Content Category: Lead Literacy
Results
Getting Emotional
Although I aspire to be a leader who is always strong, stoic, and sensible, I occasionally succumb to the emotional toll of my job. At least once a year, it...
No Substitute for Owning the Learning
I love weekends when I’m not in school because I am able to attend a water aerobics kickboxing class. The instructor is knowledgeable, she keeps the class up-tempo, we focus...
Demonstration Small Group: Discussing a Common Text
In this demonstration small group, Clare Landrigan guides first graders as they practice discussion skills around a common text. The video includes prebrief and debrief sessions with the classroom teacher....
Purposeful Post-Its
As teachers and literacy coaches, we love sticky notes, but we don’t love seeing them overused with no purpose. For example, we may have what I call “sticky-note queens and...
First-Grade Small Group on Opinion Writing
In this demonstration small group, Clare Landrigan helps first graders craft opinion writing. The demo includes quick individual conferences, as well as a prebrief and debrief with the classroom teacher....
Conferring Matters: A Coach’s Perspective
“Do you have time to talk with me about conferring?” a teacher asked me at the end of the day. I smiled because it was the same question I’d been...
Conferring Matters: A Principal’s Perspective
I remember a particular conference I had with a student in which the value of conferring clicked for me. We were in the drafting portion of our personal narrative unit,...
Be Someone Who Writes
At a recent roundtable presentation, the facilitator asked us to think about our core beliefs when it comes to literacy, teaching, and learning. Although I agreed that everything I was...
Reading Invasion
Imagine roughly 400 people—staff and students—walking out into the green space on your campus. Now imagine every one of them with a book in hand. Next, they all take...
It’s the Little Things: Small Actions for Building a Healthy Literacy Culture
What is labeled as fluff is more often the stuff of leadership and culture. Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson Lately I have been trying to reflect every day for...
What We Lost
I’m always looking for easy ways to help teachers write. I believe teachers need to write if they want to know how to teach writing. You don’t need to write...
Making Cuts in Writing: Demonstration Conference
Is there anything more difficult than getting a student to trim their writing draft? Tammy Mulligan confers with fifth grader Noah and uses her own writing as a mentor text...
Sketchnoting in Professional Development
Not too long ago, my son came home from school, threw his book on the table, and declared, “I’m never writing another reading response again!” Surprised, I asked him what...
The Evolution of a Coaching Tool Kit
My instructional coach tool kit has evolved. When I first began, I used my wheelie cart. I thought I needed to have everything, and sometimes I did need to have...
Bonding with a Collective Biography
This is the time of year when literacy coaches and school leaders bring together groups of teachers and specialists to work on collective projects all year long. If you want...
Grade-Level Team Meeting: Conversations in First Grade
Heather Fisher uses online resources and anchor charts to build cohesive instruction in talk strategies across a first-grade team.
What’s Talkworthy? Demonstration Small Group
In this demonstration lesson with a sixth-grade group, Tammy Mulligan brings a chart of ideas from students in another school to jump-start the discussion of what's "talkworthy" in book clubs....
DIY Notebooks for Literacy Coaches
Wednesdays have become my favorite coaching day of the week. Why? For the past few years on Wednesday afternoons, I have been coaching a group of literacy teachers working to...
Three Ways to Keep Coaching Student Centered
When I am working with a teacher in a coaching cycle, we commit to working together for a few weeks, planning, teaching, and assessing. When we first meet, they sometimes...
Coaching Minute: Student Observation Form
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher talk about the value of trying out a student observation form first among the coaching team before using it in classroom observations with teachers. ...
Kid-Watching as a Coaching Move
“So, what do you do, exactly?” people outside the field of education often ask me when I tell them I am an instructional coach. I have been answering this question...
