Content Category: Lead Literacy
Results
The Importance of Encouragement
Like many school districts around the country, we have been cultivating a learning culture, and instructional coaches are playing an increasingly important role. In our district, instructional coaches make up...
The Evolution of Data Meetings
Years ago as a reading specialist in one building, I began the data-wall journey with a giant data wall made out of pegboard with hooks and different-colored shapes for each...
Coaching Minute: Student Work Form
Melanie Meehan talks about the importance of developing assessment forms for coaching cycles that focus on student work and integrating analysis of the work into plans for instruction.
The Students Behind the Numbers
Data is everywhere. From the digital speed displays as we drive our vehicles, to the number of calories for each option at a restaurant, we are immersed in information. This...
From Worksheets to Workshops
At the beginning of my time at Miami Elementary School, I sent my teachers an email with my calendar and a list of ways I could support them. One item...
Coaching Collaboration: Visual Note Taking in First Grade
Entering a new coaching cycle with teachers is an exciting time. Teachers bring eagerness and a willingness to try novel ways of teaching skills and strategies, and collaboration is at...
Helping with Management Challenges in First Grade
One of the first-grade classrooms I have been working in is particularly challenging because of the students' overall attention span. It's one of those classrooms where it's hard to complete...
First-Grade Retelling Demonstration Lesson
Clare Landrigan leads this first-grade demonstration small group on retelling strategies. The demonstration includes prebrief and debrief meetings with the teacher.
In the Trenches: Reflection, Not Perfection
As a middle school literacy coach whose job is to provide job-embedded professional development, I am fortunate to find myself in classrooms a good amount of the day. My stance...
Meeting Snapshot: Defining the Essential Question
Jason DiCarlo leads a team of first-grade teachers and specialists as they work to define an essential question before a demonstration lesson on the difference between fiction and nonfiction text...
Coaching Tool: Voice-Overs
Demonstration lessons and coteaching settings are great contexts for engaging in the “partnership learning” approach to literacy coaching. What happens when the debrief discussion takes place hours after the lesson?...
Voice Notes
As coaches we plan so many professional developments sessions that it is difficult to remember the content we discussed, the things we decided to skip, the opportunities we noticed for...
Problems and Solutions: Small-Group Demonstration Lesson
In this demonstration small group, Clare Landrigan works with a second-grade teacher to reflect on the needs of two students and, after the lesson, debriefs with her about the learning....
Better Meetings Through Reflection
Think of the hours most of us spend in meetings. There are professional learning community meetings, staff meetings, grade-level meetings, curriculum meetings, data meetings, student intervention meetings, study group meetings,...
Ending Coaching Cycles with Reflection
I am approaching the end of a coaching cycle with a fifth-grade teacher with whom I've been working throughout her information-writing unit. Her students are highly engaged, so we have...
Taking a Literacy Temperature
I am the principal of a different school this year. Although I was devastated to leave my previous building—I loved it, and it truly felt like home to me—part of...
What’s in Your Bag?
What's in your bag? We are asked this question often. It may not always be organized, and you might find tea bags or candy wrappers in it, but there are...
It’s All About Perception
Life is all about perception. Positive versus negative. Whichever you choose will affect and more than likely reflect your outcomes. Sonya Techlai The blessing of first-of-the-year assessments is that...
A Coach’s Toolbox: Transcribing Talk
Most of my time in classrooms is spent coteaching or teaching a demonstration lesson. My role as a literacy coach is a nonevaluative one, so I aim to be actively...
Meeting Snapshot: Selecting a Standard for Lesson Study
Jason DiCarlo works with a first-grade team to select a standard before designing a lesson. The group explores connections between reading and writing, and has an honest discussion of where...
The Power of Sketchbooks for Coaches
I used a variety of sketchbooks as a classroom teacher to brainstorm possible charts to create for read-aloud, minilessons, and small-group instruction. However, I never really found one I loved...
