Lead Lit Topic: Getting Organized
Getting Organized
Results
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...
When Teachers Design the Professional Development Calendar
Sometimes professional development creeps up on us. All of a sudden, we have a three-hour chunk of time with a group of teachers, and we grapple with how to plan...
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...
Conferring Matters: A Coach’s Perspective
“Do you have time to talk with me about conferring?” a teacher asked me at the end of the day. I smiled because it was the same question I’d been...
Conferring Matters: A Principal’s Perspective
I remember a particular conference I had with a student in which the value of conferring clicked for me. We were in the drafting portion of our personal narrative unit,...
Reading Invasion
Imagine roughly 400 people—staff and students—walking out into the green space on your campus. Now imagine every one of them with a book in hand. Next, they all take...
It’s the Little Things: Small Actions for Building a Healthy Literacy Culture
What is labeled as fluff is more often the stuff of leadership and culture. Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson Lately I have been trying to reflect every day for...
DIY Notebooks for Literacy Coaches
Wednesdays have become my favorite coaching day of the week. Why? For the past few years on Wednesday afternoons, I have been coaching a group of literacy teachers working to...
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...
Can Anyone Be an Instructional Coach?
It was August, and we had a classroom teacher to hire. The reasons were positive: an increase in enrollment plus a school board and community that is very supportive of...
Coaching as Inquiry
As coaches we are always trying to gauge our effectiveness, always working to learn and grow, always looking for the answers to our questions about the work we do alongside...
Coaching Feedback and Reflection
A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done and to succeed beyond...
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...
Culture for Coaching Part 4: Schoolwide Coaching Cycles
This is the final article in a series of four articles about creating a culture for effective coaching. After a base of common expectations, trust, and skills have been established,...
Professional Reboot
Last year, my assistant principal and I had a conversation in which we talked about ways we could both grow as administrators. I recommended that he seek out a way...
Bringing Order to the Bookroom
I was a big fan of Hope School’s bookroom. The bookroom is the result of more than a decade of work. It has a wide selection of leveled, read-aloud, and...
You Say Tornado . . .
Whatever the weather served, that was what they ate. But it never rained rain. It never snowed snow. And it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and...
The Power of a Plastic Frame
When we were clearing out my grandmother’s house, she had hundreds of plastic frames—the ones you buy in a drugstore for about a dollar each. As I sorted through the...
Assessing First-Grade Learning
Jason DiCarlo leads a first-grade study group as they discuss different options for young learners to demonstrate understanding beyond written responses.
