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Lead Literacy Articles & Videos (formerly leadliteracy.com)

Our lounge is your home for exploring hundreds of articles and videos for literacy coaches and school leaders. Our contributors share their best advice for working one-on-one with teachers in coaching cycles, hosting professional development sessions, and designing demonstration lessons and study groups.

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Beanstalk Play for Literacy

Clare Landrigan works with a kindergarten group to foster literacy through play in this demonstration small group. The lesson includes a prebrief and debrief with the teacher.

200 Feet

“Never more than 200 feet from a book.” That’s the goal in Matt Renwick’s school, and in this photo essay you can see creative possibilities for sharing books throughout a school (and outside, too!).

Reigniting Your Coaching Schedule in December

Brian Sepe ponders the best uses of his coaching time when he is between cycles. He shares three options for building relationships with teachers.

Demonstration Small Group: Note Taking and Text Structure

Tammy Mulligan helps fourth graders develop note-taking skills in this demonstration small group. The lesson includes a prebrief and debrief with the teacher.

Recipes and Lesson Plans: Process and Practice

Suzy Kaback is inspired by chefs testing recipes to develop a lesson analysis activity. She shares an example of how it works,  encouraging honesty and risk-taking among new teachers.

Stop Paying in Quarters: Changing Thinking and Practice

Matt Renwick pays tolls the old-fashioned way on a long drive, and ponders connections between his experience and teachers’ resistance to tech innovations.

Advice for a New Coach

Melanie Meehan shares her best advice for a new coach who is just beginning to forge relationships with teachers.

Professional Development with 10 for 10

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan explain how to use 10 for 10 online book celebrations as a professional development tool. Now is a good time to start planning for the next event, in February.

The Failures of a Doughnut

We can celebrate the wonders of what a doughnut can do to improve a bad day. But what it can't do is make children read more. Jen Schwanke takes on reward programs for children that may hinder more than help family relations.

Parent Bulletin Board

Melanie Meehan takes on the challenge of designing a bulletin board to help parents support writing at home.

Celebrate the Process

Heather Fisher works with teachers to design a literacy night for families that celebtrates the process of acquiring new skills, not just final products on display.

Teaching Students at Their Own Level

Melanie Meehan explains why perfectly designed lessons aligned with standards are useless if they aren’t at the level of the students in front of you.

Making Standards Work for You

Matt Renwick shares a template he uses with teachers to help standards inform their work.

Learning Targets

Melanie Meehan explains how she changed her demonstration lessons to include more of her own process in creating learning targets, and how sharing this assessment with students helped them focus their work.

Assessing Our Impact

Matt Renwick explains how classroom walk-throughs and surveys can be powerful tools for assessing your impact—if you collect the right data.

Creating a Strategy Tool Kit

Melanie Meehan describes the power of developing strategy tool kits for coaching, and presents some of the tools in her kit for teaching revision strategies.

PD Playlist

Music is a potent and often overlooked tool in setting a mood in professional development settings. Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan share some of their new favorite tunes for PD.

Collections to Spark Writing

Clare Landrigan uses collections as a tool to spark writing among first graders during an upcoming vacation. This demonstration small-group lesson includes prebrief and debrief sessions with the children's teacher.

Engagement in Writing Workshops

Melanie Meehan shares some practical strategies for keeping students engaged that she often uses in demonstration lessons.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Gretchen Taylor reflects upon a poor relationship she develops with an instructor, and how the narratives we construct can inhibit our professional interactions with colleagues.

Coaching Minute: Using Foam Boards with Students

In this quick video, Jennifer Allen explains how using foam boards with students can increase engagement and extend learning between demonstration lessons.

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