The first group that presented had read Wondrous Words.  They talked about prescriptive and descriptive writing.   They really emphasized that reading aloud is important and is actually the single most important structure in a classroom.   For their activity this group did something called coral reading.   It is where you take text out of a previous reading from the class.  You want the sentence to be a really good one though.  After choosing your sentence with groups you combine each others sentences to create a poem.
The second group that presented read Ladybugs and Swirling Galaxies.   This group emphasized the importance of giving the students somewhere comfortable to read.   Also they encouraged hanging students work around the classroom.    This groups activity was a lot of fun.   They had us get in groups of 4 or 5 and write a story together.   Each group got a different location that they had to base their story on (ex.  Outer Space, Somewhere hot).  Also they had 8 questions that we were to answer that helped guide our brainstorming.   My group got outer space and our story took place on the dark side of the moon.