Talk! About Thinking! Workshops
 Karen Haag's workshop's mix dynamic videos, amusing anecdotes and detailed reader-response daybooks. Teachers appreciate the easy-to-replicate lesson plans and tips, offered by a 30-year veteran who still teaches children. And most important, the techniques learned from Karen are backed by solid research by some of America's leading educators. Karen's approach has brought results in schools as diverse as Vance High School in Charlotte, Wingate Elementary School in Union County and, most recently, Irvin Elementary School in Cabarrus County.
Karen will come to your school or district to teach workshops or demonstration lessons. Karen has most recently been working in the Pittsford Central School District, New York where she and the school principals have created a residency-coaching model. Karen works closely with the principal and teachers tailoring staff development, grade-level meetings, and demonstration lessons for each school. Saturday Seminars and retreats also give teachers time to study a topic in depth. In addition, Karen leads Summer Institutes. Some of her more popular seminars are listed below.
Karen's classroom-tested strategies grounded in proficient reader research get results when used with any text or program.
Talk! About Thinking! Series
Fix-Up Strategies What To Do When Reading Stops Making Sense
Connections Understanding Reading by Using What You Know
Asking Questions Student-Centered Conversation to Boost Comprehension and Test Scores
Inference Combining Background Information With Evidence
Visualization Using Symbolism to Understand Concepts, Visualizing to Connect and Infer
Determining Importance Determining Main Ideas and Themes, Writing Nonfiction Books
Synthesizing Making Meaning My Own
In these workshops, Karen introduces participants to the seven proficient reader strategies outlined in Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann. Because students call words but don't always understand what they read and students miss the deeper meanings of text, they need explicit modeling. We now have research to show that reading skills improve when taught these strategies. Students read better. However...
Many teachers find teaching comprehension strategies a challenge, most likely because they have not been taught to do such teaching. -The National Reading Panel
For ten years, Karen has collected lessons, texts, visuals, handouts and videos to share so teachers can see how to do such teaching. Workshop participants learn to create engaging, structured talk activities to coax students to think about their thinking and, as a result, deepen their comprehension. Karen shows teachers how to add teacher-led reading circles as a precursor or complement to independent literature circles to boost comprehension for all reading levels.
Karen's videos of students in action are a powerful tool for reaching teachers. In addition, Karen offers unique participant-only downloads on her website, www.liketoread.com. Plus, participants get easy-to-follow lesson plans to help them start putting theory into practice.
Daybooks
A key component of Karen's workshops and coaching residencies centers on teaching teachers and students to write reflections in journals called daybooks. By observing and discussing videotaped interviews with Karen's students, workshop participants explore how these notebooks can improve students' comprehension in any content area. Karen is a co-author of the 2008 Heinemann release, Thinking Out Loud on Paper: Student Daybooks as a Tool for Learning where she and her colleagues outline their ideas for introducing and sustaining daybooks.
Launching Reader's Workshop
Many teachers ask how to get started with Reading Workshop, what procedures to follow, or how to teach kids who don't like reading, etc. Karen helps teachers work to seek possible solutions together. Videotaped interviews of students and lessons in action model what is possible. Karen works teachers through common challenges:
- Creating a timeline for teaching the seven reading strategies.
- Designing schedules.
- Establishing procedures.
- Creating flexible groups.
- Motivating kids to read.
- Assessing metacognition.
National recognition
At Irvin, Karen designed and implemented a Title I literacy program that was named No. 1 in North Carolina for 2005 for its success in closing the learning gap between white and minority students. Key components in Irvin's success were implementing small, strategy-focused, reading circles, school-wide adoption of the proficient reader research, and introducing daybooks.
What Others Say
Finally...something to help us face the test without feeling like we are compromising what we know we should be doing to teach our kids. I'm starting daybooks Monday!
Participant, WRESA, North Carolina Workshop, Big Gains in Content Writing
I just had to give you a quick compliment. I just spent some time looking at your website. It's fantastic! You've done such a really good job showing and explaining your teaching beliefs and practices. This is such a great resource for my students so I'm adding your website to my list of recommended sites. Thanks for taking the time to create such a thoughtful website! :-)
Brian Kissel, Asst Professor, UNC Charlotte
This visit wasn't planned. It caught me by surprise when visiting a school seeing Karen doing what she does best: working alongside teachers. I am in awe every time I have the opportunity to observe her teaching. I think it has to do with her attention to intention; I think it has to do with the fact that she knows the right time to step back and quietly wait, then, at the right moment she is able to provide renewed direction; and finally, I think it has to do with the fact that she is a learner herself and in her demonstrations of what is possible allows others to "try it on" before they, too, pay it forward.
John Moran, Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina
Karen Haag's wealth of teaching experiences, of past and current research, of synthesizing this new learning into demonstrated lessons that make learning for students "challenging, engaging, and authentic" in the classroom has been invaluable to teachers and students in our school. We
thank Karen for her dedication and commitment to us, her strengths in modeling what it means to be active in learning, inquiring, and self-reflecting, and her willingness and patience in providing opportunities where we improve the craft of teaching. Meredith H Vetter, Director of Studies-Lower School, Charlotte Country Day School
Karen designed a schoolwide program to improve reading scores for W.M. Irvin Elementary. As a result of her leadership, we united to teach students how to use the proficient reader strategies, especially in our intermediate grades. Karen conducted staff development, demonstrated teaching for staff and developed lesson plans. Close to 90% of our children scored on grade level in reading in 2 years. Our school was named North Carolina's Title I Distinguished School of the Year for Closing the Gap in 2005. Karen loves to help teachers learn a process of teaching reading that gets results. Dr. Katherine Propst, Assistant Supt. for Organizational Development and Accountability, Cabarrus County Schools, N.C.
Karen is such a fine presenter. She has the gift of being able to translate complex theory into productive classroom practices AND inspire teachers to use those practices in their own classrooms. Her website is a true treasure. Dr. Lil Brannon, Associate Dean for Academic Programs, UNC-Charlotte
Karen Haag has been a powerful influence shaping the way I meet the challenges of my developing 10th-grade students. Working daily in my classroom for a full year, she helped me re-think how carefully managed "talk" time dramatically helps students who struggle with reading comprehension. Because of her impact on my students, their reading and writing scores dramatically improved. Diane Wildman, 10th-Grade English Teacher, South Carolina
The talk around here is totally different since Karen was a resident coach at our school. Teachers are discussing on grade-level and across grade levels. The videos, Karen's stories and lessons, and the demonstrations provided a vision of what changes teachers could make for the students and themselves to make teaching comprehension possible, even for some very gifted students. Dr. Elizabeth Soffer, K-5 principal, Pittsford, N.Y.
Teacher, author and literacy coach Karen Haag helps educators find success by translating theory into practice so teachers and students envision what is possible, enjoy their work, and get results.
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