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Leona Mae Dixon Pre-Service Teacher College of Menominee Nation Methods for Teaching Reading Methods for Teaching Language Arts Wisconsin State Reading Association Conference Milwaukee, WI This Spring I had the opportunity to participate in the Wisconsin State Reading Association conference that was held at the Midwest Airlines Center in Milwaukee, WI. I traveled the trip with two of my peers, Marcus and Ashley. We’ve traveled together before, both to do our PPST and to our principal/teacher meetings. I like that we are comfortable to make arrangements together and participate in professional development opportunities together. On this particular day we participated in the workshops together. The first workshop we attended was called “Teaching the Language of Reading”. The facilitator was an established classroom teacher in a public school district. She focused a lot on promoting deliberate introductions that included the repeated and practice/use of the language of reading. She spoke of engaging your learners in language and appropriate dialogue as much as possible. As a teacher she provided the participants with fun, easy and practical ideas she uses right in her own classroom. She further backed each idea with an example or pictures from her own class in her slideshow presentation. Some of the ideas that we learned I shared in our classroom discussions and I definitely feel are worth using in my own classroom one day. Some of these ideas included ways to incorporate the language into daily routine as well as ideas for centers and lessons. Other things the facilitator covered were the importance of finding literature and content that fit our learner’s skill levels and interest. The afternoon session we attended was called “What’s New in K-8 Children’s Literature”. The workshop was facilitated by a lady who worked for Anderson’s Bookshops in Downers Grove. Throughout the presentation she was able to introduce 28 different books to us. The books were introduced by three different categories which were Children’s Picture Books, Children’s Informational/Non-Fiction and Children’s Novels respectively. With each book selection the facilitator gave a little background information on the author and mentioned a few more books they authored. She then proceeded to do a picture walk through reading certain highlights of the book. To wrap up each selection she suggested ways to incorporate the book into your lessons and curriculum as well as certain subjects it could be associated with. Overall I really enjoyed our chance to learn new things that we can most definitely use in the future. I encourage all of my peers to seek as many professional development opportunities as they can.
 * Professional Development**