McKenzie Speeches Comprehension and Literacies Go Hand in Hand While rarely mentioned in the same breath, comprehension and the dozen or more information literacies should really be blended into one major effort to improve the understanding of students attempting to interpret various kinds of information. McKenzie demonstrates the linkage and outlines a program strategy that would make comprehension central to most classroom activity. Index Cultivating the Talents of Students with Digital Riches The advent of new digital resources brings with it the promise of improving the range, depth, complexity and originality of student thinking and production, but McKenzie shows how those outcomes depend largely upon the elders - the choices made to encourage and guide students while teaching them discernment and discretion. Index The Journey of Change - Adult Learning Notions and Potions McKenzie shows how teachers may deepen and extend the array of teaching strategies available to promote student learning. Employing the metaphor of "journey," he proposes an approach to professional development that will be richly rewarding and inspiring for many teachers. He emphasizes the power of discovery and action learning as opposed to traditional, limited notions of training. In this session he looks at ways schools and groups of schools can develop and plan systems to promote and sustain this kind of learning. Index Blending the Art and Magic of Teaching with the Craft and Science of Teaching McKenzie outlines the dynamic and organic relationship between these aspects of effective teaching and argues that balance across all four dimensions is essential. He explores disturbing trends to over-emphasize so-called research-based scientific approaches which sterilize learning and fail to feed the hearts and souls of the young. In contrast to the Secretary of Education, McKenzie maintains that effective pedagogy does make a difference, though he cautions against using off-putting, highly abstract terms to capture the notion of good teaching. Index Enhancing Classroom Moves, Tactics, Decisions and Strategies to Promote Learning Effective teaching requires mastery of complex combinations of classroom actions. McKenzie describes the process of collecting and then incorporating new moves, tactics, decisions and strategies into daily comfortable practice. He looks particularly at the challenge of deepening and enriching one's capacity to orchestrate more powerful student thinking and questioning as an example. Index Power Reading: It's All About Comprehension According to the Rand Study, we face a national crisis with regard to the reading comprehension skills of our middle school and high school students. The focus of instruction at the early grades may have undermined rather than strengthened students' abilities to read with understanding difficult passages requiring inference and interpretation. In this session, Jamie McKenzie offers a model for teaching strategic reading to all students so they are capable of wrestling successfully with the most difficult passages. He gives examples of how to equip students to infer, question, picture, recall prior knowledge, synthesize, and flex. Index Every Teacher a Teacher of Reading We've never put this old cliché into genuine practice, but with NCLB and AYP breathing down our necks, we need to equip all teachers with a package of strategic reading approaches that can be incorporated into their daily activities whether they be teachers of math, reading, science, social studies or art. In this session, Jamie McKenzie outlines an approach that can reach all teachers with just six hours of professional development. Index Learning to Question to Wonder to Learn Students can learn to move beyond trivial pursuit, cut-and-paste thinking and mere collection if we nurture their sense of wonder, encourage their pondering and equip them with sharpened questioning and invention skills. Jamie McKenzie shares insights from his new book by this title, exploring ways to deepen and enhance the quality of student performance, production and insight. Index Classroom Questioning Strategies for Teachers What are the moves, tactics, decisions and strategies required for teachers to hand over the prime responsibility for questioning to the students while maintaining good classroom focus and discipline? Jamie McKenzie provides a comprehensive view of questioning pedagogy - the effective orchestration of powerful thinking, questioning and research. Index Wondering With and About Images Paintings, photographs, sketches and other types of images can provoke a sense of wonder and engage students in valuable inferential reasoning as they seek to grasp explicit and implicit meanings. Jamie will lead the group through a series of examples ranging from propaganda posters of previous wars through Australian paintings and current advertising. "What's the story here?" will recur as a persistent question driving interpretation. Index Wondering With and About Numbers Research findings, climate data, economic data and other types of data collections are much like other information sources, as they can provoke a sense of wonder and engage students in valuable inferential reasoning as they seek to grasp explicit and implicit meanings. Jamie will lead the group through a series of examples ranging from recent reports of educational research through datasets for population, crime and climate as well as news articles claiming to report the meaning of such data. As with pictures, "What's the story here?" will recur as a persistent question driving interpretation of the numbers. Index Wondering With and About Words Many passages offer much more than surface meaning, providing levels of metaphor or subtexts that may be more important than what first meets the eye. In some cases, these levels are poetic in their intention. In other cases, words are used to control, influence and persuade. Jamie will lead the group through a series of examples ranging from poetry to news reports, editorials, advertisements and policy documents, showing how students can learn to wonder, ponder and unwrap such documents. As with pictures and numbers, "What's the real story here?" will recur as a persistent question driving interpretation of the text. Index

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