Escape rooms have become a widespread entertainment experience that individuals of all ages can enjoy. Using hints and clues, participants solve a series of puzzles to complete the objectives of the game and escape the room. In this session, participants will take part in a Literacy Escape room using a novel as an anchor text to address literacy competencies and standards in an engaging setting.

Teachers know that preparation is necessary for student engagement. However, without long-term planning, students often view each day in isolation. During this breakout session, participants will have the opportunity to investigate how planning for students to read, write, and discuss is more than just prepping for the next class period. Participants will investigate how to create the need to know and explore why readable text matters. Participants will leave with strategies for long-term planning as well as prepping for daily reading, writing, and discussing.

Since the passage of Act 20 (2023), much of our instructional focus has been on early literacy skills of phonemic awareness and phonics. But what about our intermediate readers? In this session, we'll explore the remaining pillars of reading established by the National Reading Panel (2000): comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Come gather practical, evidence-based strategies for your classroom and share your own favorite ideas!

Pressed for time but aiming for impact? Read-alouds can do it all by boosting language comprehension, building knowledge, and amplifying student voice. Join Maria to explore standout picture books and simple, effective ways to maximize every minute of your interactive read-aloud experiences, even within a published literacy program. You will leave with practical, classroom-tested strategies for making read-alouds a joyful, essential part of your daily routine.

This session explores how a process-oriented approach to writing instruction can cultivate authentic student voice and agency. In an age shaped by AI, teaching the craft of writing remains essential for helping young people think critically, communicate effectively, and understand the power of their own words. Participants will learn practical strategies to create writing environments that honor student identities, support growth across the writing process, and position writing as a tool for expression, connection, and shaping their futures.

In this workshop, Mia Wenjen will introduce the reverso poetry form using Marilyn Singer’s picture book Mirror Mirror. Violeta Encarnación will “read” Barbed Wire Between Us using just the illustrations. Violeta will then lead a workshop using the theme “home,” where participants will translate a concept from words to pictures. The audience will be challenged to find other themes to apply, such as “family” or “love.”Teachers will leave with a PDF of this session to teach students how to create their own picture books by thinking from 2 different perspectives.

A talk and workshop on teaching poetry, voice, and creative writing to young people from award-winning slam poet and children’s author Julian Randall. Drawing from his experience as a poet, performer, and author, Julian will explore ways to help young people connect with poetry and see themselves as writers. Participants will consider how to find poems that resonate with today’s students, encourage authentic voice and creative expression, and make poetry feel relevant, accessible, and exciting. Through conversation and hands-on activities, Julian will share approaches for bringing poetry and creative writing into the classroom in ways that invite curiosity, engagement, and a willingness to experiment with language and ideas.

I often say, “Stories are good medicine.” It’s why I write the stories I do. Prior to my author life, I enjoyed a 20-year career striving to improve public school education for Native students and improving public school education about Native Americans for all students. At the time of my book deal for Firekeeper’s Daughter, I served as the Director for the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education. What I know is that I could speak at the highest level of government about issues such as the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and not have the reach or impact as I can through my novels.

Literacy is the foundation for voice, access, and agency. In this session, we’ll explore how early literacy practices can serve as powerful tools for advancing equity and justice. Together, we’ll examine how: stories shape identity, language empowers children to express their truths, and inclusive literacy environments challenge bias and build belonging. We will explore free, bilingual resources from The Reading Universe Taxonomy and PBS KIDS that empower children to ask meaningful questions and consider diverse Reading Adventure Backpacks are theme-based activity packs for students to check out and take home for a week. During this session, attendees will learn about funding sources, program development, implementation, promotion and maintenance of a Reading Adventure Backpack program at their school. This program has been a successful part of our elementary school since 2021. We look forward to sharing our experiences and success with you so your school/students/families/community can enjoy Reading Adventure Backpacks!

Artificial intelligence is ubiquitous and growing exponentially. While it is easy to use when one has critical thinking skills, developing those skills when such tools exist is becoming more challenging. This presentation will discuss the ethical implications of AI in our society and schools, how to teach students to use AI with a critical mindset, and how to detect AI-generated writing in order to ensure that students are still thinking for themselves.

STEAM-focused picture book biographies inspire children by narrating the lives of innovators, inventors, and creators who changed the world. These biographies highlight human stories of curiosity, persistence, and problem-solving. Features such as timelines, resources, author notes, and overall book design will be discussed. Attendees will use a framework to assess various STEAM picture book biographies. Strategies will be offered to enhance the literacy and STEAM connection through student responses including creating digital and physical timelines, generating found poetry, making body biographies, crafting character trading cards, constructing playlists, and producing artistic responses. Book lists and lesson ideas will be provided.

Looking for a way to engage middle level writers in a Writing-Rich classroom and prepare them for Forward success? Attendees will learn to leverage student writing to showcase what strong writers do both authentically and in high-stakes testing. Presenters will share strategies related to rangefinding with both teachers and students, annotations, and high-impact revision.

In an era of misinformation and digital media, students must learn to critically evaluate what they read about the Holocaust. This session provides educators with tools to teach media literacy alongside historical understanding. Participants will examine examples of denial and distortion, practice source evaluation strategies, and explore ways to help students navigate online content responsibly. Walk away with classroom-ready approaches that strengthen critical reading skills while promoting accurate, evidence-based understanding.

To deeply comprehend and interpret texts is a critical thinking process powered by students’ identities, funds of knowledge, backgrounds, and experiences. Conversations about the science of reading can focus primarily on technical skills of reading such as phonics, decoding fluency, vocabulary. Within this landscape, the work of comprehension, interpretation, and antiracism can be lost along with the goal of cultivating lifelong readers who read for a variety of purposes, including joy. During our time together we’ll explore the critical lenses of an antiracist reading framework that guides instruction and supports meaning-making throughout the iterative process of interpretation.

Dr. Compton-Lilly will explore historical confluences between current discussions related to the Science of Reading and historical moments that are strikingly similar. This presentation will complicate historical conversations and consider the cumulation of research that challenges narrow interpretations of reading. Finally, Compton-Lilly will discuss long-term responses and instructional changes that followed these attacks, re-focused educators on children, and moved reading scholarship forward.

This session demonstrates a tool and process for evaluating the contents and supports offered by curricular materials and assessments. As states and districts increasingly rely on pre-approved lists, educators need more powerful tools to evaluate options for their particular setting. We will examine how different products with state approvals vary and how to estimate the opportunities for literacy development they include, or could be refined to allow.

Dr. Marcelle Haddix will narrate stories from her experiences as a literacy scholar, a teacher educator, and a leader in higher education to offer a framework for visioning possible futures in the fields of literacy, teacher education, and leadership. Her presentation will provide historical contexts, address current issues, and answer the questions: What leadership is needed to address pressing issues in literacy education today? What leadership will insure and sustain equitable and transformative outcomes in literacy education in the future?

What can teachers do when students balk at doing the reading? Why do so many students have difficulty staying with a book for more than a few minutes? In this workshop Carol Jago will demonstrate instructional moves that can help students increase their stamina and develop greater confidence in themselves as readers. Based upon current research in literacy, the session offers texts and tasks designed to engage today’s young readers and improve their comprehension. She will demonstrate methods for increasing reading skill while stimulating students' desire to read. A rigorous curriculum can be a joyful one.

Looking for literature ideas for your classroom? Books that engage and entertain, delight and inspire, affirm and inform are the focus of this session will highlight selected books for K-5 from "CCBC Choices 2026," the most recent best-of-the-year list from the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC). The CCBC is a library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and serves as statewide children’s and young adult literature book examination and resource center.

Join best-selling Wisconsin author, Stef Wade as she shares her process of turning ideas into stories by inserting fun facts and social emotional lessons, twisted up with puns and fun. In this interactive session, Stef will provide creative fuel for your classroom and leave you with inspirations to create stories of your own!

This interactive session will explore how to use an inquiry approach to help students understand their own minds, including the ways in which they (like all human beings) are susceptible to information pollution. We will look at powerful cognitive biases and how to recognize and control for them. We will explore how to help teachers and students consider the uses and misuses of AI in the teaching/learning process, particularly as applied to reading and composing. Strategies for evaluating sources and evidence (e.g. evidence ranking and semantic scales), lateral reading (putting texts into conversation, document based inquiry) and critical reading (e.g. Civic Online Reading Questions) and more included!

Though originally intended for upper elementary students, this session shows When we share our hearts through story, we inspire others to think more deeply about their own hearts and how stories connect us all. In this presentation of the heart, teacher, librarian, children's author, book lover, and story ambassador John Schu invites readers to consider literacy beyond its academic benefits, highlighting the ways story speaks to our hearts and brings us together. Presented through a study of five affective elements of story --- healer, inspiration, clarifier, compassion, and connector --- participants will explore how the universal truths found in stories can change us, inspire us, connect us to others, answer our deepest questions, and help us heal.

Literacy education did not develop in a vacuum. Drawing from Revolutionary Love: Creating Culturally Inclusive Literacy Classrooms, this session explores how race, power, language, and politics have shaped literacy education and continue to influence today’s classrooms. Through a historical journey, educators will examine whose knowledge and literacies have been valued, consider why teaching is never neutral, and reflect on how understanding the systems we inherited can help us interrupt inequitable practices and imagine more just possibilities for literacy education.

This interactive session explores how culturally relevant children’s and adolescent literature can advance literacy, identity, and social action. Participants will engage in dynamic read-alouds while learning practical strategies to support comprehension, critical thinking, and purposeful writing. Aligned to Wisconsin Standards for English Language Arts—including reading, writing, speaking, and listening—this session highlights how literature fosters student voice and advocacy. Participants will explore texts that inspire students to write and act for change, while collaborating on instructional approaches. Attendees will leave with classroom-ready resources, diverse book lists, and actionable strategies to strengthen teaching.

In this session, I’ll share a goal-setting process that I used with my own students to grow them as writers and to increase their overall literacy skills. What was most rewarding is that not only was their growth evident to me and to their parents, but my students witnessed themselves the improvement they’d made and felt proud and successful. I’ll tell you how I guided my students through this process by helping them set goals, monitor their progress, revise (and sometimes even abandon!) goals, and celebrate their achievements along the way. I’ll also share examples of how you can set your own goals to learning and grow alongside your students.

What is a paratextual prologue? How is this storytelling device used to immerse readers in a story? Many picture books include pages of text and illustrations within the front matter, delaying the title page. These pages are not merely for design purposes but serve as an essential prologue. Teaching children to read and comprehend paratext offers a multilayered reading experience. Paratexts introduce characters, conflicts, themes, or literary elements such as foreshadowing or mood. Attendees will engage in hands-on strategies that explore ways stories are constructed and how these books lend themselves to serve as mentor texts that offer compelling and mimicable approaches in creating narratives for fiction and nonfiction writing.

Help students discover the power of their own stories. In this interactive workshop, educators will learn practical strategies for cultivating student voice, identity, and confidence through writing. Participants will explore how to create brave spaces for authentic expression, build writing stamina with low-stakes prompts, teach the craft of powerful storytelling, and design culturally sustaining writing experiences that honor students’ lived experiences. Through community-centered celebration and feedback practices, teachers will leave with ready-to-use tools that help students see themselves as writers whose stories, perspectives, and aspirations truly matter.

Building a strong foundation for writing involves starting early with our youngest learners no matter their skill level. From pictorial representations and oral storytelling to sentence starters and beginning paragraphs, each writing experience can provide learners with the practice and opportunity to develop foundational skills needed for success. Learn how to use wordless picture books, hands-on punctuation, video shorts, and more with your elementary students and make writing fun, engaging, and effective.

With packed schedules and endless to-dos, you need smart, time-saving strategies. Join Maria to learn how picture books can be powerful springboards for cross-curricular learning. Discover read-aloud experiences that inspire inquiry and grow thinkers, tinkerers, and innovators. Walk away with simple STEAM learning experiences you can use right away, along with a list of engaging books to bring STEAM to life through literacy.

This session will highlight recently published trade books recommended in "CCBC Choices 2027," the most recent best-of-the-year list created by librarians at the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The books recommended in the annual "Choices" list offer a range of opportunities for supporting K-5 students across literacy, learning, and reading for pleasure.

As teachers become increasingly required to focus solely on skill development, this session offers important information on how to create meaningful reading lessons that go beyond skill development and immerse students in cultural knowledge and civic engagement. Teachers will be empowered to reimagine their reading curriculum so that they can teach content and skills while honoring and elevating their students' cultural wealth and community experiences in ways that move students' thinking into realms of critical and analytical action.

Learning to read involves more than developing foundational skills—it requires children to learn how to use multiple sources of information together as they make sense of text. This interactive session explores how responsive teaching can support the development of increasingly strategic readers. Participants will examine children’s reading behaviors, consider what those behaviors reveal about how they are processing text, and explore teaching moves that prompt children to notice, search, check, and problem solve. Participants will leave with practical ways to support increasingly flexible, efficient, and independent reading.

Catherine Compton-Lilly revisits “Why Johnny Can't Read” – the classic critique of reading scholarship – in the age of the Science of Reading. This analysis compares the rhetorical devices used by Rudolph Flesch in 1955 to the current discourses surrounding the Science of Reading, particularly the podcasts of Emily Hanford. Intriguing parallels are identified. Compton-Lilly argues that when we understand how discourses and rhetorical appeals are used to denigrate and dismiss legitimate research, we are better able to respond to problematic claims.

“The Reading Wars” have always been fought in the battlegrounds of the media, locally and increasingly globally. This media coverage has repeatedly promoted ideas that are exaggerated, inaccurate, or both. This talk begins by deconstructing some of these tropes in order to present a more accurate picture based on robust research evidence. It will examine the concept of “the science of reading.” Some of the realities of legislation in Wisconsin, and the implications for teachers and schools, will be used as examples to highlight how policies can fail to match up-to-date evidence from research.

Once we understand the systems in which we teach, how do we teach differently? Drawing from Revolutionary Love: Creating Culturally Inclusive Literacy Classrooms, this session moves from understanding to action. Educators will examine how texts, questions, and responses to children’s languages, cultures, identities, and knowledge can reproduce or disrupt inequitable systems. Participants will explore practical ways to make culturally responsive teaching part of everyday reading instruction and create rigorous literacy classrooms where every child is seen, valued, challenged, and loved.

This session explores creative strategies for using children's literature as an anchor for cross-curricular learning, giving K-8 teachers practical tools and resources they can use immediately. Attendees will explore how to pair literature with science, social studies, writing, and SEL instruction, turning a single well-chosen text into your most efficient curricular tool, not just an ELA add-on. Strategies shared will cover primary, intermediate, and middle grade levels, so there's something for every K-8 classroom.

In recent years, legislatures across the nation have adopted “science of reading” laws and invested heavily in teacher training, curriculum, and instructional approaches. And yet, reading scores continue to decline nationwide, and the gap between students who are doing well and those who are struggling remains large. This session examines major U.S. policy initiatives in the past 25 years that focused on reading and considers why these policies have had limited success in the past. We then review research showing how factors beyond instruction influence children’s reading development and achievement. Education policy should address the social and economic conditions affecting children’s lives, and reading policy needs to be thought of more broadly than just curriculum and instruction. Children’s experiences with housing, poverty, health, and stress shape their learning in critical ways, and in ways that public policy can address. Our argument is not that reading instruction is not important. Rather, we argue that to be truly effective, policy efforts should take a more holistic approach, expanding from “science of reading” to the “science of learning and development.” 

In this presentation, I will explain how to create a sustainable classroom culture that welcomes the seven essential literacy skills. Next, I offer the essential literacy skills where educators will discover how to: expand their teaching methods to include literacy skills, activate students' prior knowledge to build new learning, introduce literacy into daily lesson planning, embed reading comprehension into any subject area, and scaffold instruction using literacy strategies to boost subject-area comprehension.

What happens when world-class masterpieces meet student imagination? In this session, you’ll explore how the Art of Writing, Young Authors and Artists Conference at the Milwaukee Art Museum has sparked powerful stories, bold artwork, and creative photography for more than 35 years. Walk away with ready-to-use strategies used in the conference to inspire meaningful, student-driven creation in your classroom. We will also share practical ways to bring your students to the annual conference and showcase student work developed over the last 30+ years. See student examples, explore fresh ideas, and gain everything you need to turn inspiration into celebration while giving your students an authentic audience for their voices. 

Whether you already provide time for your students to write poems or you want to get started, this session is for you. You’ll explore ideas for creating a poetry-inclusive classroom environment, and you’ll be introduced to – or reminded of types of poems – your students will enjoy writing. You’ll learn how to scaffold poetry-writing for students who may need that, and you’ll also leave with suggestions for raising the challenge level for students who are ready. Writing poetry helps students develop important literacy skills and brings joy to the classroom. So, make space for this vibrant classroom practice! I bet you may even write some poems of your own.

Oneida Reads is a collective impact initiative working to address early literacy challenges and improve third-grade reading proficiency among Native students in Brown and Outagamie Counties. Four strategic focus areas are supported by partnerships at the local, state, regional, and national levels, including a partnership to support kindergarten readiness with PBS Wisconsin Education. Presenters will share an overview of Oneida Reads and an in-depth look at a pilot family engagement event designed to facilitate intergenerational learning and support the development of early reading skills at home with research-backed and trusted resources from PBS KIDS.