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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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Visualizing to Sustain Reading: Second-Grade Small Group

Clare Landrigan leads a small-group demonstration lesson with second graders who are having trouble sustaining their reading. The strategy she teaches is visualizing as a way to help the children hold key details from the story. The lesson includes prebrief and debrief sessions with the teacher.

Together: Supporting Readers Toward Independence

Cathy Mere works with first-grade teacher Deb Frazier to ensure that struggling readers receiving extra support still have plenty of time for independent reading in literacy workshops.

Nurturing a Growth Mindset in Young Readers

Heather Fisher shares some of the practical strategies she has developed to assist teachers with the issues of stamina and motivation in primary reading workshops.

Meeting Snapshot: “Look Fors” After Demonstration Lesson

Jason DiCarlo leads a group of first-grade teachers sharing their "look-for" notes after a demonstration lesson in a first-grade classroom. The teachers were observing a lesson on differences between fiction and nonfiction, and used both the look-fors and their observations of designated students to focus their notes.

Coaching Tool: Evernote

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan describe how they use Evernote to enhance coaching collaboration and organize materials and assessments from professional development sessions.

Parents in a Foreign Land

Jennifer Schwanke shares the poignant tale of connecting with the parents of English language learners.

Engaging Not Blaming: Increasing Parent Involvement

Melanie Quinn and her colleagues try some fresh approaches to tackling the dilemma of low participation in curriculum events for parents.

Kindergarten Writing: Helping Advanced Learners

Melanie Meehan meets with kindergarten teacher Hayley to examine student work and talk about how to help young learners who are still in transition from home to school environments.

New-to-Grade-Level Teacher Tool Kit

This is the time of year when many teachers are getting new grade assignments for the coming year. Melanie Meehan shares a tool kit she's designed to help each teacher make the shift.

Advice for New Literacy Coaches: An Interview with Susan Avis

Susan Avis chats with Brenda Power about the delicate work of honoring the strengths of teachers while still pushing them beyond their comfort zones to improve skills.

Master Class: Mentoring New Coaches

Memories are triggered as Jennifer Allen mentors a first-year literacy coach through the anxieties and failures of the first weeks in the role.

A Writing Marathon for Teachers

Sunshine, multiple venues, and a writing marathon give a group of teachers led by Heather Rader many insights into the needs of writers of all ages.

A Quilters’ Workshop

Terry Thompson leads a quilters' workshop for teachers on a lark over the summer, and everyone makes some powerful connections to reading and writing instruction.

Loaf and Invite Your Soul

Kim Campbell finds a snippet of Walt Whitman's poetry is just what students and teachers need to pause and to refresh their intellects and energy levels.

Three Little Tweaks for More Effective Communication

Ruth Ayres realizes that the sheer volume of information teachers receive each day overwhelms any attempt at real connection. She explains some simple changes she made to improve her communication skills.

Closing the Year Strong: Leveraging Technology When Time Is Short

Matt Renwick shares some of his favorite tech tools and strategies for connecting with teachers during the stressful last months of school.

Becoming a Literacy Coach: Principles and Mission Statements

Brian Sepe thinks about what has influenced his coaching, and through that process develops a mission statement and a vision statement to guide his work.

Meeting Snapshot: Sharing Resources

Jason DiCarlo explains the importance of previewing resources and not just giving them to teachers, as well as linking the text directly to current work. In this video example, Jason distributes copies of Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning during a first-grade lesson study of fiction and nonfiction text features.

A Test Run for Difficult Decisions

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan describe a four-part protocol they use for working through their most challenging decisions.

Starting with Core Beliefs and Values

Jennifer Vincent shares some of her favorite strategies for helping colleagues describe their core beliefs and values.

Conflict: A Coach’s Perspective

Julie Johnson gives a coach's perspective on conflict with a teacher and how it was resolved.

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