Highlights and Takeaways from The Reading League Conference, October 2022

I had the absolute pleasure and honor to attend The Reading League’s 6th Annual Conference in Syracuse, NY at the end of October 2022! It was a whirlwind of two days but I loved every moment of it! Here are some of my highlights and takeaways!

Meeting SOR Rockstars

The conference started with an amazing invite-only breakfast with Dr. Anita Archer and Dr. Louisa Moats hosted by Voyager Sopris. Not only was it amazing to meet these two SOR rockstars but this kickoff breakfast set the tone for the rest of the conference! I spent so much of my time completely starstruck!

Later that day, I ran into Dr. Stephanie Stollar and got to snap a few pics before running off to sessions! I was lucky enough to co-present a webinar with Dr. Stollar this past summer and I love being in her Reading Science Academy! It was amazing to meet her in person!

The fangirling continued that first evening at a post-conference happy hour event when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Dr. Carol Tolman! A hard cider made me bold as I introduced myself, told her how amazing it was to meet her, and spilled my guts about being a local LETRS facilitator!

Over the course of the conference, I met so many other SOR celebrities – Dr. Roland Good, Dr. Mary Dahlgren, Dr. Deb Glaser, Lyn Stone, Joan Sedita, Nancy Eberhardt, Dr. Marnie Ginsberg, Dr. Julie Klingerman, & Dr. Pam Kastner! I got a few of my books signed and I wish I could have gotten pictures with all of them!

Attending Amazing Sessions

As one does when they go to conferences, I attended a bunch of sessions on various topics! There were so many good sessions to choose from and it was really hard to pick! I tried to go to sessions that would stretch my knowledge with new concepts or new research. I’ll share about two of them here!

One of my favorite sessions was with Dr. Marnie Ginsberg from Reading Simplified. In her session, called The Decoding Strategy You Never Heard of and Why it Matters for Instruction: Set for Variability, I was fascinated at this concept of set for variability. It’s in the beginning stages of research but has shown some promise as an indicator for reading success. Briefly explained, set for variability is a reader’s ability to shift the pronunciation of a word when their decoding attempt produces a word they don’t recognize. It’s like shifting tab-le to ta-ble – a flexing of the vowel, so to speak!

Another favorite session was The Grammar/Text Generation Connection with Lyn Stone. Her humor and wit make any presentation of hers really enjoyable! If you ever have the chance to listen to her, don’t miss out! In her session, she made a distinction about writing that will stick with me for sure: “Writing is not speech written down; it is thought written down. Our writing system wasn’t created to transmit speech. It was created to transmit concepts.” This is a mindset shift that helps us when teaching grammar, syntax, punctuation, and writing structure!

The Vendors

My guilty conference pleasure is always the vendor exhibit hall and The Reading League vendors did not disappoint! I was excited to stop at every booth, either to rave about the resources I already use or to learn about new ones!

Many of the vendors had decodable texts to explore and other goodies to learn about! Heggerty even gifted me a whole set of decodables! It was so exciting to see so many resources I use too! I spotted some of my favorites at Voyager Sopris, Heggerty, 95% Group, Acadience, Lexia, Amplify, Really Great Reading, Tools4Reading, and Zaner-Bloser!

I entered every giveaway I could find and I left the conference feeling like I should have gone to play the lottery! I won Apple AirPods from Curriculum Associates, an Amazon gift card from The Center for Literacy & Learning, a Orton-Gillingham Card Deck from Hamilty County Educational Service Center, and Oral Language Talking Deck from AIM Institute! The swag was next level!

Me showing off Voyager Passport at the Voyager Sopris vendor booth

Meeting Voyager Sopris

But the icing on The Reading League Conference cake was meeting some of the amazing people I work with at Voyager Sopris! I’m in my 2nd year as a Voyager Passport Ambassador and I finally got to “meet” Jean and Kristan! Writing blogs, presenting Webinars, and sharing about my journey with Voyager Passport and Reading Rangers has been a complete delight and these women have helped me do it! They spoiled me with goodies and swag for my students! And they let me share about Passport at the Voyager Sopris vendor booth!

Until Next Year

I am already counting down the days until the next Reading League Conference! I cannot recommend it more for educators who want to both grow their science of reading knowledge and celebrate the SOR community with other SOR nerds! Will I see you there next year too?!