SEATCA 2025 - Southeastern Alberta Teachers' Convention: Full Schedule

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9:00am MST

Helping Students Navigate Academic Vocabulary Across Subject Areas

Friday February 21, 2025 9:00am - 10:00am MST

Students require specialized skills to be able to cope with the demands of disciplinary text. As students move up in secondary grades, the language of the texts they engage with becomes more specialized and precise, and the language more academic. Academic vocabulary (often referred to as Tier 2 Academic Words) is problematic for students to master, as academic vocabulary can take on dramatically different meanings depending on the usage. As the knowledge students engage with becomes more formalized and complex, so too do the patterns of language that construct that knowledge. This session will take a look at patterns of language and some of the problems with academic vocabulary. Teachers will come away with practical and useful tools that students can use to visualize, organize and structure their thinking to improve their reading, writing and communicating across all subject areas.

Speakers

Karena Hartson

Karena is a secondary literacy consultant who delivers high-level, high-energy professional learning sessions that help teachers leverage their own experiences to support student learning. Teachers attending her sessions will come away with tools and strategies that they can use immediately... Read More →

Friday February 21, 2025 9:00am - 10:00am MST
E149 299 College Dr SE, Medicine Hat, AB

Literacy

Audience Div 3, Div 4

10:30am MST

How Big Movies Help Students Understand Big Transferable Concepts

Friday February 21, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am MST

E149

Finding Nemo. How to Train Your Dragon. Apollo 13. There are big ideas and big moments in big movies: ideas that can pinpoint key instances of learning and transfer. We’ll examine these moments (and more) and bridge them into classroom learning. Teachers will learn about transfer theory and ways to use movies to explicitly teach for transfer of understanding. This session includes a support package of takeaways, teaching tips, and graphic organizers teachers can use in their classrooms.

Speakers

Karena Hartson

Friday February 21, 2025 10:30am - 11:30am MST
E149 299 College Dr SE, Medicine Hat, AB

Literacy

Audience Div 2, Div 3

1:00pm MST

My Students Can’t Summarize! Please Help!

Friday February 21, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm MST

E149

The ability to read and summarize a text is an essential skill. A good summary needs to do more than pick out the big ideas and simplify the text. A good summary helps students to identify and analyze key points in the text and then relate those points to the overall structure of the text. Teaching summarization that is linked to text-structure improves both the quality of the written summaries and students’ overall comprehension of the text. Join Dr. Hartson to explore this powerful method of summarizing text. You’ll walk away with examples, graphic organizers, and materials you can use in your class tomorrow.

Speakers

Karena Hartson

Friday February 21, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm MST
E149 299 College Dr SE, Medicine Hat, AB

Literacy

Audience Div 2, Div 3, Div 4