Content Category: Lead Literacy
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Curricular Literacy: Rehearsal Time
Curriculum serves not just students; curricular materials also provide potential learning opportunities for the adults who teach them. —Ball & Cohen, 1996, as cited in Grossman & Thompson, 2004, p....
Micro-Wins: The Data Graphs Don’t Show
It can be daunting to look at the data charts and test scores. It is hard to see those red lines and dots running across the page in a straight...
Grow Your Own Confidence and Humility as a Coach
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. —Rick Warren Coaches are usually hired because they have extensive knowledge and experience. The trust that is...
Senior Send-Off
“Ms. Messenger!” I hear as I walk out of Costco. There stands former student Henry, now over 6 feet tall. We spend our two-minute conversation beaming and catching up. It...
Curricular Literacy: Learning When to Chef
Many teacher preparation programs have not sufficiently prepared new teachers to understand the importance of well-taught, high-quality curriculum on student learning, or how to recognize, select, revise or facilitate high-quality...
Curricular Literacy: What Can Teacher Candidates Learn from High-Quality Instructional Materials?
The truth is that teacher education programs often reinforce . . . a long-standing emphasis on “lesson-planning from scratch” over approaches that teach candidates how to recognize and skillfully use...
Beyond Compliance: A Framework for Supporting Literacy Engagement and Empowerment
“We should purchase a couple of books on ADHD, so that I can share them with my friends and they can understand what it’s like to be me.” This quote...
The Other Foundational Reading Skills
Cognition is but one factor in reading achievement, and test scores are but one indicator of how student readers develop. — Peter Afflerbach I didn’t truly become a reader until...
More Than Skills and Scripts: Systems That Lift Literacy Up
“In one ear and out the other” would aptly summarize a lot of my school experience. As a student, I did my best to pay attention during literacy instruction. But...
From Middle School to College: Finding a Reading Connection
We know that reading experiences shape the future. Stop and think about your early reading experiences. Likely you can conjure up some memories and trace them to the reading choices...
Using Picture Books to Launch Professional Learning Sessions
I have always been a voracious reader. Books were my friends in childhood (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume), my therapists in my adult years (Separation...
Tips for Hosting a Student Teacher
Watching my youngest daughter work on her undergraduate degree in education reminded me how important it is to open my classroom door. Hearing her talk about the students and teachers...
Circle Up: Whole-School Read Alouds to Promote Student Wellness
Early in my first year as a librarian I was approached by our school social worker about an idea she had for classroom read alouds centered on wellness themes (kindness,...
Notebooking for Coach Wellness
As literacy coaches, we are charged with leading the learning of others, learning that is often embedded in a mesh of additional factors, including teachers' overall health and wellness, stress...
Five Picture Books to Spark Teacher Wellness
How are you…really? Lately, I’ve been asking this question, coined from Jenna Kutcher’s new book, of myself and of the teachers I work with. While we might be tempted to...
Library Choices for All: Providing Activities for Every Student
It’s a typical day in my library, and the students have finished checking out books. Today we read Unplugged by Steve Antony. The book is about a robot who gets...
Bingo! Games to the Rescue
"Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game... You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever...
Rethinking Flow in the ELA Classroom
My superpower in junior high school was reading. I couldn’t keep track of my assignments. Homework was a nightly battle. But if you gave me a book I wanted to...
Tough Conversations
When I’m frustrated with someone, I tend to have long conversations in my head, picturing all the ways I could explain exactly how this person has annoyed me. I’m looking...
Design for the Edges: Strategies for Supporting Unique Readers and Writers
One of the symptoms of my ADHD could be described as “promiscuous reading”: jumping around from one half-read book to the next. For example, I started the novella Mapping the...
Swarm: Embracing the Unexpected
I left the Zoom session of the virtual writing retreat, took a sip from my mug of tea, and reflected on the thoughtful feedback I'd just received. As I considered...
