Lead Lit Topic: Study Groups
Teacher study groups are as diverse as the teachers who participate in them. They can be an informal, low-key coffee klatch designed to relieve the daily stress of teaching or a highly structured inquiry group with definite participant protocols. Most study groups are somewhere in-between, with colleagues getting together regularly to discuss books, view videos, and support each other as they test out new literacy instruction strategies in their classrooms. Here you’ll find inspiration and ideas from study group leaders who coordinate book groups, design workshops, and develop structures for helping colleagues transfer professional learning to the reality of the classroom and sustain it.
Results
First-Grade Team: Exploring Student Engagement
Heather Fisher leads a first-grade team monthly meeting where everyone shares strategies they are trying for fostering more student engagement.
Making Meetings Purposeful
We’ve all heard the jokes and complaints: When I die, I hope it’s in a meeting. That way, the transition from life to death will be barely noticeable. I just...
Being Selfish About Meeting Norms
Writing norms helps create groups that are able to have honest discussions that enable everyone to participate and be heard. Joan Richardson I have found myself thinking about the...
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. ...
Third-Grade Team Discussion: Rate Your Post-It Tool
Literacy coach Kathy Provost leads a team of third-grade teachers as they discuss using a "Rate Your Post-It" visual tool in their classrooms.
Motivating Reluctant Writers in Third Grade
Kathy Provost and a third-grade teaching team discuss how to motivate reluctant writers.
Case Studies All Year Long
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher talk with reading specialists about the value of following a case study over an entire year.
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...
Planning Next Year’s Professional Development Offerings
I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again. Annie Dillard It’s easy to...
Coaching Minute: Selecting Books for Teachers
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share some criteria for selecting books for teachers to open doors and conversations.
The Secret to Better Meetings: It’s All in the Ending
I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and...
The Other Agenda
Teachers are always on the lookout for a fresh idea. They look to their colleagues, to curated sites such as Pinterest, and to any number of other resources for new...
Coaching Minute: Better Data Meetings
In this brief video, Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost explain why turning data meetings over to reading specialists has had such a positive effect on schools in their district. ...
Planning Family Literacy Night
Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost work with a group of reading specialists to plan a family literacy night.
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,...
Coaching Minute: Case Studies with Reading Specialists
Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost talk about how case studies have changed their work with literacy specialists over the past year in this brief video.
Common Planning Meeting: Third-Grade Notebooks
In this excerpt from a common planning meeting, Kathy Provost works with third-grade teachers who are focused on improving their use of student notebooks across the curriculum.
Teachers Who Write
I always wanted to be a writer. As a little girl, I kept notebooks and folders filled with loose-leaf pages of my latest novel. I wrote a lot of haunted-house...
Making Fiction Writing Come to Life
We need to find a way to get our writers talking more. We need to get our writers elaborating in their stories. We need a way to make fiction writing...
Coaching Minute: Literacy Master Document
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher explain how the Literacy Master Document has simplified and improved their coaching.
Recipes and Lesson Plans: Process and Practice
Fitness and cooking are the interests I most often use as analogies when I work with new teachers. Nothing original there, I admit. It’s almost too easy to compare interval...
