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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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Planning for a Year of Professional Development

If you’re planning next year’s study groups, you might find Jennifer Allen’s list and reflections helpful in thinking through your school and district needs.

An Open Apology

Jennifer Schwanke crafts a letter (never to be sent) to parents of her students from years past, remembering all her early blunders as a middle school teacher. This would be a fun piece to share at a new-teachers orientation, or as a workshop icebreaker for chatting about how teachers have changed over the years.

Seizing a Coaching Opportunity

Melanie Quinn develops a new appreciation for a fifth-grade teacher’s struggles with her class, and finds an opportunity to open a conversation about student motivation and community building.

Coaching Minute: Strategic Reading for Our Youngest Learners

In this quick video tip, Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan have wise advice for supporting strategic reading in young learners.

Advocating for English Language Learners

Of all the skills teachers of English language learners need, knowing how to advocate for students may be the most important. Jennifer Schwanke explains why.

Hiring Teachers for English Language Learners

Jennifer Schwanke shares interview questions and ways to analyze candidate responses when hiring teachers of English language learners.

Taking Notes in Fourth Grade

Tammy Mulligan works with a group of fourth graders to help them build their nonfiction note-taking skills. The demonstration small group includes a prebrief and debrief with the teacher.

Coaching Minute: Working with New Coaches

In this brief video, Amanda Adrian talks about the importance of considering how to integrate new coaches into ongoing study groups and teams that have worked together for years.

Back-to-School PowerPoints

Kim Campbell helps new teachers develop presentations to introduce themselves to parents during open houses in the days before school begins.

Coaching New Teachers

Brian Sepe explains how literacy coaches can best support new teachers.

Coaching Minute: Supporting New Coaches

Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share tips for how veteran coaches can support new colleagues in this short video.

Developing Coaching Skills Together

Dana Murphy explains how she works with other literacy coaches in her district to develop a "toolbox" of coaching skills and strategies together.

Breaking Tasks Down into Steps

Melanie Meehan identifies a crucial step in assessing student needs: asking students to think through where learning breaks down for them.

Rethinking End-of-Year Assessments

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan share strategies for getting the most out of end-of-year assessments, even those that are most likely to gather dust after they are administered.

Coaching Minute: Personalizing Assessment Binders

Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher chat about the challenges of getting teachers to use assessment binders, and the importance of helping teachers tailor the binders to their needs.

Good Intentions Gone Wrong

Julie Johnson experiences a horrible moment as a literacy coach, and realizes she needs to slow down and prioritize her time in new ways.

Finding Evidence in Texts

In this demonstration lesson, Tammy Mulligan confers with fourth grader Hailey, helping her hone her develop skills in finding textual evidence. The lesson includes a prebrief and debrief with the teacher.

Empowering Teachers to Share: Leading More Powerful Professional Development Sessions

Ruth Ayres provides more time and opportunities for teachers to share learning and artifacts from their classrooms during professional development, and is amazed at the results.

Changing Two Words

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan explain how two simple word changes have made all the difference in building rapport with teachers.

Coaching Conversations: Carry the Water

In this audio interview, Susan Kennedy chats with Brenda Power about the challenges of starting a new coaching position in a different part of the country, and building relationships with resistant teachers.

Empowering the Reading Team

Kathy Provost explains how and why she transferred more responsibility for professional development to reading specialists. In her district, elementary reading specialists now lead literacy professional sessions for paraprofessionals.

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