Content Category: Lead Literacy
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Why I Love Having a Coach
This year, our district put literacy and math coaches in place at the elementary level. I knew I’d love having a coach, but I had no idea how much I...
Fostering Change with Student Work
As a literacy coach within my district, I find myself promoting district initiatives that require teachers to take on new curriculum. For some teachers this means letting go of cherished...
Coaching Basics: Routines
“I can’t take it anymore!” When conversations start like this, I perk up and listen closely. It’s critical to be an active listener as the teacher elaborates. The listening becomes...
Coaching Logs and Daily Reflective Routines
As a classroom teacher, I was intentional—one could even say obsessive—about reflecting on the effectiveness of my work. Almost nightly, I would spread a pile of work across my living...
Cultivating Natural Mentors
When I was hired as a junior high English teacher, my principal was just one year from retirement and had the proverbial “one foot out the door.” He spent his...
Meeting Snapshot: Exploring Terms in Standards
Jason DiCarlo pauses for a minute with a team of first-grade teachers to examine a standard together, projected with an LCD to ensure everyone has the same understanding of terms...
First-Grade Small Group: From Decoding to Monitoring for Meaning
Clare Landrigan leads a demonstration small group with Braden and Talis, who are working to move from an emphasis on decoding in first grade to monitoring meaning. The video includes...
Goal Setting with Google Spreadsheets
Early in the school year I was contacted by a fifth-grade teacher asking for a way to help her students keep track of their own learning and to set goals...
Screencasting Professional Development
One of the biggest barriers to professional learning is simply that of finding the time. Teachers have so much on their plate that actually finding time to attend a workshop,...
Monitor for Meaning in Third Grade
In this demonstration conference, Tammy Mulligan works with third grader Ben to help him monitor meaning. The lesson includes prebrief and debrief sessions with his teacher.
Honesty, Ignorance, and Building Relationships
Being a leader of literacy instruction can feel like a daunting job. There are so many excellent instructional practices being used by teachers that it seems impossible to know everything...
Coaching Relationships: Move Closer
When I was in graduate school working on my degree in educational leadership, I had a professor admonish us to “Move closest to the person you feel the least closest...
Twitter Book Chats
Cultivating a culture of learning and collaboration among teachers and support staff is a responsibility of all coaches. But everyone is dealing with overstuffed schedules, and finding the ability to...
Takeout Book Club
Book clubs are a rewarding opportunity for educators to continue growing in their profession while reading the latest in professional resources and collaborating with colleagues. But with the hustle and...
Coaching Minute: The Walkaway
Amanda Adrian shares the importance of the "walkaway" -- narrowing the focus of professional development planning to one critical question in this quick video tip.
See Their Stories, Not Their Misbehaviors
Picture a glass jar filled with your favorite pens. Imagine every color of pen inside the jar. Red and turquoise, ocean blue and fuchsia, sunshine yellow and neon orange. There...
Expanding Study Group Communities
Jennifer Allen explains how a simple bulletin board in the literacy room can expand the learning from individual study groups to the whole school teaching community.
Because It’s the Right Thing to Do
As a school that focuses on positive behavior, we used to have a token jar that was prominently displayed in the front hall. As classes passed, they could see how...
Implementing New Mandated Initiatives
An emotionally positive learning environment encourages learning by mitigating the big learning inhibitors: fear, ego, defenses, complacency, and arrogance. Edward Hess With a new school year come new initiatives...
Study Groups That Nourish the Soul
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl Jung Steven Wozniak was part of a...
On Being Observed
Jeni shares reflections on teacher observations and what needs to be in place for them to work well.
