LA GRANDE — Writing is a valuable but often overlooked tool for developing reading skills.

People attending any of the beginning literacy workshops at Cook Memorial Library will learn how to best use this tool to help young readers. The next workshop, titled “How Do Kids Learn to Write and Read?,’’ will be Saturday, Nov. 9 and will be for parents, caregivers and teachers.

Ruthi Davenport, a La Grande educator with 45 years of teaching experience, will conduct all of the workshops.

Davenport believes it is critical that anyone helping to teach literacy skills to children understand how closely writing and reading are linked.

“They support each other and are developed together,’’ the educator said.

Davenport was an education professor from 1993 to 2011 at Eastern Oregon University, where she was the director of its Early Childhood Education concentration. Davenport, who has a Ph.D. in reading education from the University of Missouri-Columbia, founded Oak Haven, a private La Grande grade school in 2006. She served as the head teacher at Oak Haven until it temporarily closed in 2023 and now is a volunteer at Blue Mountain Nature School in La Grande.

Areas Davenport will be discussing at each of her workshops, include living literate lives in the company of others, using your balanced brain and your whole body, writing texts which convey meaning and reading texts that make sense.

The educator said that during her workshops she wants participants to learn that everything children write has meaning. 

“What looks like a scribble to anyone else is a child saying something meaningful,’’ Davenport said. “It is always their intent to convey a message.’’

Much of what Davenport will present will reflect what she has learned while teaching children for more than four decades. And she said she’s still learning.

“I continue to be a learner and a student of children’s literacy development,’’ Davenport said.

Much of what Davenport has discovered from children is included in her book “Miscues, Not Mistakes: Reading Assessment in the Classroom,’’ which now is in its ninth printing. Copies of the book will be available at her workshops.

Davenport’s Nov. 9 workshop will be followed by workshops on Nov. 16, Nov. 23, Nov. 30, Dec. 7 and Dec. 14. The workshops will each cover the same content and are not part of a series.

Each will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Johnson Community Room at the library, 2006 Fourth St. in La Grande.

The cost for each workshop session is $100, which is payable before it starts. Workshop participants are asked not to bring children.

Reservations are required for her workshops, which have a 12-participant limit. To make reservations or for more information, contact Davenport via phone at 541-805-4972 or email her at ruthi.oakhaven@gmail.com.