Attendance (Professional Conference)

2015 Virginia State Reading Association Annual Conference (VSRA)

Thursday, March 12th through Saturday, March 14th, I attended the 2015 Virginia State Reading Association Annual Conference in Richmond, Virginia! The theme of this year's conference was "Reading Is Magical". Jen Eubank and I presented on the topic of motivation regarding adolescent readers to educators, administrators, reading specialists, and literacy coaches from across the state of Virginia and other visiting states. We were extremely pleased and grateful that over 50 people chose to attend our session! It was a wonderful experience to be able to talk with these attendees as they shared their prior classroom experiences and offered ideas to enhance or modify the activities. Laughter and excitement filled our entire room as attendees collaborated and communicated with one another. An experienced reading specialist stated, "I could see myself modeling and sharing each of these activities with the teachers I work with."

After presenting, I was able to attend several other featured speakers and concurrent sessions. One featured speaker I loved listening to was Richard Allington, who happens to be the author of one of our textbooks, What Really Matters for Struggling Readers. His passion for literacy is very moving and inspiring. He believes that it is essential for educators to allow students access to books and other reading materials as early as possible. Within the school system, he advocates for more daily instructional time to focus on reading and literacy. According to Allington, “Largely forgotten in this area of accountability is the simple fact that the volume of reading that kids engage in is the best predictor of their reading development.” Student reading development will increase the more he or she is engaged with reading. He also believes that more books and other reading materials should be equally distributed to students, regardless of their Socioeconomic Status (SES). Many students from a lower SES are reading below grade level due to the lack of resources and materials. Within my own classroom, I hope for each student to have his or her own personal library of printed books on his or her independent level. The students would be able to read these books to themselves as well as their peers. These books could also go home for them to read with a family member or guardian.

The concurrent session that I enjoyed the most was entitled I Like to Move-It, Move-It: Literacy in Motion, presented by fellow Longwood University graduate students Kayla Brock and Kelly Farr. In this session, all of the attendees were up and moving as we practiced some interactive classroom activities. I walked away from the session with ample ideas and activities to promote movement in my future classroom, while incorporating literacy instruction. All of the interactive classroom activities within the session were highly engaging and motivating. I personally am a kinesthetic learner. I prefer to be doing something hands on and active, instead of listening to a lecture. The session activities included: roundtable writing, sight word basketball, and vocab on the move.

These speakers and sessions provided me with several ideas, resources, and activities that I will definitely utilize within my future classroom and share with fellow teachers. Attending this state conference allowed me to network with people who hold varies roles with the schools system, including educators, administrators, reading specialists, and literacy coaches. It was exciting to watch my fellow grad students present on topics they have become so knowledgeable of. The amount of support I felt from my professors and fellow grad students was very comforting. We have become one big happy literacy family! There were also lots of vendors at the conference that supplied me with resources, websites, leveled readers, and other books to use within my own classroom library.

I had such an amazing time at VSRA! Originally, I was so unbelievable nervous. When I stood up to present, my palms were sweating and I thought I was going to fall out in the floor. As I looked around the room, I began to realize that all of these attendees are here because they are interested and care about what I have to say. They all had an intrigued look in their eyes as we began our presentation. We all attended this conference for one common goal, to promote students to become successful lifelong literacy learners. Reading truly is magical!