Russ Walsh is currently the Director of Human Resources and Staff Development in a New
Jersey school district. Over the past 30 years he has been a reading specialist, Director of
Language Arts for a K-12 district and adjunct professor at Rider and St. Joseph’s Universities.
For the past 30 years, Russ has presented workshops for thousands of teachers at local,
regional, national and international conferences. His presentations have been praised for being
engaging, research based and practical. Teachers walk away from his presentations with ideas
for activities they can do in the classroom and an understanding of why they are doing it.
Workshop Topics - All can be 1/2 or full day except as noted
Guided Reading in the Primary Classroom (Grades K-3)
This workshop introduces teachers effective grouping for reading instruction. Teachers learn how
to form dynamic, flexible groups by basing their grouping on regular reading assessments, how
to choose books for instruction and how to conduct lessons that focus on reading for meaning,
building decoding strategies andfluent processing of text.
Developing Reading Fluency through Poetry (Grades 1-3)
In this workshop, teachers learn an instructional design that develops and reinforces fluent
reading. Participants receive a packet of humorous and engaging poems that can be used for the
instruction. Activities such as shared reading, choral reading, echo reading and radio reading are
demonstrated. A variety of reinforcement and follow-up strategies ware shared.
Baker’s Dozen Reading Comprehension Strategies for Beginning Readers (Grades K-3)
Building on the work of Ellin Keene, Debbie Miller, P. David Pearson, as well as the recent
National Reading Panel report, this workshop shares a variety of instructional designs that allow
teachers to focus on the key comprehension strategies of connecting, predicting, summarizing,
clarifying, asking questions and visualizing.
A Baker’s Dozen Reading Comprehension Strategies for Intermediate Readers (Grades 4-6)
Building on the work of Ellin Keene, Debbie Miller, P. David Pearson, as well as the recent
National Reading Panel report, this workshop shares a variety of instructional designs that allow
teachers to focus on the key comprehension strategies of connecting, predicting, summarizing,
clarifying, asking questions and visualizing
Strategies for Struggling Writers (Grades 3-6)
Despite our best efforts in the writing workshop, some students remain resistant to writing and
demonstrate limited growth. This workshop shows the teacher how to focus on what the student
can do, to build power, confidence and competence in writing. A variety of practical classroom
strategies will be shared.
Navigating Non-Fiction Text (Can be tailored to any grade level through high school)
Recent research has confirmed what teachers have long known – reading content rich text is a
very different activity from reading story. This workshop will explore those differences and provide
teachers with many practical instructional strategies for bringing students and informational text
together.
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