Choice Lit Topic: Literacy Coaches
A simple question – who will coach the coaches? If you’re a literacy coach, you already know there is no job more amazing or overwhelming in a school. Our Choice Literacy library includes a small sample of our resources for literacy coaches. If you work as a coach, you’ll want a subscription that includes access to our Leaders Lounge, where there are over 900 resources for coaches, including study group protocols, videos of demonstration lessons, and guides for designing coaching cycles.
Results
Collaborative Team Meeting: Assessing and Planning Together
Collaborative team meetings take place every 9-10 days in our schools. In these meetings, teachers from one grade level, literacy coaches, and our principal meet together to discuss individual students,...
Time for Reading
How much time do your students spend actually reading text during the literacy block? This question came up during a meeting of elementary classroom teachers. These teachers are required to...
Night Terrors: Let the Coaching Begin!
It's mid-July and I received an email from Jessica, one of our newly hired 4th grade teachers. I can sense her energy through the cable line. Jess has just finished...
Assessment and Curriculum Mapping
In this video from a new teacher study group for grades 3-5 teachers, Jennifer Allen demonstrates how teachers can use assessment data to develop instructional plans for individual students and...
Four Essentials in Designing Professional Development for Literacy Leaders
I never imagined years ago when I was a first-grade teacher that I would one day be responsible for designing professional development for literacy leaders in a highly successful school...
Teacher Study Group: Writing Focus
In this video of a teacher study group, Jennifer Allen leads a group of grades 3-5 teachers as they launch their monthly meeting in October. Jen follows her own guidelines...
Charting the Course: A Yearlong Professional Development Plan for New Teachers (SCHEDULE)
My first task in thinking through how to work with new teachers was to design a professional development plan for the entire year. Only then could I be sure the...
Literacy Room for Teachers Tour
When Jennifer Allen became a literacy specialist ten years ago in Waterville, Maine, she inherited a dusty basement space, bare except for a large pile of ancient reading intervention materials...
The Curricular Support Menu: A Collaborative Tool for Assisting Colleagues
We work as curricular support teachers in the Dublin, Ohio school district. We share a classroom, and each of us spends half the day supporting our colleagues throughout the building....
Word Choice Lesson: A Collaborative Coaching Session with a New Teacher
When I work with a new teacher in his or her classroom, it's a collaborative experience. We design and teach together over time, sharing what works and what doesn't. In...
Reflective Observation: Helping Teachers Observe, Analyze, and Guide (TEMPLATE)
Our new teacher support group includes monthly observations of peers, with time scheduled following the observations for group discussion and analysis of what everyone saw. I wanted to develop some...
Three Little Phrases No Literacy Coach Can Live Without
If there are three skills any literacy coach needs, they are the ability to engage with colleagues, diffuse hostile situations, and connect with people who have a different world view....
What’s Valued? Exploring Different Values in Evaluation (E-GUIDE)
This series of four activities is designed for use in workshops or mentoring sessions, with a goal of helping everyone ferret out their school community's history, beliefs, and goals in...
The Dark Side of Girl Talk: How Female Conversation Patterns Can Inhibit School Change
In Margaret Atwood's novel Cat's Eye, eleven-year-old Elaine is alternately taunted and cajoled within her group of female friends in the classroom, on the playground, and in their homes. As an...
Launching Teacher Study Groups: Guidelines and Resources
Teacher study groups are becoming more popular in schools, fueled in part by the surge of interest in adult book clubs in the U.S. over the last decade. In study...
Getting Started with Your Own Writer’s Notebook
It's summer and school is out - at least in Georgia. There are a zillion things I love about the summer: waking up without an alarm, having my morning java...
Collaborative Teaching: Finding Common Ground First
The questions on this checklist are designed to be used by teachers, coaches, or mentors working as partners in co-teaching or demonstration teaching situations. Ideally, the partners should get together...
Under, Over and Beyond Words: Strategies for Observing Talk in Classrooms
In the book Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning, Peter Johnston writes about the importance of the ways teachers talk with students. He notes, "Teachers have very different...
Opinion Exchange: A Workshop Activity for Study Groups
What do new teachers need to keep them going that difficult first year? In our first session with new teachers in October, our room was filled with the stories of...
Literacy Coach Confidential: What Can I Do About Poor Attendance at My Study Group?
I lead a study group once a month for interested colleagues after school, and attendance is pathetic. What am I doing wrong? Answer: There may be many reasons why you're...
Keeping It Simple: Reflections on the December New Teachers Study Group
Written on a sticky note stuck to the edge of my laptop are three phrases: Listen first; teach by example; be patient. These are three things I've learned as a...
