Content Category: Lead Literacy
Results
Learning Labs for Professional Development
With a staff of 42 teachers ranging from one year of experience to 30-plus years of experience, differentiation of professional learning is something our school leadership team is constantly struggling...
Coaching Letter to Jo
Jo is a fifth-grade teacher in Harlem. Although she has many responsibilities, Jo and I are working primarily on enhancing curriculum, instruction, and assessment related to her instructional reading block....
Student-Centered Coaching: Collaborating with Teachers
A teacher who earlier shared that her team has a focus on nonfiction writing is at the copier. I greet her and say, “I was thinking about your team as...
The Value of Story Play
Recently we were talking with some kindergarten teachers about how we could include opportunities for talk and verbal response to reading. Our data showed that their students needed more opportunity...
Coaching Letters
Does writing a letter lead a teacher to a deeper understanding of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, or does writing a letter lead an instructional leader to better serve those they...
Accountable Talk: Beginning Steps
As another set of state test scores reaches our doorway, our grade 3-6 teachers are frustrated at the amount of work they have done with students over the past four...
Coaching Minute: Read to Every Class
Principal Jennifer Schwanke has a simple strategy for building connections to every reader in her school: she regularly reads to every class.
The Staircase Reading Response: Demonstration Small Group
In the second of a two-part video series, Clare Landrigan leads a demonstration small group with fourth graders who have an intriguing way of responding to reading.
Where Am I Going and How Did I Get Here?
And you may ask yourself What is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself Where does that highway go? And you may ask yourself Am I right? . ....
The Staircase Reading Response: Planning Session
In this first video in a two-part series, Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan meet with fourth-grade teachers to assess student reading responses and plan a demonstration small group that Clare...
Secrets of Coaching Revisited
Listen First Teach by Example Be Patient I first read these words of the late Juli Kendell back in 2007 in an article she wrote on the secrets of school-based...
My Ideal Professional Bookshelf: What Does Yours Look Like?
Inspired by our discussions of an important book in our professional lives (see Part 1), our literacy teacher support group decided to take our work a step further and create...
Resource Round-Up for Text Types
My colleague Samantha Munnecke and I had just finished facilitating our Introduction to Writing Workshop series when it was time to create a new course and respond to teachers’ content...
Coaching the Nuts and Bolts of Book Bags
We are seeing reading workshop thriving in classrooms where we coach teachers. It is so exciting to hear students talking about the books they like, the authors they have discovered,...
Pictures First
In this demonstration lesson, Clare Landrigan instructs a group of kindergartners who are stuck on the strategy of only "sounding it out" to decipher text.
I Should Have Stopped at the Staples
As a fourth-year literacy coach, I like to think that I have lots of experience under my belt to share with new teachers and can be more of an "expert"...
Writer-ish
Thinking ishly allowed his ideas to flow freely. Peter Reynolds in Ish In my new position as a literacy coach, I no longer have a classroom of students. Although...
Coaching Minute: Punctuality
Heather Rader explains why starting professional development meetings on time is crucial in this quick video tip. A transcript is available below the player. I’ve noticed that...
Teaching Is Like . . .
Early in the year as I prepared to meet with different groups of educators, I recognized that I needed a quick but meaningful way to build relationships. It was also...
An Ideal Professional Bookshelf: The Important Book for Teachers
This year, our literacy teacher support group is doing a lot of book talk—about favorite books, memories of reading, and current reading obsessions—to help ground us in our classroom practice....
When Is Coaching a Waste of Time?
I met Lisa, a new literacy coach, for dinner early in the fall. She’d just come from an afternoon meeting with Mary, a fifth-grade teacher. They had discussed designing a...
