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
Going Google as a Literacy Leader
Our time as literacy leaders is precious. The demands of our day and our positions are limited, especially when we also have a family and a life beyond school. Productivity...
Next-Thing Thinking and Google Keep
When I returned to work after the birth of my first child, I struggled to balance my new role as a working mother. As the coordinator for a local reading...
Coaching Minute: Case Study Observation Form
Literacy coaches Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost talk about how their work with reading specialists has evolved by having the specialists focus on case studies of individual students, rather than...
A Yearlong Coaching Calendar
I took a deep breath and positioned my fingers over the keyboard. It was the beginning of November, and it was time. I had just completed two successful coaching cycles...
Coaching Minute: Student Observation Form
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher talk about the value of trying out a student observation form first among the coaching team before using it in classroom observations with teachers. ...
Three Ways to Keep Coaching Student Centered
When I am working with a teacher in a coaching cycle, we commit to working together for a few weeks, planning, teaching, and assessing. When we first meet, they sometimes...
Using Concern Forms for Feedback
The practice of having playground balls kept in classrooms or just outside the door is disruptive and unnecessary. The biggest problem is the continuous bouncing of balls in the hallway...
Graphics and Coaching Opportunities
An email from the principal. A curriculum memo from the assistant superintendent. The monthly newsletter from district office. Teachers are bombarded with Very Important Information every day. I wanted to...
A Checklist for Reflection
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Soren Kierkegaard It's 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday in the dead of winter. I should go home...
Conference Records That Stay with Kids
As I waited for the transition to writing workshop, I looked around the kindergarten classroom. It was packed! Not only was the class size large—34 five-year-olds prepared their desks for...
Coaching Minute: Lesson Planning Form
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher talk about the value of using a lesson planning form with teachers as a shared record of plans, action, and reflection in coaching sessions. The...
Coaching Minute: Selecting Books for Teachers
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share some criteria for selecting books for teachers to open doors and conversations.
Collecting Data on Case Study Students
As part of a yearlong in-depth study of one student, each reading specialist in our district gathered data in a variety of ways about a student who, as a reader,...
Data Mining Before a Coaching Cycle
Over the course of my coaching, I have become more and more student-centered. Whenever I embark on a formal coaching cycle, I do some data mining before I even meet...
Meeting with Principals
During a recent meeting I was having with a principal in our district, our superintendent stopped in unexpectedly. “What are you working on?” he asked. He was impressed when we...
Coaching Minute: Literacy Master Document
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher explain how the Literacy Master Document has simplified and improved their coaching.
Engagement in Writing Workshops
Last week, I participated in instructional rounds with three second-grade teachers, and the hosting teacher was interested to know how much on-task writing behavior was exhibited when she was conferring...
Literacy Specialists and Case Studies
There are always a few students who puzzle even the most seasoned reading specialists. Even though these specialists carry a large bag of tricks, they don’t always know exactly what...
Planning a Coaching Cycle
Kathy Provost works with a third-grade teacher to plan long-term and daily goals in a coaching cycle.
Essential Resources for Building Professional Learning Communities
Professional learning communities, or PLCs, have become almost ubiquitous in US schools. Most educators are aware of this philosophy for structuring collaborative teacher learning. Yet common knowledge of the best...
Refining Reflective Practice and Notetaking
Ten years ago, as a first-year middle school teacher, I clumsily juggled piles and piles of information (and that was before standardized testing really amped up!) about my readers and...
