Literacy Coaches Can Determine Effective Classroom Environments

The next area to discuss is classroom environment.   An effective classroom environment is not just cute or pretty.  Everything in the classroom must contribute to student learning.  A literacy coach should be able to walk into a room and determine if it is an effective classroom environment.  The easiest way is to start with a checklist to train your eye to look at what is most important.  My resource, Starting Point, does just that.  It will help you develop your clinical eye.

A Print-rich environment that supports reading should include:

–Anchor charts (strategy cards, standard explanations, rotation charts, graphic organizers...):  Be sure the anchor charts are created by the teacher and with the students.  If there are too many pre-made or bought anchor charts they are meaningless to the students and only provide attractive decorations.
–Word Walls:  Word walls in K-2 should be alphabetized and in 3-5 they should be thematic or by units.  Word walls should also be added to as the words are learned and not made ahead of time.
–Trackers: Trackers should actively track each program in place in the classroom.  If a program is not monitored, how will the teacher know her next steps?  How will students know if what they are doing is working? 
–Evident grade level planning:  It is only fair that each student receive the same high quality education in each room of your school.  When you walk from room to room, can you tell that teachers are planning for and grading the same type of work?  
–Quality Student Work Posted (current)
–Focus Calendar/Common Board Configuration:  It doesn't matter how you do it in your school.  What matters is that students know what they will be learning and how they will know that they learned it by the end of each day.  
–Leveled Classroom Libraries:  Students should be able to find books at any level and interest in the classroom library.  Again, the system doesn't matter.  What matters is that there is a system in place.
–Dictionaries (regular and ELL)
–Learning Environment is engaging and neat:  Notice if the environment is engaging for this particular grade level.  Are all of the charts made with this age-group in mind?  Is the seating high enough so that students can write comfortably?  Can every student access each center?  Students should contribute to the neatness of the room.  Which means that students must understand where everything goes.  Labels are an important factor for organization.  

An effective literacy coach is reflective and observant.  Take a look at these and then determine other factors that are specific for your particular school.

This blog post is just one in a series of posts for coaches.  You can purchase a full presentation to help you build your clinical eye in my TPT store, here: Building the Clinical Eye

Literacy Coaches Must Address the School Culture

A school's culture can stop change dead in it’s tracks.  Why?  People can be irrational.  Decisions can be made poorly. Personalities can get in the way.  State, district, school, and/or classroom goals can be out of alignment. Schools can engage in self-destructive behavior.   Any change can be difficult to accept.  "Culture influences everything that goes on in schools: how staff dress, what they talk about, their willingness to change, the practice of instruction, and the emphasis given student and faculty learning (Deal & Peterson, 1994; Firestone & Wilson, 1985; Newmann & Associates, 1996).  

This is why being able to identify and support your school's culture is an important part of building your clinical eye as a literacy coach.  Sometimes, this is not an easy task when you are actually a part of a dysfunctional school environment.  The first thing an effective literacy coach does is assess the past and current condition of your school culture.  How do you recognize if your school culture is dysfunctional?
Dysfunctional School Culture is when:

• The school is teacher-centered, not student-centered

• Negative values and hopelessness is prevalent

• New ideas are criticized instead of embraced

• Faculty meetings have become battlegrounds

• Administration is rarely seen nor heard

• Negative staff sabotage new initiatives

• Literacy is not valued nor encouraged

• Parental involvement is minimal

Sometimes there are deeper meanings behind why certain attitudes are embedded in your own school.  Maybe teachers feel hopeless because there have been numerous administrator changes who have come in with a totally different agenda each time.  Dig a little before coming to conclusions.  Schools trapped in dysfunction, typically follow this pattern:

As you can see, any initiatives you try to implement will eventually be abandoned.  You will become frustrated and soon give up trying.  Instead of working against this trend, identify what areas are in need of improvement.   After, determine the core values of the school.  In the article, "How Leaders Influence the Cultures of Schools" by Kent D. Peterson and Terrence E. Deal, "...leaders uncover and articulate core values, looking for those that buttress what is best for students and that support student-centered professionalism. It is important to identify which aspects of the culture are destructive and which are constructive."  In other words, look for those values that better the learning environment for the students.  Highlight them and build them up.  Once you build trust and rapport, you will be able to slowly address those negative aspects of the culture.  Little by little, you will begin to see changes.  This does not happen overnight.  Once it begins to change, you will have much more success with your academic initiatives as well as other improvements.  Your school culture will now begin to look like this:

How can you start improving your school culture?  There are several ways:

• Communicate your vision and identified core values-Some schools plaster the vision statement all over the school.  This is a start, but start talking about them every time you address the faculty.  Highlight teachers and others who are demonstrating aspects of the vision.  The more you talk about them, the more they become a part of your school's "language."
• Celebrate your staff's accomplishments- Even if the accomplishments are baby steps, it is important for the entire school to start seeing that you are highlighting the positive instead of the negative.  
•  Keep you eye on the prize- Know your vision.  Know your goals.  Stay focused on the task at hand, which is to change the school culture.  Teachers will come to you with complaints about initiatives, other teachers, and students.  They may even be right with their assessments, but you cannot participate in the negative talk.  Try responding with your school's vision "language."  For example, If a teacher comes to you and says, "These kids are just so low."  You may respond, "Yes, but we are rising up, way up!"  Teachers will begin to understand that you will not participate in this kind of talk and will even begin to take on some of these phrases in their own conversations.  
• Be diligent, patient, and persistent-Changing your school culture is NOT an easy task.  Negative school culture did not happen overnight, and you can't expect to change it overnight either.  

I have been a part of and seen a school's culture change dramatically.  It has been one of the most challenging feats I have ever worked on.  I drove home crying on many occasions and complained to my husband many nights, but it was well worth it when I walk into the building now.  You can find information about this topic as well as the other areas for Building the Clinical Eye in this resource on Teachers Pay Teachers.  This resources is in presentation format to help you build your own clinical eye.

Building the Clinical Eye for Literacy Coaches

Many people believe that building the clinical eye means being able to recognize a highly effective classroom environment.  But it is SO much more.  A coach's primary job is to support their teachers with their teaching.  When you are able to walk into a room and quickly assess the quality of the teaching and determine what support you can provide all of the teachers in your building, then you have effectively developed your clinical eye.

There are 7 areas that make up your clinical eye.  They are:

•School Culture

•Classroom Environment

•Classroom Management

•Instruction

•Literacy Centers

•Student Engagement

•Capacity-Building Opportunities

Effective coaches are able to identify, address, and support their teachers in each of these areas.  Once you are able to walk into one of your teachers classrooms and determine which of these areas you should focus on, it will be much easier for you to determine the type of support you will provide and be very targeted on the instruction.  Your goal is to be able to identify which area you must support first.  For those of you who are interested in building your own clinical eye, you may purchase the entire presentation with detailed notes here:  Building the Clinical Eye for Literacy Coaches

End of the Year Blues...

    

      Oh, the end of the year!  Not only do the students get antsy, but the teachers do too.  We know the year is not over, YET, but sometimes it feels like we've all checked out as soon as testing is over.  We don't do it on purpose, but the stress building up to testing takes it's toll.  The best part of the end of the year, is we can start be a little more creative.  My latest resource, Greek Mythology Think Tac Toe, encourages you and your students to dive into a topic that they wouldn't normally have time to learn about (or possibly care about) and be creative, independent, and thoughtful.  

Portion of the Fiction Passage

Portion of the Nonfiction Passage

     The focus of this Think Tac Toe is on Greek Mythology; however, it is SO much more than that. By purchasing this product, you will provide your students with 9 varied activities using project-based learning.  

     Three of the activities allow kids to practice their computer skills and at the end of the week, students have the opportunity to present their projects to their classmates.   

Sample Activity

Included in this 10-paged resource:

• An engaging and authentic learning menu
• Helpful tips for the teacher
• Additional activity suggestions
• Myth: How Athena Came to Be (Fiction)
• The History of Greek Mythology (Nonfiction)
• Step-by-step, kid-friendly instructions for-
• Creating a PowerPoint
• Inserting new slides
• Inserting a picture
• Sorting slides
• Changing the background color
• How to save a document
• Creating a Microsoft Word document
• Creating a table
• Creating a chart/web

Students will love collaborating with this highly engaging resource!  You can purchase it here:  Greek Mythology Think Tac Toe

The Pros and Cons of the McGraw-Hill Curriculum (The Way I See It)

I was recently asked if I would recommend the McGraw-Hill Curriculum.   I have worked with this series to lesson plan with teachers in 2nd-5th grades in four different schools this year.  We use this curriculum for our whole group, as a part of our differentiated instruction, and for intervention.   I have not used any other curriculum, so what I discuss below is not a comparison of this curriculum with any other. Instead I am going to give you the pros and cons of it to help you make the decision for the needs of your school.

The stories- Our kids are loving the stories!  They are high interest and engaging.  Our kids actually love to read them and I've even heard them talk about the stories outside of the classroom and have referred to them to make text connections throughout the year.  This is a major plus for the curriculum. 

Reading Writing Workshop-This extra book is wonderful.  We use it to model a benchmark/standard (in Florida we have benchmarks until next year).  It is great to have a short piece of text to use to model a concept.  And, because they wrote the text to closely follow what the students will do in the anthology, it is perfect for this purpose.  It really helps our teachers go through the gradual release model.  We use the RWW on days 1 and 2 of instruction and model the graphic organizers and how to take them to writing.  Then, students work in groups or independently from the anthology or paired text.  It is working out very nicely.  This is another huge plus.

The resources- There are SO many resources with this series!  This has been both a pro and a con for us.  On the positive side, it offers many choices for our teachers.  There are tons of activities, teacher "helps" and even Tier 2 materials.  Another great thing about the resources offered is the interactive lessons for a projectable whiteboard.  If you would like the negative side of all of this, you could go back and read this section again.  :)  I've come across so many teachers who were frustrated because they couldn't fit all of this into one day.  Some teachers have tried to teach what is listed in the sample lesson plan in one day.  It just isn't possible in a 150-minute reading block.  After I've explained that they could pick and choose, they felt much better.  Teachers have access to Webinars on every aspect of the curriculum.  They are able to learn at their own pace and review whenever they want.  The technological components are outstanding.  The kids just love them.  The Lesson Planner is amazing.  I love how you can re-order the plans and delete things you are not going to use.  This makes it so easy to not just plan, but teach. 

Readability Levels- I know Common Core advocates complex text, but complex doesn't always mean difficult.  What I mean is, there are quite a few stories that are 2 Lexile levels above the grade level it is intended for.  Complex could mean the text structure or how many narrators there are in a story.  There are many different variable to take into effect.  This makes it very hard for struggling readers to feel successful.  You would think the materials listed for ELL and approaching leveled readers would be at a lower level, but after checking the Lexile and readability levels they are not.   Students become easily frustrated because they cannot decode the words.

Graphic Organizers and Scripts- At first glance, these appear to be an amazing resource.  Finally a curriculum provides SOMETHING to help teachers teach a lesson.  The DEA (Define, Example, Ask) and Close Reading Scripts are a great way for new teachers or teachers trying to learn a whole new set of standards to teach at the beginning.  But, they are very basic.  All of the graphic organizers follow the same pattern (Clue, Clue, Clue, Theme; Detail, Detail, Detail, Author’s Purpose).  Oh, if it were this easy!  It doesn’t take into account students who struggle with finding the RIGHT details or determining which clues to select.  It assumes all kids learn the same way.  Experienced teachers quickly determine that we have to teach a little deeper.  It needs to be more rigorous.  Again, what the curriculum provides is a great start, but if we are to get our kids to where they need to identify, analyze, and synthesize what they learned, many kids need instruction that goes a little deeper. 

WonderWorks Intervention- The concept is wonderful. However, the reality is not this cut and dry.  WonderWorks Intervention takes the story from the anthology and writes it at a lower readability level.  It is designed to close the achievement gap and is written at 2 years below grade level (the grade level of the story).  Students are supposed to work one week after they have already dissected the story.  It asks additional questions so that students really understand what they are reading.  There are plenty of assessments to determine if your kids really understand.  And, if it is determined by the assessment that the student has mastered the skill, it even has an exit plan.  Students are not intended to be in intervention for the rest of their lives.  There should be a way for them to exit.  It is a great plan. 

But then, there’s the reality.  Many times, the teacher is not the interventionist.  The interventionist usually not a highly skilled teacher (which is the foundation of effective intervention) The interventionist often times relies on the teacher’s guide as a script to direct their teaching.  They do not just know higher order thinking questions.  In this case, the interventionist must have a highly scripted lesson to follow.   This program does not offer that.  Also, because the story is the same as the anthology, the interventionist and the teacher must communicate often to ensure that the plans are followed in both programs.  How many of us ever speak with the interventionist outside of an RTI meeting?  It just doesn’t happen.  The pacing guides change, or the teachers decide to do another story, or there is an assembly that pushes back the timing during whole group.  This throws off the balance of everything.  There is one last thing about WonderWorks that is a little difficult to execute, and that’s the exit plan.  Many teachers just don’t feel comfortable with an interventionist exiting a student from intervention.  There must be an RTI meeting just to talk about the possibility.  It is a wonderful concept in an ideal world, but it just doesn’t work this way.  If I could, I would have an additional program for intervention next year. 

Differentiated Instruction- For those of you who work in schools where the majority of the students are on grade level, you will love the resources provided for D.I.   There is an on grade level, approaching level, challenge level, and one for ELL.  The books are tied directly to the story the kids read in whole group.  The lesson components also follow the Tier 1 program.  The Essential Question, skill, graphic organizer, and vocabulary are all the same.  This is a great way to reinforce all of the newly learned material.    The stories are also very engaging and the lesson plans provided to the teacher are thorough. 

The biggest drawback lies in the levels of the texts.  Teachers have to be very careful in assuming that the approaching level reader is actually a year below the student’s grade level.  If the story in the textbook is a year above and sometimes almost 2 years above, then the approaching leveled reader will be a year below that one.  The text will be too difficult and the teacher should select something else to instruct with.  I have even found that the ELL reader was at a higher level than the on grade level books!  This is not a hard fix.  Teachers just need to double-check the levels.  Fortunately, they are listed in the teacher’s guide.  

The Power of the Daily Doable

I am a strong believer in unwrapping the benchmark or standard to ensure that we plan with the end in mind.  I am such a strong believer that I unwrap the standard every time I pre-plan and ask the teachers to do the same before we collaboratively plan together.  This practice has let to some great discussions during lesson planning and taking our lesson plans to the next level.  We hear the term, "planning with the end in mind" all the time, but if we don't unwrap the standard, how will we know that we are actually teaching what the benchmark or standard is asking us to teach?

I used to include objectives based on this unwrapping in every lesson plan, but then, I was introduced to the daily doable.  The daily doable basically is the objective, only it is intended for the students.  Students can clearly see what they are responsible for learning by the end of each lesson.  Seeing the objectives in this way changes the way I present a lesson for a teacher to teach.  How?  Well, for one it makes sure the students not only learn passively, but actively complete some kind of task with the newly learned information.  It also helps me see what scaffolds I need to put in place for those students who typically experience difficulties can accomplish the goals I have put in place each day.

As a coach, I have seen teachers put up objectives on the Common Board Configuration out of compliance.  These objectives are meaningless.  The teachers haven't thought them through and have thrown them on the board so that they don't "get in trouble."  What's the point of that?  It would be better if they weren't there at all.  But I've also seen teachers who have really understood the benchmark to be taught, used it to focus their instruction on, and their class make REAL progress.  The difference is in the understanding, not in the compliance.  If we truly understand what the standards are asking, our kids will be able to reach them.

I've posted how to unwrap a standard on another post.

Here are some tips to help your teachers with implementing the daily doable:  

• Explicitly teach your teachers the steps to unwrap the benchmark or standard during common lesson planning time.  It is better to have your PD embedded into a meaningful activity.  Help your teachers see the "why."
• Go through the process with them each week, until they are comfortable with it.
• Release the responsibility to your teachers by sending a pre-planning email ahead of time and asking your teachers to unwrap it before you meet to plan.  If you explain that this will free up time during planning so we can plan for D.I. or go through a student product they will be willing to do this.  
• After awhile, expect your teachers to have it unwrapped before the planning session.  As a coach, we should continue to unwrap it too before planning.  We should always model what we expect our teachers to do.
• Use each part of the unwrapped benchmark or standard to develop the daily doables.  These are the baby steps to achieving the entire standard.  
• Use the unwrapped benchmark or standard to ensure the end of the week assessment is actually assessing what the standard is asking.  With the Common Core standards, the weekly assessments in many series do not.  A multiple choice test doesn't cut it most times.  We can use the multiple choice test, but many times we must add a written response component.  
• Use the unwrapped benchmark or standard to develop a rubric to use during the grading process.

By following these tips, you will become more comfortable with the process and your teachers will understand the importance of the daily doables.  

3 Million Strong Sale!

I've joined forces with Teachers Pay Teachers to have a 20% off everything sale in my TPT store.  The sale starts tomorrow, so if you've wish listed anything, tomorrow is the time to get it!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Cookie-Navarro  Here's the link to my store.  It's easy peasy!