Presentations

KEYNOTES, PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS

Linda Diamond is a sought after speaker at regional and national events. From the science of reading to specific evidence-based practices to support English learners and adolescents struggling to read, Linda’s experience and expertise provides audiences with actionable insights and a wealth of resources and ideas to put into practice.

If you’d like to invite Linda to speak at your event or conduct a workshop, please reach out.

SAMPLE PRESENTATION DESCRIPTIONS

All of Linda’s keynotes, presentations and workshops can be customized to the interests, needs and knowledge level of your audience. Linda will work closely with you prior to the event date to ensure what she shares is valuable for those
she has the honor of presenting to.

It’s important to be an informed consumer when selecting instructional materials to teach reading. An informed consumer is empowered to support parents, influence publishers, district selection committees, and even university teacher preparation programs.

This presentations teaches participants to:

  • Learn what a knowledgeable consumer of literacy curricula looks like
  • Understand how outside organizations evaluate curricula
  • Evaluate alignment of professional learning provider with the science of reading
  • Learn how to use The Reading League Curriculum Evaluation Tool as a resource to guide you in selecting curricula.

What do we do about meeting the needs of students in middle and high school who are still struggling readers but also need to learn subject matter content? We must work to ensure struggling older students learn the skills they need to become readers, and also learn the content they need to graduate and prosper in either careers or college. This presentation debunks the idea promoted by many administrators that all teachers are reading teachers.

Specifically, this session highlights:

  • Foundational reading skills and the meaning of academic and disciplinary literacy
  • Important strategies and scaffolds teachers can use to improve student access to complex content
  • The essential skills that interventionists must teach.
  • High-leverage practices that benefit all students, but particularly students with disabilities

Many middle and high school students who are struggling readers do not read fluently even if they can decode the words. The lack of fluency impacts comprehension, assignment completion and reduces motivation to read. Students who read laboriously often give up on assignments, setting up a vicious cycle of avoidance and ultimately failure. Generally, fluency instruction, if provided at all, is limited to the primary grades.

This presentation explores:

  • Fluency and the variables that affect it
  • Techniques that can be useful within middle and high school classrooms to improve fluency
  • How improved fluency correlates to improved reading comprehension and increased motivation
  • Sample lessons highlighting a learner’s experience or lack of fluency
  • Using prosody as an important component in generating meaning

Given the increased demand to teach students using complex and challenging texts, one of the barriers to comprehension is unfamiliar vocabulary. When teachers select a text for close reading and study, they must decide how to deal with words that are likely to be unknown to many students and are important to the text meaning. Participants are encouraged to bring smartphones, tablets or internet-ready computers to join the conversation and reflections.

During this presentation, Linda shares:

  • Teaching strategies, including pre-teaching identified words; point of use; using context and morphological information, or ignoring some words altogether
  • A framework for determining an approach to vocabulary instruction in the context of a close reading
  • Video models of two different approaches to vocabulary in complex text
  • Using a graphic organizer and flowchart to make vocabulary decisions in preparation for teaching a complex, informational text to students

Increasingly, American educators are faced with the challenge of appropriately instructing, assessing and identifying English learners who may be struggling academically. Given English learners may be over-represented in special education while still others may be under-represented but demonstrate a need, understanding the difference is of utmost importance.

In this presentation, attendees will learn:

  • Processes to distinguish between language difference and disability
  • Options for identification
  • How to emphasize practical instructional processes within an RtI/MTSS approach

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