and Middle School
Glass Room
We will be presenting a variety of iPad apps that can be purchased at a low cost and some are free to use as supplemental resources and curriculum in the classroom.


We all Talk About Teaching; Let’s Learn More About it! (Repeat)
MaryLou McGirr – Talk about Teaching · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
The combination of rigorous procedures for teacher performance and the higher standards for student learning creates a need for improved teaching practice. One of the most power mechanisms for the improvement of teaching is professional conversations. This session is a book review of Danielson’s Talking About Teaching and focuses on informal professional conversations. Find out with whom teachers are most often having informal conversations. Learn what it is teachers need to be talking about to improve their practice. An example: Chapter 2 tackles, What Causes Learning? How are Students Motivated? What is Intelligence and How Do Students’ Views Influence Their Action?

Ice Cream Sundae Buffet

Technology Action Planning Workshop
Jim Warford
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
Effective technology integration is one of the most exciting, and enticing, ideas in education today. New standards and Next Generation assessments call for technology to be integrated seamlessly into both instruction and assessment. They establish significantly higher expectations for increased technology use and proficiency throughout the process. As a result, all across the country schools and teachers are re-inventing the traditional classroom. Are you ready? This session will provide examples, resources, and facilitated Action Planning to help you identify your goals, plan your transition, and prepare your students for success.

Tuesday, August 2

West River Breakfast Buffet

Engaging and Supporting All Learners

jane-d-hill

“Engaging and supporting all learners” obviates a social constructivist view of learning whereby students interact to construct knowledge. This keynote will explore ways to support this theory of learning.

How to Make Personal Connections with At-Risk Students/Best Practices in an Alternative Setting (Session 1 of 2)
Shane Thill – Alternative High School (100 minutes) · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
There’s more than one way to make a delicious sandwich or dessert; which brings me to my point. There’s more than one recipe for reducing risk factors affecting a student’s life. There are a few ingredients that are universal. I will be sharing with you those important universal ingredients, along with multiple examples of success stories throughout my 23 years of working with the at-risk population.


Language and Cultural Difference vs. Disability: How School Practitioners Can Make an Accurate Distinction
Jean Larson · Target Audience: Classroom, ESL & Special Education Teachers, Administrators, Counselors, School Psychologists
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
When a culturally linguistic diverse student struggles in school, how can school practitioners make an accurate distinction between a learning disability and a cultural or language acquisition difference? This session will introduce school professionals to the research and methodology of Dr. Catherine Collier’s Separating Difference from Disability. This process emphasizes the cultural and social history of the student while supporting structured collaboration and comprehensive documentation among teachers of struggling English learners. Enhance your instructional intervention efforts by expanding your knowledge of this framework and explore the seven steps that are clearly outlined for determining English learner strengths and needs.


Leaders of Learning
Cary Davis, Candi Foltz-Hall, Martha Anderson, Bobbi Schillinger · Target Audience: All Attendees
Wheeler Room
As leaders of learning, we realize leadership is a people process successfully influencing and inspiring others. Effective leaders recognize that they cannot accomplish great things alone. They also recognize that the ability to lead is not the private reserve of a few extraordinary people or those in particular positions of authority. We empower all members of the building–that leadership capacity is “broadly distributed in the population and is accessible to anyone who has passion and purpose to change things as they are.” We’ve learned a great deal from one another as we engaged in the collaboration effort to provide a helpful resource to educators. Regardless of your position, you will embrace your opportunity to lead to act in ways that inspire others. The premise of our presentation is based on our book study with Leaders of Learning by DuFour and Marzano allowing us to share our work and learning that everyone who enters the field of education has both an opportunity and an obligation to be a leader of learning.


Mindset and the Classroom (Repeat)
Terri Bissonette · Target Audience: All Attendees
Glass Room
How does mindset effect a learner’s motivation, perseverance, and resiliency? What can teachers do to encourage and build a growth mindset in students? This session will first explore how mindset can affect student beliefs about themselves, their environment, and their future. Then, we will discover ways to create a classroom that fosters the development of a growth mindset for all students.


Providing Effective Feedback for Instruction
Cher Daniel · Target Audience: Building Administrators, Instructional Coaches
Breakwater Room
Research shows that effective feedback for students is one of the greatest instructional strategies to increase student achievement and increasing the instructional capacity of teachers results in higher student achievement and academic growth. How do principals juggle the role of evaluator and provide reflective conversations and feedback to their teachers? In this session participants will be provided tools for coaching conversations and stems for effective feedback, and create their own “roadmap” plan to use and implement throughout the year.


The Systemic Collaborative Process
Jeanne Burckhard-McKenna – TIE · Target Audience: All Attendees
Howe Room
The systemic collaborative process is a creation for collecting, analyzing, monitoring, and evaluating data (daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly). It utilizes an electronic template that captures school team conversations around data, goals and action planning using the four lenses of data. If you’re looking for a way to focus your school’s school improvement process with your leadership team, this is for you.

Academic Talk
Jane Hill · Target Audience: All Attendees
Wheeler Room
Today’s classrooms consist of ALLs (Academic Language Learners), which represent every student, with a subset of ALLs called ELLs (English Language Learners). Both groups need to have a multitude of academic conversations with targeted academic language that supports content they are learning. This workshop will be a simulation of what academic talk looks like, sounds like, and feels like. In other words, participants are going to be using strategies to learn strategies. You will walk away experiencing how ALL students, along with ELLs, can acquire academic language that aligns with content.


Educator Effectiveness Update
Matt Gill · Target Audience: All Attendees
Glass Room
As a result of the new ESSA, South Dakota has had the opportunity to create a workgroup of educators to review the Educator Effectiveness Systems. Join us at this session to receive an update from the workgroup and potential changes to the Teacher and Principal Effectiveness Systems.


Fiscal Highlights
Cody Stoeser · Target Audience: Educators, Title I Directors, Business Officials
Breakwater Room
This session will cover the following topics for Title I Fiscal Requirements:
Supplement, Not Supplant
Comparability (large school districts)
Maintenance and Effort
Carryover
Allowable Costs
Time Distribution Records


How to Make Personal Connections with At-Risk Students/Best Practices in an Alternative Setting (Session 2 of 2)
Shane Thill – Alternative High School (100 minutes) · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
There’s more than one way to make a delicious sandwich or dessert; which brings me to my point. There’s more than one recipe for reducing risk factors affecting a student’s life. There are a few ingredients that are universal. I will be sharing with you those important universal ingredients, along with multiple examples of success stories throughout my 23 years of working with the at-risk population.


The School Improvement Process, Principal Panel
Jordan Dueis & Terri Bissonette · Target Audience: K-12 Teachers and Administrators
Howe Room
This panel of focus and priority school principals will discuss the ins and outs of the school improvement process. This includes strengths and challenges of the process, leading a leadership team, success they have seen, and what they have learned through the process.
Panelists:
Jeremy Wollman, South Central Middle and High School Principal, Bonesteel SD
Jane Hannemann, Elementary Immersion Center Principal, Sioux Falls SD
Peri Strain, White River High School Principal, White River
Anna LaDeaux, Colome Junior High School Principal, Colome SD
Monica Whirlwind Horse, Rockyford School Principal, Oglala Lakota County, Rockyford SD
Michelle Glodt, Former Stanley County Elementary School Principal, Fort Pierre SD
Mike Deming, North Middle School Assistant Principal, Rapid City SD

Academic Talk (Repeat)
Jane Hill · Target Audience: All Educators
Wheeler Room
Today’s classrooms consist of ALLs (Academic Language Learners), which represent every student, with a subset of ALLs called ELLs (English Language Learners). Both groups need to have a multitude of academic conversations with targeted academic language that supports content they are learning. This workshop will be a simulation of what academic talk looks like, sounds like and feels like. Participants will be using strategies to learn strategies. You’ll walk away experiencing how ALL students, along with ELLs, can acquire academic language that aligns with content.


Bottom Line: Improved Learning
Lennie Symes – TIE · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
We’ve been doing team planning for years, but it is easy to get stuck in a rut. Learn about the tools necessary for productive team planning: data structured in a useful way, processes for individual and group input and collaborative tools for monitoring on-going group planning.


Facing the Unknown…Wakpala Elementary’s Journey towards Maximizing Student Achievement
Stephanie Weideman, Karyl Knudson & Kathy Schmeichel – MTSS · Target Audience: Elementary Teachers & Administrators
Howe Room
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-level prevention system that strives to maximize student achievement, which may lead to a reduction of behavior problems in the classroom. Most educators have heard of this strategy but have been reluctant to pursue it due to the unknown. Wakpala Elementary has uncovered the keys to implementing a successful RTI program and will be sharing their knowledge and lessons learned with participants. Leadership, professional development, data that demonstrates success and a step-by-step plan for implementation will be discussed.


September is Attendance Awareness Month-Teaching Families Why Attendance Matters
Dawn Smith & Lori Laughlin · Target Audience: All Attendees
Breakwater Room
Why focus on September for Attendance Awareness Month? At the start of the school year schools and communities lay out expectations for the coming year, which is a perfect time to begin to develop a culture of attendance. A clear message about the connection between good attendance and student achievement is easily incorporated into rallies, assemblies, back to school nights and stories in your local media. Don’t be shy about spreading the word! Kids who miss too much school in pre-K and kindergarten are less likely to be reading in the 3rd grade, making it much harder to learn in the years that follow. Studies show that 75% of students who are chronically absent in 6th grade will drop out of high school, and students who are chronically absent in high school are 7.4 times more likely to dropout. Let’s do what we can to turn around chronic absence in our schools and help kids to be in school every day!


Transition to Kindergarten
Lori Bouza · Target Audience: Preschool and Kindergarten Educators
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
Transitioning from home to school is a critical step for our children and families. I’ll present some ideas for transitioning into Kindergarten from Preschool. Discussion will be held on what we do, how it works with our headstart partnership, and give audience a chance for questions and sharing of ideas.


What’s New with the WIDA Can Dos?
Gwyneth Dean-Witte · Target Audience: ESL Teachers, ELL Coordinators, Content Teachers – K-12
Glass Room
The WIDA (World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment) Can Do Descriptors, Key Uses Edition, K-12 offers a focus on what language learners can do to participate meaningfully in teaching and learning in academic contexts. It’s organized around four over-arching communicative purposes, called key uses: recount, explain, argue and discuss. Included are: descriptors for language proficiency level 6, reaching; representation of the four domains of language: listening, speaking, reading and writing; examples of listening and speaking communicative skills in the key use of discuss to highlight the importance of oral language development for language learners; descriptors for the grade and grade-level bands K, 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8 and 9-12; and connections to the academic expectations outlined in college and career-readiness standards.

Free Online Digital Resources for ALL Learners
Jane Healy · Target Audience: All Attendees
River Run Room
Attend this session to learn where to find good non-fiction and fiction multi-media content with read-aloud, text translation, study aids and other features for K-12 available from the State Library at no cost to your school.


Information + Inspiration = Impact
Jordan Dueis & Carol Bush · Target Audience: K-12 Staff & Administrators
Glass Room
This session will include examples from the book The Fred Factor in which Fred, the ordinary mail carrier, who passionately loved his job and customers, is constantly going the extra mile to make an extraordinary difference. Fred sees opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those he serves. We will discuss the four basic principles that define the “Fred” Factor. The session will also include the story of Linda Cliatt-Wayman, a principal at a school at Strawberry Mansion High School in North Philadelphia, a low-performing school classified as “persistently dangerous”. Linda is a passionate educator with an unwavering belief in the potential of all children. Linda is driven by her love for her students. Every morning she ends her announcements with “Remember, if no one told you they loved you today, remember I do and I always will.”


Making Connections: Assessment, Accountability, and Evaluations
Matt Gill, Jan Martin & Laura Scheibe · Target Audience: All Attendees
Wheeler Room
SD DOE staff will discuss how the state assessment systems connect to the accountability report card and can be used to help classroom teachers set goals and inform instruction. Special attention will be given to how summative data can be connected to local data to help drive meaningful goal development. A preview of the Academic Growth Model will be shared.


Serving ELs in a Colony Setting
Kerri Whipple · Target Audience: Administrators, teachers, coaches, and SSTs in colony settings
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
Research-based principles of effective EL (English Learners) programming will be reviewed and participants will determine how well their school uses the principles. Participants can work as a team or as individuals to make plans for improving access to academic language for their EL students based on the research-based principles of effective EL programs.


Strategies to Help the Struggling Adolescent Reader
Susan Wanta – Education Technology Partners · Audience: All Attendees
Breakwater Room
Every year, approximately one-third of U.S. public high school students don’t graduate (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006). Learning can be stressful and difficult for the young adults students that struggle with baseline reading skills. It’s frustrating and embarrassing for students to struggle with reading aloud, it can be even so embarrassing and painful for adolescents that poor reading can lead low self esteem and even to a decision to drop out of school. Researchers found that teens with poor reading skills were more likely than competent readers to experience anxiety disorders, drop out of school, and even contemplate suicide (Daniel et al., 2006). Let’s discuss strategies to help our struggling adolescent readers.


Waggle Adaptive Smart Practice
Randy Brooks, Regional Sales Director – Waggle · Targeted Audience: 2nd-8th Grade Teachers, Administrators
Howe Room
Right Challenge at the Right Time! Based upon the growth mindset, Waggle provides a safe environment for students to have in-the-moment instruction and have just the right challenge at the right time.
Amplify teacher impact: adaptive learning can be a powerful tool for teachers to extend their reach and impact.
Promote student engagement: adaptive learning can improve student engagement by increasing self-confidence, decreasing discomfort and frustration and encouraging productive learning habits.
Understand students beyond their scores: no two students are identical – they learn and forget at different rates, come from different educational backgrounds and have different capabilities, attention spans and modes of learning.

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – Be in the Know (Repeat)
Shannon Malone and Jordan Dueis · Target Audience: All Attendees
Hale & Oacoma Rooms
The Every Student Succeeds Act, P.L. 114-95, officially replaces NCLB as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. U.S. Department of Education notes that the law intends for States to transition to ESSA in 2016-17, with interventions based on new accountability systems starting in the 2017-18 school year. The law ends current ESEA Flexibility waivers by Aug. 1, 2016. Join us for this session to be in the know about ESSA.


Interactive Notebooks for English Language Learners
Jenifer Palmer & Yutzil Becker · Target Audience: Upper Elementary/Middle School ELL Teachers
Howe Room
Interactive Notebooks are gaining popularity in English classrooms nationwide that include English Language Learners. These student-created, teacher-directed notebooks are effective with all students. But as places to record learning and develop proficiency with academic English, they are ideally suited to the needs of English learners. With Interactive Notebooks and English Language Learners, you’ll see how easy the Notebook is to implement and why it makes such a difference to English learners.


Is Your School Bully-Proof? Bully Prevention and Intervention (Repeat)
Pat Hubert & Stephanie Weidemann · Target Audience: All Attendees
Glass Room
This session will provide research, systems and examples of implementing effective bullying prevention within your school. A systems framework, explicit social skills instruction, and re-definition of the bullying construct will be emphasized to focus on the social attention among students on building an appropriate and positive school climate.


The Systemic Collaborative Process (Repeat)
Jeanne Burckhard-McKenna – TIE · Target Audience: All Attendees
Wheeler Room
The Systemic Collaborative Process is a creation for collecting, analyzing, monitoring, and evaluating data (daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly). It utilizes an electronic template that captures school team conversations around data, goals and action planning using the four lenses of data. If you are looking for a way to focus your school’s school improvement process with your leadership team, this might be for you.


Tools in SD-STARS to Help Your School
Brad Steckelberg & Sara Kock · Target Audience: Teachers or administrators, anyone with a STARS account
Breakwater Room
We will present on ways in which reports in SD-STARS can help teachers and administrators specifically as it applies to Title. This could include reporting requirements or decision making. As the STARS staff and Title staff work more closely together and learn about each other’s programs, this presentation and topic will become more detailed and cohesive.

Wednesday, August 3

How To Teach Reading to Recently Arrived Secondary Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education

jane-d-hillThis question has recently been raised by several SSTs who are experiencing secondary students arriving in SD without reading proficiency in their native language. If several educators have that question, then many probably do as well. Since so many of us are going to be in the same place in August, the DOE in conjunction with the North Central Comprehensive Center, decided to add on this working session for August 3 from 8:30-1:30.

Jane Hill, NCCC, will offer the 26 letters and 44 sounds from English to work from as participants select a language represented in SD and identify which sounds are similar. The group will discuss ways to explicitly transfer those sounds which are the same in two languages. Next, participants will identify which sounds do not exist in the native language that must be learned in English. The group will discuss ways to purposefully teach those sounds using authentic texts. The outcome will be resources we can use in the upcoming school year for teaching reading to this particular group of students.

Come with your best reading ideas!

Registration is limited to 25. Meals are NOT included.