2012 SPRING CONFERENCE
Thank you for participating in the Spring Conference. Please have a look at the variety of books from our conference vendors.
The JASCD Spring Conference will be held at the New Sanno Hotel on March 2nd and 3rd, 2012. This year's conference has limited availability so please register early. Registration will be open until Monday, February 27th. Further details on the JASCD Spring Conference are forthcoming. Please feel free to learn more about our 2012 presenters, Dr. Lella Gandini and Dr. Dianne McCune
 
Dr. Lella Gandini
An Advanced Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Approach
How Shared Relationships and Learning Begins, is Developed and Sustained In Reggio Emilia: Young Children 3 Year to 6 Years , Their Teachers, Parents and Environments.
Visual stories from Reggio Emilia and other places document what is creative and unique for each child and how children in the small responsive communities of infant/toddler centers can cooperate, negotiate conflicts, transform materials and spaces, construct and invent play, experience learning with joy, with teachers, the network of parents and a supporting community. We will analyze and discuss together visual stories from Reggio Emilia and other places also focusing on documentation and inquiry.
In Italy now, preschools, whether municipal, national or private, serve about 95% of the children between 3 and 6. The distinguishing features of the education of young children in Reggio Emilia soon reveals that the educators have been serious readers of John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, David Hawkins, Jerome Bruner, Howard Gardner and other world renowned scientists and philosophers. At the same time, though, they continue to formulate new interpretations and new hypotheses and ideas about learning and teaching through their daily observations and practice of learning along with the children. This is because the basic principle is that children have extraordinary potential for learning and change, and possess tremendous affective, relational, sensorial and intellective resources. Teachers with children are in constant exchange with the environment, culture and society. The presentations will be based on real life stories from the schools of Reggio Emilia.
*Dr. Gandini, MA Smith College, Ed.D University of Massachusetts, a consultant in early childhood education was Lesley University Visiting Scholar from 2007-09 and now 2011-2013. She is Visiting Scholar 2010 -2012 at the University of Arizona in Tucson and taught previously at Smith College and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the Erikson Institute in Chicago in 2004 and The Smith College Medal, in Northampton, MA in 2008. She is Reggio Children’s United States Liaison for the Dissemination of the Reggio Emilia Approach, and serves as Associate Editor of Innovations in Early Education: the International Reggio Exchange. Lecturer and author of many articles and book chapters about early childhood education in Italy, she is co-author and co-editor of the first, second and now third edition of The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation; Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials; Bambini: The Italian Approach to Infant/Toddler Care; In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia; and Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Children and Teachers from North America. With George Forman, she produced videos presenting and examining projects in the schools of Reggio Emilia, including An Amusement Park for Birds. She is the author of several books for children in Italian.
Dr. Dianne McCune
Questioning! How Critical Is It?
Part 1: Using inquiry to empower students for survival in the 21st century.
With an emphasis on questioning, students will engage with each other and with subject content. They will confirm the learning process with a written product.
 
Strategies to be taught and utilized include:
· A-Z
· Clustering
· Metacognition
· Morphology
· Diamante
· Acrostic
 
Part 2: Using cues and questions to activate higher levels of thinking in all learners.
Continuing to develop a learning process which emphasizes engaging inquiry Part 2 will focus on the following strategies:
· Character analysis with I am
· Comparison utilizing inquiry to focus a Venn Diagram
· Precision use of vocabulary by implementing Defining Format
· Process analysis with Question--Answer--Why
· Using a structured literary analysis (SWBST (Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then)
--as applied to fiction or non-fiction concepts
Dr. McCune has taught children of all ages, representing all economic and ability levels including gifted and special needs. Early on in her career McCune established her professional reputation as a pioneer in the field of gifted education, K-12. Her Experimental Research Design Matrix for K - 8 students has been presented throughout the United States and the World.
Dr. McCune's “inquiry- based teaching approach has transformed the educational experience of students. She helps move students from being mere consumers to that of an active producers of new information. McCune emphasizes results oriented, universal strategies that can be applied across the curriculum. In the United States her work has assisted low performing schools meet and exceed the standards put forth by the United States No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. She has achieved remarkable success in every school district where she worked during her forty-plus-years. She continues to teach a variety of literacy workshops in local schools and conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
As an international literacy consultant, Dr. McCune has shared and developed teaching philosophies with education professionals from Australia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.