Lead Lit Topic: Collaborative Teaching
Whether you’re collaborating with a veteran teacher who is confident about her classroom, or a novice who is completely overwhelmed with management issues, structuring collaborative teaching is one of the most fulfilling and important responsibilities for any literacy coach. Here are some possibilities for making the most of your collaborative time with colleagues.
Results
Picture Walks Gone Wild: Supporting Teachers in the Appropriate Use of Picture Walks
Rita was literally sitting on her hands and biting her lips to keep them clamped shut. I checked the clock on the wall again. Rita was right – this picture...
No Time for Collaboration
A literacy interventionist, Marnie, double-checked her notes. She had it right. Andy, a fifth grader, was indeed reading Poppy (Avi, 2005). Andy kept calling the main character Bobby instead of...
Coaching Minute: Flexible Plans
The key to successful coaching in classrooms? Ruth Ayres believes it is flexibility and keeping some space in your schedule for the unexpected, as she explains in this Coaching Minute...
Letting Children Lead While Conferring
I love Tuesdays, the day I get to return to work with a special group of third-grade students. I enter the room and see almost all students writing in notebooks...
Coaching Minute: We Are Guests
What does it mean to be a guest in a classroom? Ruth Ayres considers the complex role coaches have as visitors to classrooms in this one-minute video.
Time In/Time Out Conference: Andrew
In this "time in/time out" conference, Ruth Ayres and Cathy Laker meet with second grader Andrew, who is working on a "versus" story in writing workshop.
Virtually Coaching a Lesson
I'd known Chad for about two months when his first observation was scheduled. Chad had shared with me that he didn't feel like his new principal understood him. Even though...
Something to Talk (and Write) About
Amy, a literacy coach, invited me to sit in on a first-grade team meeting. She had had a breakthrough with the group and wanted some input for next steps with...
Time In/Time Out Conference: Ava
The Time In/Time Out Conference is a terrific way for coaches to maximize time and reflection in classrooms. Literacy Coach Ruth Ayres and Cathy Laker confer with Ava, a second...
Days of Magic and Wonder: Generating Research Topics with First Graders
mag·ic (noun) -- Encarta Dictionary conjuring tricks -- conjuring tricks and illusions that make apparently impossible things seem to happen, usually performed as entertainment inexplicable things -- a special, mysterious,...
Coaching Minute: Wait for the “In”
In this brief video, Heather Rader shares her strategies for getting into classrooms of teachers who may be hesitant about inviting visits from coaches. A transcript is available below the...
Reading to Students
Three times a year, I offer to be a guest reader in each of the 25 classrooms in our K-5 elementary school where I am the principal. I am quite...
The Road to Rainbow Magic: Hannah’s Story
A comfortable calm came over the room. It was reading time and students were settling in together and alone. Some were enjoying the solitude of a beanbag chair while others...
Taking the Lead by Teaching
My office had begun to feel like a black hole pulling me in. There were observation reports to write, student discipline issues to deal with and emails waiting for a...
Collaborating When the Going Gets Tough
When the going gets tough, turn to inquiry. Courage to Teach Touchstone I don’t know about you, but when the going gets tough, inquiry is not the first thing...
Personal Conferring Notebooks
How do you effectively and efficiently share formative assessment data between the teachers providing different types of instructional support when the population of students receiving extra instructional support exceeds more...
Teacher and Coach Common Quiet Signals
Each teacher has one or more special signals to get students’ attention. When literacy coach Heather Rader began working with second-grade teacher Sean Moore she noted how he asked students...
Picture It: Increasing Comfort with Technology
We know that technology has changed the way we access and use texts in our daily lives. Here you see both teacher- and student-generated ideas for future blog posts in...
Acquiring Knowledge Two or Three Strategies at a Time
"Hey, Papi! What is that crop growing over there?" My dad responds patiently to repeated requests by my nine-year-old son, Jack, to identify exactly what is growing in the fertile...
From Teacher to Coach: Building Community in the Early Days
It's late August and next week I start my position as Instructional Coach. I am not new to working with teachers. I spent six years in higher education working with...
Charting Isn’t Cheating
For the first few years of my high school teaching career, every time there was a major exam I was urged to take down or cover up anything that might...
