Content Category: Lead Literacy
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Grammar Instruction in Fourth Grade
Melanie Meehan coaches a fourth-grade teacher who is trying to improve his grammar instruction.
First-Grade Demonstration Group: Why Read?
A first-grade teacher shares a guilty secret: she isn't sure some of her students have an innate sense of the value of reading. Clare Landrigan leads a demonstration group to...
Conference Records That Stay with Kids
As I waited for the transition to writing workshop, I looked around the kindergarten classroom. It was packed! Not only was the class size large—34 five-year-olds prepared their desks for...
A Checklist for Reflection
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Soren Kierkegaard It's 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday in the dead of winter. I should go home...
Developing Life Skills vs. Teaching to the Test
My principal winced in trepidation while simultaneously nodding in agreement when I suggested last fall that we tackle our low test scores head-on. We started our inservice day meeting like...
Coaching Minute: Lesson Planning Form
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher talk about the value of using a lesson planning form with teachers as a shared record of plans, action, and reflection in coaching sessions. The...
“There Are Words All Over Our Hallways!”
For students who are quickly becoming independent readers, they need to see the word about ten times before it moves into their bank of easily recognized words. However, our dependent...
Reflecting and Planning for Summer Reading
Tammy Mulligan helps Katie, a sixth grader who lacks confidence in her reading abilities, reflect on her strengths and make plans for summer reading. This demonstration conference includes a prebrief...
Teacher Guilt
Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they're big, flashing signs that something needs to change. Gretchen Rubin A...
Word Study Kick-Off
One of the biggest struggles teachers share is that getting word study off the ground is tricky. It should be no surprise to know, then, that many teachers admit that...
Professional Development Choice and Follow-Up
We have many opportunities for professional development in our district, but we are constantly grappling with the question of how to create more long-lasting instructional changes. In the moment, as...
The Power of Mini-Charts
I spend a lot of time making charts. I have filled multiple sketchbooks with charts over the years—anchor charts, strategy charts, and learning progressions. These sketchbooks have become invaluable to...
Exit Slips for Reflection and Planning
In this video, Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher use exit slips to assess the success of a professional development session and plan next steps.
Poetry Love
Our school district offers an annual Summer Writing Academy, and each year we have a different topic or focus area for the writing. When we first bounced around the idea...
Planning Next Year’s Professional Development Offerings
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. Annie Dillard It’s easy to...
Benched
We’ve all watched games in which players have been benched. In my own house, we have all kinds of experiences with “riding the bench.” One of our kids isn’t athletically...
It’s Not About Us
One of our teachers scheduled an appointment with me. Assuming she wanted to discuss her midyear professional goal, I was surprised when she came with guided reading resources. “I wanted...
Coaching Minute: Selecting Books for Teachers
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share some criteria for selecting books for teachers to open doors and conversations.
The Other Agenda
Teachers are always on the lookout for a fresh idea. They look to their colleagues, to curated sites such as Pinterest, and to any number of other resources for new...
Coaching Minute: Better Data Meetings
In this brief video, Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost explain why turning data meetings over to reading specialists has had such a positive effect on schools in their district. ...
The Secret to Better Meetings: It’s All in the Ending
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and...
