Lead Lit Topic: Forms
Organization is important to every literacy leader. Not only do we need to organize ourselves, but teachers look to us for support structures they can use. One form may help you model conferring with young writers, the next gives you solid feedback at the end of a class and another prompts teachers’ reflection around student work. Finding the right form helps us preserve the tracks of our thinking in professional work.
Results
Coach-Principal Meeting Template
An Agenda Template to Streamline Principal-Coach Meetings Every administration and their building needs are different. For coaches, traveling between buildings can often feel like whiplash. The building goals are different....
Goals Create Direction
You feel stressed because you don’t have a goal. This simple truth resonates deeply in our schools today. Many of our colleagues are stressed—overwhelmed with classroom behaviors, daily demands, and...
Transforming Our Own Professional Learning
If you want to thrive as a Transformational Coach, you need to be prepared to engage in a lot of practice and refining of your skills. I’ve also learned that...
Capturing Meeting Notes to Boost Accountability
You leave a teacher meeting with an extra pep in your step. The conversation flowed, you both seemed energized, the teacher’s goal was determined, next steps were established, and you're...
Five Questions to Ask When Reviewing Literacy Curriculum
Selecting a curriculum resource is not as simple as previewing a book. As a building administrator and former curriculum leadership instructor, I find that these decisions are complex and multifaceted....
Back-to-School Coaching Reflection Survey
We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. —John Dewey I vividly remember the last day of school during my first year of teaching. I had...
Using a Checklist for Powerful Post-Conferences
The new school year has started! You’ve connected with your teachers, created a schedule, organized your resources. As you begin to navigate your coaching cycles, it’s helpful to have a...
Coaching Minute: Set-Up Coaching Plans
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share an important first step for instructional coaches to help teachers feel invited into the coaching relationship: Make shared coaching plans.
Changing Positions? How to Rethink Your Community (Download)
“How are you?” I asked the teacher as I walked into the hallway where she was looking at art on the wall. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m switching to...
Watching Writers Work
I learned to teach writers by watching students work as writers. I believed Don Graves when he encouraged teachers to watch children write and trust that we would discover everything...
Affirm, Acknowledge, Ask: A Simple Protocol for Communicating Feedback
How do we let people know how they might improve if they are not ready to hear it? There are many situations in which the signals are clear that feedback...
Measure for Measure
Measure in love. —Jonathan Larson (from the musical Rent) I remember the first time we took Liam to the pediatrician. After the waiting and the weighing and measuring and prodding...
Coaching in PLCs
In our last fourth-grade PLC meeting we had tackled the first two questions, “What do we want students to learn?” and “How will we know they learned it?” Standards had...
Establishing Trust
The teacher and I had met about the second-grade student a handful of times, had had various hallway conversations, and had exchanged more emails than I could remember, but it...
Coaching Minute: Cycle Forms
Jean Russell explains the importance of establishing norms and a framework for coaching cycles. You can access the documents she mentions below the player. Here is a copy of Jean's...
Investing in Coaching Logs
The first time I was introduced to the concept of a coaching log, I am sure that I rolled my eyes, clucked my teeth, crossed my arms, and sighed, or...
When There’s No Time for Debriefing
A new coaching cycle focused on conferring and small groups in reading workshop was starting, and Kate had asked teachers to sign up for a debrief time slot so that...
The Literacy Master Document
Paper copies here. Paper copies there. Paper copies everywhere. Whether it be the district curriculum maps, reading units, or lesson planning sheets, these important paper documents remain a window into...
Helping Teachers Develop Their Own Chartbooks
As a coach, I am in many classrooms, and I am constantly reevaluating and restocking the contents of the bag I carry with me whenever I am working with students....
Reading Specialists: Using a Common Observation Form
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher work with reading specialists who are observing individual students to study the transition of skills from targeted support to work in the classroom. The observation...
Peer Observations with a Purpose
“Please clean up the playroom,” I reminded my daughters before dinner. “Done!” they yelled three minutes later as they skipped through the living room. I peeked around the corner and...
