Do you guide teachers, specialists, and literacy coaches? Here are tools, advice, and strategies school leaders need for their daily work in staff meetings, study groups, and one-on-one discussions with colleagues. If you have a leadership role in coaching teachers and designing professional development, you'll want an upgraded membership with access to our Leaders Lounge.
Heather Rader has advice for literacy coaches looking for honest appraisals of their work from colleagues.
Coaching cycles look different depending on teachers' needs. Via email and phone, Heather Rader has professional conversations with a teacher as he plans and designs a lesson for observation.
Here are some suggestions from Choice Literacy Contributors of the best ways to close out the year, with everything from personal organizing tips to family events.
If you're a literacy coach, those teachers who don't want to work with you can make you feel like the wallflower at the prom or the last kid picked for the basketball team. Heather Rader has positive, proactive suggestions for making the best of an awkward situation.
Heather Rader examines the use of Venn diagrams as a catalyst for thinking about how to coach for more depth in classrooms.
Shari Frost writes about the ways our perfectly organized bins may limit the teaching possibilities for many books. She takes readers step by step through her process of determining ways to use a sample mentor text to teach a multitude of lessons and strategies.
Samantha Bennett is the author of That Workshop Book: New Systems and Structures for Classrooms That Read, Write, and Think, and works with teachers and literacy leaders across the country to create vibrant school learning communities. In this podcast, she chats with Franki Sibberson about what matters most in schools.
Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan talk with Franki Sibberson about strategies for getting the most out of observing in a colleague’s classroom.
It’s virtually possible to get together around a book without getting together at all. Shari Frost shows us how.
Heather Rader gets three nasty emails, and thinks through how to hold on to an attitude of gratitude when dealing with colleagues who are short-tempered or demanding.
Heather Rader wants to transition to more of a guide-on-the-side role as she coaches colleagues. Here are some simple strategies she uses to move offstage during collaborative scoring workshops.
Jennifer Allen visits a thriving cupcake store in Boston that doesn’t sell any cupcakes. It turns out to be the perfect example of “simplexity” – Michael Fullan’s term for maintaining focus on goals and a larger purpose. Jennifer writes about how simplexity applies to professional development planning for literacy leaders.
We know that the shorter our minilesson, the more time students will have to read and write, but it's not easy for many of us. Shari Frost has tips to shape up minilessons that have become maxilessons.
In the day-to-day triage of our schools and the sense of urgency that pushes us to always be accountable for every minute of the day, it is understandable that we tend to forget to pause to think about our larger goals. No one wants to “waste time.” This activity helps everyone keep the big picture in mind.
Jennifer Allen realizes that her biggest fear as a literacy coach is forgetting to keep students at the heart of our coaching conversations. With this in mind, she shares what keeps student learning as her primary focus.
With a tough winter and tougher budget prospects, many schools will be dealing with the Januaries straight through March. Our contributors have suggestions for dealing with stress, fatigue, and depression to help renew and re-energize your work.
Heather Rader coaches a teacher who considers her boy/girl ratio and how it may be affecting students' understanding of directions and time on task.
 Mary Lee Hahn finds Poetry Fridays are about so much more than poetry, or even a pleasant end to the week. She shares how this activity is a wonderful way to bring together colleagues and students.
For teacher leaders who are called upon to do demonstration lessons, here is a “must-have” list of short, potent books.
Heather Rader writes about "agency" – the challenge of letting students and teachers take charge of their learning. In concrete examples from a third-grade classroom and a professional development scoring session with teachers, Heather shares the subtleties of learning to trust, wait, and celebrate when learners of any age are responsible and independent.
Stepping back to think about the design of quality instruction is essential for any teacher. Heather Rader looks to brain research and tried-and-true practices to lay out lesson components.
In this podcast, Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan, the founders of Teachers for Teachers, talk with Franki Sibberson about how to link grade level team meetings with student achievement, and build stronger teaching communities at the same time.
Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan found that even though the group share is the shortest part of the workshop, teachers reported many issues that needed attention. These issues can be resolved with attention to the framework, modeling and more.
Terry Thompson considers the concept of “scaffolding” for both student learning and professional development.
As Suzy Kaback explores the question “How does your expertise function?” she explains the power of Photovoice and details its use in K-12 classrooms.
Do you have a tattler in your midst? Not a child, but a teacher complaining about the work habits of a colleague? Jennifer Jones explains her proactive use of walk-arounds to gather data and confront misconceptions.
Colleagues and coaches, Amanda Adrian and Heather Rader, explore the upcoming shifts in English Language Arts and anticipate what it will mean for leaders, teachers and most importantly, students.
Jennifer Jones finds in a time of budget cuts it is more important than ever for literacy coaches to keep good records of how they spend their time with teachers. She shares a very simple spreadsheet system which includes content codes and brief notes.
Jill Ostrow creates a flexible and practical online tool to support teachers of English language learners.
What role should literacy coaches have in helping teachers manage unruly students? Melanie Quinn settles into a morning of poring over assessment data, only to have it interrupted by a child who has been disrupting his class. Her interactions with Darren and his teacher lead to strategies for helping colleagues take an inquiry stance with challenging children.
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