Choice Lit Topic: Leadership
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.
Results
Literacy Groundings
One thing I find educators cannot talk enough about is their personal literacy histories, that fundamental grounding of how they became literate. What happened in their lives that impacted who...
I Can’t Quite Put My Finger On It
Have you ever been working with a teacher and they start to tell you about a new strategy or "program" you are not familiar with, but the description you are...
Second-Grade Team Meeting: Helping Students Choose Books Independently
In this five-minute excerpt from a second-grade team meeting, Principal Karen Szymusiak sits in on a discussion about the challenges of helping young readers learn to pick appropriate books independently....
Voila! Best Writing and Entry Slips in Second Grade
The word voila in French literally means "see there." Linda Karamatic put time and reflection into creating a binder, or "voila book," that will ease bulging writing workshop folders and...
Learning and Teaching Team Meeting
Principal Karen Szymusiak meets with her large and diverse "Learning and Teaching Team" which is comprised of specialists, grade-level team leaders, and administrators.
Can I Quote You on That?: Capturing Classroom Conversation
Sometimes inspiration for my teaching life comes from seemingly disparate experiences in my personal life. I spent a recent Saturday afternoon surrounded by a gaggle of giddy women who had...
Common Core Conversations: Using Evidence From Text
"I suggest the crime was committed in the lounge by Mr. Green with the wrench." Can you prove the suggestion false? Ah-ha, you happen to have a Clue card representing...
Planning for a Demonstration Lesson Part 1
In this first installment of a video series, Clare Landrigan takes a team of grades 3-5 teachers through the steps of planning for a demonstration lesson.
Planning for a Demonstration Lesson Part 2
In this second installment of a two-part video series, Clare Landrigan takes a team of grades 3-5 teachers through the steps of selecting a book for a demonstration lesson.
Common Core Standards: Spreading the Word
As a district-level literacy coach in California, I've been given the task of helping move our system toward implementation of the Common Core Standards. We are a large urban district...
Supporting New Teachers and Appreciating Their Gifts
The research is clear and the statistics are grim. The most important factor which influences student achievement is the skill of the teacher, yet we lose more than 50% of...
Building Community Protocols
When we plan professional development sessions, voluntary courses, and literacy team meetings, we are always on the lookout for new ways to build community within the group so that everyone...
The Superpower of Reflecting
What is your superpower? Are you a great listener, storyteller, misconception spotter, advocate, or feedback giver? Educators have a multitude of superpowers, and we'll focus here on one that takes...
Conferring with Parents (ROUND-UP)
Parent conferences are a time of preparing, collecting, analyzing, scheduling, and sharing. This fall we asked Choice Literacy contributors to share some of their best tips and reminders for conferring...
Katherine Casey on Coaching in Classrooms (PODCAST)
Katherine Casey shares her latest thinking with Heather Rader on the best ways to mentor teachers in classrooms. Katherine is the author of Literacy Coaching: The Essentials. You can visit her...
What’s the Evidence?
The first and most brutal fact that must be confronted in creating professional learning communities is that the task is not merely challenging: it is daunting. It is disingenuous to...
Working with Adults: Structuring Effective Conferring
Most of us acquire the ability to run shortly after we learn to walk. Although the movement is second nature, given the choice, many of us choose not to engage...
Trying to Coach Without the Budget in Mind
With daily headlines keeping alive the reality of a sputtering economy, I fear for my job more than ever. Perhaps it was my sheer naïveté in my first year coaching,...
Learning from Master Teachers: It’s the Process, Not the Content (Part I)
I was lucky enough to visit the Manhattan New School when Shelley Harwayne was principal, and I saw Sharon Taberski, Joanne Hindley, and Judy Davis in action. I have also...
Communicating with the Y Chromosome
A colleague was relaying a disagreement with her husband. "All he did was tell me point by point what he said and what I said and what we could do...
Sense of Little Engines
About half of our coaching staff is engaged in a book study of Peter Johnston's Choice Words. We meet once a month before school at a local coffee shop that offers...
