Foundational Writing Skills: K-5 (An Offering of the Literacy Alliance)

Student writers benefit from inquiry, modeling, and guided practice in all elements of writing. While idea creation, attention to audience, structure, focus, and elaboration are essential in designing a powerful piece of writing, so are more foundational skills that may often get overlooked.

In this workshop, teachers will learn about grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling and how they can be explicitly studied within a writing unit. This will include sharing research, concrete tools, and lesson ideas that can be tried out immediately. Teachers will leave with research knowledge and classroom practices as well as an extensive handout of resources.

This workshop aligns with the proposed revisions to the New Jersey ELA Student Learning Standards that will now include sound-letter basics, letter formation, encoding and spelling skills, and elements of grammar, syntax, and punctuation.

Audience: Grade K-5 Teachers, Co-Teachers, Specialists, Coaches, and Administrators
Instructor:  Jaimie Margolies, Literacy Alliance K-5 Literacy Specialist/Lead Consultant
Delivery Format: Virtual 
Date/Time: 9 AM - 12 PM

What is the mission of the Literacy Alliance?

Since its inception in 2014, the Literacy Alliance has served as a transformational force to foster optimal learning environments through exemplary ELA literacy curriculum, instruction and leadership that promotes equity, cultural responsiveness and social-emotional wellness in classrooms across the globe. The mission of the Literacy Alliance is simple - to provide timely, research-based and exemplary professional development, so as to ensure that EVERY classroom teacher is confident, comfortable and capable of providing effective literacy instruction for EVERY student they serve.

Dr. Gravity Goldberg is a leading literacy expert, an educational consultant, author, founder of Gravity Goldberg, LLC, and Co-Founder of the Literacy Alliance, along with her Co-Founder, Dr. Brian P. Chinni, CEO/Founder of The Madison Institute (d.b.a., TMI education) and President of ChangeMaker, LLC.

Dr. Goldberg’s most recent books, What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow? Fiction & Nonfiction (Corwin) and Mindsets & Moves: Strategies That Help Readers Take Charge (Corwin) have been met with great enthusiasm. They have allowed many teachers to make shifts in their practice creating positive impacts for their students. Gravity is co-author of the book, Conferring With Readers: Supporting Each Student’s Growth and Independence (Heinemann). These books show Gravity’s commitment to creating learning environments that are responsive and supportive of students, teachers and leaders alike.

For more information about the 2022-2023 Literacy Alliance membership and related offerings, visit the Literacy Alliance website.

This workshop is offered in partnership with the Literacy Alliance, and included in the 2022-2023 TMI PLC membership.

Payment Methods and Cancellation/Refund Policy: Payment can be made by purchase order (PO) or check to TMI Education, LLC. Please mail all correspondence, including purchase orders, checks and agreements to TMI Education – PLC Division at PO Box 922, Madison, NJ 07940. If you are unable to attend a program for which you have registered, email the TMI PLC at [email protected] or call seven (7) days prior to the program to request a refund. No refunds will be granted unless notification is provided within this time frame. TMI Education reserves the right to cancel events for any reason, including inclement weather and instructor illness. If TMI Education makes the decision to cancel a workshop, we will use the EMAIL contact information you have provided to us to inform you. In addition, we will post the announcement of cancellation on the respective TMI Education website event page. If TMI Education cancels, participants will be provided a choice of:

• a full refund;
• transfer to another, upcoming workshop date and location (space permitting); or
• credit toward a future workshop. (Please note that all credits expire one (1) year from the date that they are issued.)

Video-Recorded Virtual (Zoom) Sessions and Tips to Maintain your Privacy during a Recorded Session:  All of our virtually-delivered programs are video recorded and accessible to workshop registrants, Professional Learning Consortium Members, and education professional constituents subsequent to the session. Therefore, each virtually-delivered workshop and webinar will have Zoom’s Recording Disclaimer enabled by default. With this feature, attendees will receive a notification when a recording starts or if they join a session that is already being recorded. The participant can then consent to stay in the session and be recorded or choose to leave the session altogether.

Tips to Maintain your Privacy during a Virtually-Delivered Session: Actively engaging in Zoom sessions is important. Participants may have concerns, however, of a Zoom session recording capturing their participation. Meeting hosts or instructors are taking steps to minimize this concern. In addition to the consent, participants can also use the following steps and features to take control of what is shared when a session is being recorded.

• Change your participant name displayed in Zoom (e.g. only use your first name, replace your name)
• Disable your video
• Mute your audio
• Do not communicate via the chat feature
• Do not upload an identifiable profile photo

Please refer to Zoom’s Attendee Controls for more information on how to use these features.