Lead Lit Topic: Professional Development Tools
Whether you’re looking for something as simple as the perfect icebreaker, or a plan for a full-day in-service session for 100 teachers at many grade levels, this is where we share our tried and trusted tips for successful professional development sessions.
Results
Opinion Exchange: A Workshop Activity for Study Groups
What do new teachers need to keep them going that difficult first year? In our first session with new teachers in October, our room was filled with the stories of...
Same Old Books with New Intentions: Reflecting on Rigor and the Common Core
Rigor is not an attribute of a text, but rather a characteristic of our behavior with that text. Kylene Beers and Robert Probst I remember one of my first...
Hollering About Informational Text
We set out over a year ago to increase the informational side of our bookshelves when we realized that our professional development mentor texts mirrored the elementary school discrepancy between...
Professional Development and Then What? How to Keep Learning Alive Long After the Staff Meeting
"Remember when we did that . . . what was it called, you know we talked about ways to help students share their thinking?" "Oh, yeah, I used that a...
“Step Over the Line” Professional Development Icebreaker
This video of the "Step Over the Line" icebreaker activity was captured at a meeting of district-level coaches in Washington state early in the fall led by Amanda Adrian and...
Exit Slips Open Doors
"It doesn't have to end here." So claimed the PowerPoint slide at the end of my professional development classes in the past. With this statement, along with my contact information...
What Coaches Carry (Part 2)
In part one of this series we began the conversation about what to carry to be prepared for the varied work of teacher leadership -- from teaching and one-on-one coaching,...
The Power of Linking Words and Perceptions
It does not take long before we start to attach labels to children in any classroom. We begin to sort, both by academics and behavior. Soon we find ourselves using...
Getting Started with a Writing Habit: Six Kinds of Notebooking
I am a notebooker. I have stacks of journals that I write in across the days, months, and years. I have Morning Pages notebooks, gratitude journals, daily agendas, affirmation notebooks,...
On Being a Wise Consumer: Three Questions to Filter Ideas
Kate has a not-so-slight obsession with WNBA player Caitlin Clark. In sharing with her class about Caitlin Clark, Kate played a video of the before-game ritual Caitlin has with her...
Same Candy Bar, Different Wrapper: Professional Books That Change Instruction
Kylene Beers, a literacy advocate, author, and educator, passed away this summer. She had a lasting impact on my classroom, and I know many other educators around the world express...
The Coach’s Notebook: How to Capture, Organize, and Analyze Your Data and Responsibilities
Part of my work as a systems coach is documenting my conversations with leaders and teachers around their goals for building more equitable outcomes for students. We use a Google...
Bridging the Gap (Session 2): Finding Your Footing
Science of Reading versus curriculum—that was the buzz. The Sold a Story podcast was the heart of the chatter, and teachers were choosing a side of the fence. As the...
Overcorrecting
Hey Suzy, Thanks for spending time with me and my kiddos today. I agree that they’re starting to understand how to “go back to the text” to support an opinion....
Planning for PD in the Company of Teachers
Continuously thinking about what new information to share with teachers, and how to share it, often puts planning professional development at the heart of a literacy coach’s role. But what...
Teacher Booklist
Over the past 23 years, I have amassed quite a collection of books full of educational research, ways to help students read, strategies for developing writers, and inspiration for writing...
Pedagogical Clarity in a Time of Changes
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. —James Baldwin Many songs, phrases, and quotes have been written on the subject...
Benefits and Challenges of Using AI as a Coach
When our dog, Millie, was young, we enrolled her in puppy school. She was one of two golden retrievers in this doggy behavior class. The two dogs' "retriever-ness" came out...
Tapping Novelty for What Teachers Need
We are nourished by novelty. Too much sameness and the world goes gray . . . We [look] for things to notice, alert to the ways in which our days...
Cultivating a Habit of Reading Children’s Literature as Part of Our Professional Growth
I have a Saturday morning ritual that I absolutely love: going to my local library and browsing through the children’s books section. But this is not your typical “check out...
Supporting Literacy in All Subject Areas
I was the PLC leader for the English department when a young social studies teacher came to my room. He had assigned an essay to his students, and he was...
