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Show Panguitch Woman To Attend Conference Rocne Dickinson, Panguitch who. serves as vice president of the Southern Utah Reading Council, attended the Fifth Annual Reading Conference at Southern Utah State College held earlier in the month. She reported that Jim Trelease, author of the "Read Aloud Handbook," was one of the featured speakers at the two-day seminar. This year's theme, she said, was "Reading 1985: Springboard to Life." The conference was designed for elementary-middle school and special education teachers, and was sponsored jointly by the SUSC Department of Teacher Education and the College Division of Continuing Education. Byrd Baylor, the award-winning author of "Hawk," "I'm Your Brother," "Everybody Needs a Rock," and "The Desert Is Theirs," addressed the conference at a special authors' luncheon. Baylor, who said she felt at home "with cliffs and mesas and rocks and open skies," writes for children about the southwestern deserts that she loves. Other speakers included Norma Inabinette, a professor from California State University, Fuller ton, who discussed microcomputers and the language arts, and Jim Jacobs, who discussed "Truth in Fantasy." Trelease discussed techniques to motivate children to read by making books into friends and not enemies. He also discussed why it is important to read aloud to children, when to start reading to children, and the detrimental effects on children of viewing too much television and how to deal with it. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Trelease and his books have been the subject of numerous features in such publications as the New York Times, Parade Magazine, USA Today, the Washington Post, and on the CBS Morning News. Kent Myers, a professor at SUSC taught a workshop on creating an environment writing in the classroom, and integrating the writing with reading. He also gave a mini-course on editing and publishing in 'the classroom. Laura Ward and Sherry Wasden, two teachers from the Jordan School District, presented a workshop on "The Four I's Imagination, Invention, Inspiration and Imagery." Sally Archer, marketing manager of the Deseret News, presented a workshop on using the newspaper to teach critical thinking skills. The workshop was designed to help voting students become thinking readers and develop reading skills with newspapers. A workshop on building a child's self esteem by letting each child write his or her own predictable book was taught by Kathryn Ipson, a teacher from the Iron County School District, and Sharon Leigh, SUSC acquisition librarian. Other workshops taught such skills as putting some of reading's sacred cows to the pasture, implementing direct teaching and daily monitoring techniques, effective use of parents, peers, aids and cross grade tutors, making the language arts relevant to children's lives and reading in five stages regardless of age. The annual conference was timed to coincide with the opening of the Utah Shakespearean Festival was an extra incentive for people to attend. |