Literacy Now

During its annual awards ceremony, the International Literacy Association recognized outstanding achievements in the world of literacy Sunday at the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits in Boston.

Hosted by Douglas Fisher, incoming vice president of the ILA Board of Directors, a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University, teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College, and member of the California Reading Hall of Fame, the ceremony applauded several honorees’ accomplishments in literacy excellence.

Guest presenters included Mary Ellen Vogt, Jerry Johns, Carmelita Williams, Jack Cassidy, Angela Rivell, Tiffany Sears, Carrice Cummins, and Nancy Frey.

Fisher said the ILA Awards are something special that he looks forward to every year.

“It’s something that ILA honors our own,” he said. “We have people in schools who transform lives and it’s important to recognize that.”

The 2016 award recipients were:

Technology and Literacy Award
Sara Hamerla, Framingham, MA, for Academic Conversations Promote Literacy for ELLs
Kaity Kao, Taipei, Taiwan, for Using Technology to Teach Literacy to the Advanced Student

Jerry Johns Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading
Lori Helman, Minneapolis, MN

Outstanding Dissertation of the Year
Julie Learned, New York, NY

ILA Advocacy Award

• Illinois Reading Council, Louis Ferrolli, president
• Louisiana Reading Association, Brandi McNabb, president
• Keystone State Reading Association, Michael Williams, president
• Texas Association for Literacy Education, Robert Raymond, president
• Virginia State Reading Association, Tiffany Brocious, president
• Wisconsin State Reading Association, Susan Boquist, president

ILA Exemplary Reading Program Award

• R.J. Vial Elementary School, Paradis, LA
• Carlton Innovation School, Salem, MA
• Lake Orion Community School, Lake Orion, MI
• Joan Austin Elementary School, Newberg, OR
• Holly Springs-Motlow Elementary School, Campobello, SC

ILA Local Council Community Service Award
First Place – North Central Arkansas Reading Council, Angie Betancourt, president
Second Place – Tar River Reading Council, Denise Owens, president

Special Service Award
Lesley M. Morrow, Scotch Plains, NJ

William S. Gray Citation of Merit Award
Douglas Fisher, San Diego, CA

Other honorees included:

ILA Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award
Primary Winners
Fiction: A Dog Wearing Shoes. Sangmi Ko. Random House.
Nonfiction: Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. Lindsay Mattick, Ill., Sophie Blackall. Little Brown.
Intermediate Winners
Fiction: A Blind Guide to Stinkville. Beth Vrabel. Little Brown.; Hoodoo. Ronald L. Smith. Clarion.
Nonfiction: Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show on Earth. Laura A. Woollett. Chicago Review Press.
Young Adult Winner
Fiction: Denton’s Little Death Date. Lance Rubin. Knopf.

ILA Dina Feitelson Award
Susan Hopewell, Boulder, CO, and Kathy Escamilla, Boulder, CO, for “Struggling reader or emerging biliterate student? Reevaluating the criteria for labeling emerging bilingual students as low achieving”. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(1), 68-89.
Laura A. Woollett won the ILA Book Award for intermediate nonfiction for "Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show on Earth".

ILA Elva Knight Research Grant
Eric Claravall, San Francisco, CA, for project titled Fostering Historical Thinking to Develop Literacy Skills Among Middle School Students in Special Education

ILA Helen M. Robinson Grant
Colleen Whittingham, Chicago, IL, for Local Literacies, Preschool Practices, Sponsored Spaces: A Case of One Ethnically and Linguistically Diverse Preschool Classroom

ILA Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship
Sarah Lupo, Barboursville, VA, for project titled Investigating the Relationship of Text Selection and Instructional Method to Adolescent Readers’ Comprehension Proficiency during Intervention

ILA Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award
Irene Latham for Dear Wandering Wildebeest: And Other Poems from the Water Hole

ILA Nila Banton Smith Award
Shavonne Marie Jacobson, Troy, MI

ILA Regie Routman Teacher Recognition Grant
Amy C. Sippert, Oshkosh, WI

ILA Steven A. Stahl Research Grant
Margaret Troyer, Somerville, MA, for project titled Teaching by the Book: Teacher Implementation of a Reading Intervention

ILA Teacher as Researcher Grant
Danielle Rylak, Phoenix, AZ, and Erin Ruegg, Phoenix, AZ, for project titled How Can Spanish Trade Books Support Family Involvement and Improvement in Spanish and English Literacy for Dual Language Learners?

ILA Achievement Awards
Teacher Empowerment: Wisconsin State Reading Association
Community Engagement: Illinois Reading Council
Public Awareness: Keystone State Reading Association

ILA Distinguished Council Award
Virginia State Reading Association

Click here for more information about the ILA Awards and Grants program.

In case you’ve missed any conference news, here’s a list of Literacy Daily blog posts previewing the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits this weekend. Catch up on the 411 and feel extra-prepared to network and learn about the latest and greatest literacy practices!

Get Online and Get to ILA 2016

Everything You Want to Know About ILA 2016 Conference

The Preconference Institute Wrap-up

Taking a Deep Dive into General Classroom Strategies

Teaming Up to Teach the Teachers

Use the Conference iPlanner to Build Your Itinerary

Bringing ILA 2016 Fun to Beantown

Sparking Inspiration with ILA General Session Speakers

Tap Into a Wealth of Experts With ILA Featured Speakers

Literature Luncheon Author Interviews

Putting Books to Work Conference Sessions

The Learning Continues in the ILA 2016 Exhibit Hall

Unpacking ESSA: Panel to Discuss Critical Implementation Challenges

Partial Draft of the 2017 Standards for Literacy Professionals to Be Unveiled at ILA 2016

My Annual ILA Pilgrimage

Ahdieh Joins YA Luncheon

Upgrade Your Conference Experience

TheILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits will be July 9–11 in Boston, MA, with more than 6,000 attendees eager to cultivate new teaching practices. With over 300 sessions, including several new additions to the schedule, and the popular Preconference Institutes on July 8, the weekend is sure to be a memorable one. Learn more about what’s coming up at this summer’s conference at ilaconference.org.

Technology is integrated into most aspects of our lives, even our professional development. This change is for the better: The mobile device app assistant for the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits in Boston. You can find the app by searching “International Reading Association 2016” in the app stores. Although you can access the ILA 2016 Conference app from a desktop, you'll have a more efficient and seamless experience by downloading the app to your smartphone or tablet.

This year’s app still lets you plan your day with session schedules, find exhibitors in the Exhibit Halls with step-by-step directions, get notifications about last-minute changes and exciting events, and network with fellow attendees. Rather than rehash the same features from last year, these helpful tips make the most of the app and offer sneak peeks at the new features that will upgrade your conference experience.

Creating a schedule

The ILA 2016 app makes it easy to plan your PD calendar for the whole conference. At any time, touch or click on My Schedule in the dashboard to be taken to a personal calendar, which can be easily populated with sessions and meetings.

To import a specific session, choose Events from the dashboard, browse by the available categories, and find the session. Select the star icon on the left-hand side of the screen to add the session to the calendar.




Want to hit the Exhibit Halls during a particular window of time? Schedule that, too! Touch or click on the Exhibitors button and browse through hundreds of potential stops. Select the exhibitor’s name, and then click the calendar icon, which is the fourth icon from the top on the left-hand side. Choose Date to set the time. Click on or press Done and then on Submit to save this event on the calendar.

Do you have other meetings you need to attend? Having lunch with a mentor or catching up with colleagues? You can add those items to your My Schedule calendar by clicking on the plus icon in the top right-hand corner and filling in the information.

You can have your plan in place even before arriving in Boston, or you can make it up as you go.

Synchronizing the iPlanner

If you’ve already created your schedule using the Conference iPlanner, you can download that schedule onto your mobile device. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner, select Online Profile Login, and use your username and password from the iPlanner. This will populate My Schedule with your iPlanner schedule.

Can’t make a session?

It happens at every conference: A session is canceled or the room fills up or you’re too far away to make it. Is there something going on nearby? The ILA 2016 app has a new feature on the dashboard called What’s on Now, and it tells you just that! Tap there for a list of sessions available at that moment. It’s a quick and easy way to make the most of your time, even if the day goes off track.

Extras

Previously called Show Documents, the Extras icon takes you to a collection of conference information that might be of use to you. Here you will find a digital version of the Events, Signings & Savings Guide (the print version is in your registration bag), a copy of the hotel shuttle, and more.

ILA Quest

Don’t forget: ILA 2016 isn’t all work and no play. This year we’ve added ILA Quest, a treasure hunt of sorts played through the app. Click or touch the dashboard icon for the full rules and the tasks to complete the game. These tasks take players across the conference and exhibits to events, locations, and sessions. Each task gives direction to obtain an ILA Quest code. Enter this code into ILA Quest for points. The player with the most points at the end of ILA 2016 wins a travel pack including travel to and accommodations at ILA 2017 in Orlando!

There’s no purchase required to play the game. Just fill out a profile in the app and provide a valid e-mail address so we can contact you when you win. For full rules, visit ilaconference.org/ilaquestrules.

The ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits will be July 9–11 in Boston, MA, with more than 6,000 attendees eager to cultivate new teaching practices. With over 300 sessions, including several new additions to the schedule, and the popular Preconference Institutes on July 8, the weekend is sure to be a memorable one. Learn more about what’s coming up at this summer’s conference at ilaconference.org.

Wesley Ford is the Digital Projects Manager at the International Literacy Association. An ILA Conference & Exhibits veteran, he can usually be found in or around ILA Central chatting with attendees. Feel free to stop by with any questions about the app.

Genre-bending best-selling novelist Renée Ahdieh will join April Henry at this year’s Young Adult Literature Luncheon at ILA 2016.

Ahdieh, whose romance-laced historical fantasy novels draw inspiration from the canonical A Thousand and One Nights, replaces John Corey Whaley, who is unable to attend.

The Rose and the Dagger, Ahdieh’s latest project, is a sequel to her much-lauded The Wrath and the Dawn. Published this past spring, The Rose and the Dagger earned a starred review from School Library Journal, which noted that the book’s “beautiful, lyrical writing combines with a cohesive plot, richly drawn backdrop, and just the right mix of action and romance to create an undeniable new classic.”

From Ahdieh’s site:  
 

ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits is just around the corner. Before you start packing for Boston, join our #ILAchat Thursday when we’ll talk about how to make the most out of your conference experience.

Cornelius Minor, Thursday’s guest host, is a staff developer for Teachers College at Columbia University. A strong advocate for digital equity in the classroom, Minor is a Featured Speaker at ILA 2016 who will explore digital literacy and ways that educators can use it to create opportunities and to ensure access for students and teachers.

Join our #ILAchat to get a preview of this year’s conference, including the hot sessions and presenters, best places to network, and local attractions you don’t want to miss.

Follow #ILAchat and @ILAToday at 8:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 9, to join the conversation with your fellow educators and get ready for the literacy-rich PD activities that await you next month.