by Elizabeth Bleacher
The popular Teaching Edge speaker series will return to IRA’s Annual Convention this year. This year’s speakers include six literacy professionals whose innovative research has both shaped and improved classroom practice on the national and international levels. These intensive speaker sessions take an extensive look at what students need to know now—and what literacy educators can do to ensure that each student reaches his or her potential.
Douglas Fisher
Nancy Frey 
Irene Fountas 
Gay Su Pinnell 
Richard Allington 
Ellin Oliver Keene Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
Frequent collaborators Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey return to Teaching Edge with a presentation that explores how to identify complex texts that meet the teaching expectations of the Common Core State Standards—a topic inspired by their best-selling Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading (co-authored with Diane Lapp).
Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell
Also returning to the speaker series are Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Attendees of their presentation will learn about a six-step inquiry process that can be used to help students learn genre distinctions and “thinkmarks” that students can apply to their independent reading.
Richard Allington
The final returning speaker, Richard Allington, presents What the Research Says About Teaching So That All Children are Reading on Grade Level. Allington’s session addresses issues that surround the early development of grade level reading and outlines the instructional support that is needed to overcome such issues.
Ellin Oliver Keene
In addition to the five returning speakers, Ellin Oliver Keene has been added to the 2013 Teaching Edge series. Keene’s presentation, Fostering Deeper Understanding With Student Discourse: Putting the Dimensions and Outcomes of Understanding to Work, discusses her research on natural conversation as a tool to enhance student understanding and achievement.
Though the IRA Annual Convention provides numerous opportunities for professional and personal development, the Teaching Edge speaker series is undoubtedly one of the most unique. The series provides an in-person opportunity to hear about the most contemporary theories of literacy from the very people that developed them.
The IRA 58th Annual Convention will be held from April 19 to 22, 2013, in San Antonio, Texas. Read more about this series and other convention events at www.iraconvention.org.
Elizabeth Bleacher is the strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association.