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Amy Benjamin
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Amy Benjamin offers workshops and keynotes for educators at the secondary level. She is a nationally-recognized expert in improving student performance in all subject areas through literacy instruction. Amy, a long-time high school English teacher, has coached teachers throughout the United States and Canada.
She is a consultant to the National Council of Teachers of English, and has been a professional advisor to the College Board; Holt, Rinehart, and Winston; and Scholastic Magazines.
Amy's book on strategic literacy, But I'm Not a Reading Teacher is considered a valuable resource for teachers who want to embed reading comprehension mini-lessons into content area and English classes. Her workshops in strategic literacy train teachers in social studies, science, math, and English to use domain-specific reading comprehension mini-lessons that enhance content learning.
Major Publications:
- Grammar Alive! A Guide for Teachers (NCTE, 2003) co-author
- Differentiating Instruction: A Guide for Elementary Teachers (Eye on Education, 2003)
- Differentiating Instruction: A Guide for Middle and High School Teachers (Eye on Education, 2002)
- An English Teacher's Guide to Performance Tasks and Rubrics (Eye on Education, 2000)
- Writing in the Content Areas (Eye on Education, 1999)
- Engaging Grammar and Formative Assessment: A Guide for English Language Arts Teachers
Workshop Topics:
- Grammar as a Contact Sport: Forget the old schoolmarm way of teaching grammar with worksheets dusty old rules about “how not” to speak and write English. Amy shows teachers how to make grammar instruction come alive, using students’ own innate knowledge and their natural love of language play. She shows teachers exactly how to use the principles of linguistics to integrate active grammar instruction into lessons in literature and writing. Included is what every teacher needs to know about the grammar-usage section of the SAT.
- This is Your Brain on Reading: Every subject area teacher requires reading, yet few secondary teachers really know how to embed reading instruction without sacrifice to the demands of state learning standards. This presentation is based on the most recent research-based findings endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. Included in the presentation is a segment on vocabulary instruction that improves reading comprehension, along with a helpful list of words that Amy calls the “Academic Language Toolkit.”
- Writing Equips the Mind to Think: This presentation is based on Amy’s acclaimed book, Writing in the Content Areas. Topics include motivating teachers to include writing as a tool for learning, framing the task, solving common problems in student writing, matching writing tasks to state learning standards, and building vocabulary skills through an “Academic Language Toolkit.” This workshop can be geared to specific content areas, including math and science.
- Checkpoints and Benchmarks: Formative Assessments: Formative assessments are used to diagnose strengths and weakness so that the teacher can make informed decisions about instruction that meets whole class, small group, and individual needs. In this workshop, Amy presents various models of formative assessments that address the skills and concepts in English Language Arts, as identified by NCTE learning standards.
- Rx Read, Rx Write, Rx Research: Differentiated Instruction for Literacy Skills: In this workshop, Amy presents an innovative, Web-based model for differentiated instruction in three key areas of literacy: reading comprehension, academic writing, and traditional research. She will demonstrate her Rx programs that direct students to specific lessons designed to reinforce skills in pinpointed areas for individual students.
- Differentiating Instruction Using Technology: Based upon Amy’s book of the same title, this workshop gives teachers ideas about using a classroom website as more than just an online bulletin board. Amy demonstrates how teachers can use their classroom websites as in-class libraries, learning centers, and resources for prescriptive lessons in skills reinforcement. Other topics to be included are Webquesting and Hotlisting.
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