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Beyond Matt Christopher (BOOKLIST)
Thank goodness for Matt Christopher! I can't imagine how many boys are avid readers because of his books. Every year, I have readers, mostly boys, who become obsessed with reading...
Watching Teachers Teach: An Observation Form for Literacy Coaches
Early in my first year as a literacy coach, I tried to go into classrooms to watch teachers teach. I wanted to know what was happening in classrooms, and I...
Open Book Clubs
Monroe School was very pleased with their literacy instructional program. The students were encouraged to read independently and kept track of the books that they were reading in reading logs....
Multicultural Picture Books for Young Children
Children learn about the sounds of language through exposure to linguistic awareness games, nursery rhymes, and rhythmic activities. Engaging children in choral readings of rhymes and rhythms allows them to...
Letting Go and Holding On: Evaluating Our Work as Literacy Coaches
As a literacy coach, I am very interested in the progress of our students and value that data as an indicator of the success of my work. I also solicit...
New Teacher Conversations: Management Stories from the Classroom
Classroom management was on the new teachers' minds at our last meeting of the year when we asked them what they would like from us for resources and discussion the...
Quotes about Literacy Leadership and Change
I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle; but today it means getting along with people. Indira Gandhi Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in...
Giving New Readers a Diet of More Than Leveled Books
I am going on another diet. Not one of my favorite things, but something I have to do. I know that for the diet to last through all of the...
Chance Encounter
It was supposed to be a casual and quick lunch with a couple of colleagues I worked with when I taught in a middle school some years ago. It turned...
The Language of Coaching Part I: Word Choices
Giving written and spoken feedback is an opportunity to be very thoughtful about the words we choose in communicating with teachers. This is a challenge. There are nuances to our...
Favorite Mentoring Quotes
Looking back across my timeline through school, and indeed in the early days of teaching, I see one good thing about being filled with insecurities. Knowing that I had everything...
Notetaking Series Part V: Getting Out of Notetaking Ruts
Routines are wonderful -- they help us organize our days, weeks, and months in a way that helps us accomplish goals. Yet routines also can lead to ruts -- certain...
Memorable Students, Memorable Teachers: A Quick-Write Icebreaker for Teacher Workshops
"Memorable Teachers, Memorable Students" is a simple quick-write reflective activity that is especially appropriate for summer or "getting to know you" events early in the year with study groups, teacher...
How Study Groups Are Like Self-Cleaning Ovens
One of our favorite inventions ever is the self-cleaning oven. Set a timer, lock the oven door, and a few hours later -- voila! You have a clean oven, and...
Punctuation Quotes
In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy and the semicolon quietly practices the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is...
“Hard” Reading Workshop: Understanding How Proficient Readers Comprehend Difficult Text
This workshop activity is useful for a study group, staff meeting, or mentor meeting where the topic is reading instruction. Over the past two decades, comprehension research has focused on...
Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric
The "Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric" was designed collaboratively with colleagues who are preparing to become literacy coaches. We talked through the different philosophies in school communities about the purposes and...
The Language of Coaching Part II: The Leading Edge
Peter Johnston has written an entire book about the subtleties of our communications. In Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse, 2004), Johnston explores the places where work is partially...
Notetaking Strategies Part I: “In the Midst” and “After the Fact” Notes
Memory is made as a quilt is made. From the whole cloth of time, frayed scraps of sensation are pulled apart and pieced together in a pattern that has a...
New Teacher Conversations: Breaking Through Roadblocks and Sustaining Support
At our final New Teacher Conversations meeting, we wanted to celebrate with the first-year teachers as well as look ahead to their second year. Knowing this was the last scheduled...
Mentor Interviews — A Protocol of Questions
Fall is a time when many novice and seasoned teachers begin mentoring relationships. But what do the mentors expect from this partnership? And how might their expectations differ from those...
