Rubrics

I love rubrics! I think they take the guess work out of grading and make it easy to see if work is on grade level or not. The most important thing about rubrics, is to use them correctly. :) In our school, we (teachers and the reading coach) create them together for our assignments. I used to create them for the teachers. But, this creates two problems. The first one is teachers didn't value the importance of the rubric and/or understand the need for them. The second problem is that many times they didn't understand each of the criteria or the "what counts" in the assignment. Unfortunately, what was to be graded was not stressed ahead of time. The next mistake I have found is that teachers typically use rubrics strictly as a grading tool. This is a good practice, but to get the most bang for your buck, you should introduce them to your students before allowing them to work on the assignment. Walk your students through the rubric and then have them goal set. Ask your students what kind of grade would they like to receive and have them mark off each quadrant of your rubric so they are clear as to what it takes to earn that grade. Then, let them start working on the assignment. Once the time frame of the assignment is reached, let students check their own work using the rubric and then have them peer assess each other. After, allow students to improve their work before turning it in. Rubrics are meant to be used as a formative assessment and not just as a grading tool. Only after students have been given the opportunity to correct anything they missed, should you use the same rubric to assign the students a grade. And finally, I always ask teachers to attach the rubric next to the student's work on your bulletin boards. This shows your students that their grades are not subjective. It also allows students to hold themselves accountable. And because we have grown to value rubrics, we started using them during common planning to review our interactive journals each quarter. Here is one we've used.

Kindergarten Phonics Fun Freebie!

I've already started planning for our common lesson planning sessions, and of course I started with Kindergarten. Our focus will be the -ut and -up families for phonics. I put together some fun phonics follow-up activities that you can get here: Here is a sample of what you can download.

Let me know what you think.

Collaborative Common Planning for Literacy Coaches

On Thursday, I presented to my colleagues at an Instructional Coaches Academy about effective collaborative lesson planning. I posted previously on the pre-planning stage. Today, I will post about what goes on in a common lesson planning session at our school. As stated in the last post, I email our teachers beforehand so they know ahead of time exactly what theme, pages, or novel we will be working on. I also ask them to write down pertinent information from our pacing guide, such as the benchmark we are covering, the page numbers, vocabulary, and essential question. Each teacher is required to have these components from the pacing guide in their lesson plans, so it saves us time if it is completed ahead of time. If there are any resources I have that are well suited to what is listed in the pacing guide, I email them ahead as well, so that teachers can look them over prior to our session. And lastly, teachers bring any resources they want to use for the upcoming plan. Once we are all together, we get straight to work on our plans to maximize our time together. I make sure to provide extra copies of our lesson planning template and our higher order question stem cards. This reduces the excuses for not being able to plan together. I try to always have a back-up plan for any excuse. I also refer to any resources I requested for the teachers to bring. It brings value to the resources, so they will continue to bring what you request. Because we have streamlined the process, there is now time (for the most part) to review student work samples, interactive journals, model a new strategy, or create rubrics and anchor charts. Our common planning is jam-packed, but I love it! We have moved beyond venting sessions to really honing in what our kids need.

Stay tuned for the After Planning

Pre-Planning

Look at pacing guide. Write down benchmark, pacing, theme, vocabulary, and phonics skill. Write down the essential question AND answer it. Write down page numbers to cover on a daily basis. Read the material. Take notes in the book about HOT questions, vocabulary to point out, and background information. Identify pertinent points to address the benchmark. Identify any sections you know will be difficult for your students/teachers. Write how this material will be used to answer the essential question on a daily basis. See if the resources provided will meet the needs of your students See if the resources provided will meet the needs of your teachers Tweak resources to meet the needs of your students Find or create additional resources Sample anchor charts Graphic organizers New strategies Rubrics Pull other effective resources and strategies together Write out what the week may look like Email teachers extra resources and strategies to review before meeting remind them what materials to bring-what theme or novel, data, student journals, and resources they would like to include remind them to complete the first page of the gradual release lesson planning template

Do you pre-plan this way? What works best for you?

Lesson Planning for Coaches

As a literacy coach, one of my strong suits is lesson planning. Over the years I have learned that lesson planning as a coach must be focused and targeted. You must be sure to recognize the needs of your students, but also the needs of each of your teachers. Today, I will walk you through the steps of what I do to Pre-plan for a common planning session. When you prepare this way, your teachers will value the resources you provide. They will also begin to come more prepared because they know you will be prepared and will want to contribute to the planning. This process doesn't become successful overnight. But, be patient. You will soon see the fruits of your labor. Happy planning!

Organizing your TLC

It is critical that we have our Teacher Led Center (TLC) organized and well-stocked. Your materials should be easily accessible too. And, your TLC should have much more than just a book for each student. So, what should your TLC have? Well, it depends on each group and what grade you teach. For today's post, I will focus on the intermediate grades (3-5) just to make it easy to understand. I will post about K-2 at another time. Your lower group will most likely need phonics instruction. So, begin by administering a phonics inventory. Using the data from this phonics inventory, identify the starting points of your students. Create a framework so that you make sure you cover both phonics and comprehension needs. (You can see my second post for an example.) Next, identify good phonics resources to address your group's needs. Some good resources are Elkonin boxes, letter tiles, decodable books, board games, and Lakeshore kits to name a few. Take a look at fcrr.org for many great phonics activities too. Just be sure to target the students at their phonics level, and not just look at the grade level. Target one of these resources to focus on for your phonics instruction this week. After, find a book that has several examples of this phonics skill. You should take this skill to text after you have explicitly taught it and the students had an opportunity to practice with it. After you have the phonics materials organized for this group, you must address the comprehension needs. There are numerous resources you could use. First, take a look at what your current curriculum offers. For example, we currently use Houghton Mifflin; they offer Leveled Readers, Vocabulary Readers, Theme Resources, Selection Summaries... There are so many resources! Match the Lexile levels of the group to the resource. Decide on a guided reading strategy to address comprehension issues. And, finally have some type of running record or retelling rubric to use with each student on a weekly basis. I also like to have a tracker to keep track of each benchmark I teach in the TLC. And then, there's the issue of fluency. Again, assess what you currently have in your building. There are TONS of resources. We have Quick Reads, Blast Off Passages, Six-Minute Solution, Reading A-Z, and Voyager Fluency Books. We also purchased the Sight Word Superstars Plan on TPT. Determine what your students' needs are, be it accuracy,prosody, and/or automaticity. And align the resources to the data. Now put the week's materials for each group into a separate bin or basket. Keep this at your TLC. I also like to have a binder for each group with trackers for sight words, WCPM, benchmarks, and to keep the running records for each child. Also, I keep the lesson plans for each group inside this binder, as well as their data. Lastly, have a separate area in your TLC to keep additional materials all kids can use, like dry erase boards, markers, erasers, stickers, task cards, crayons, pencils, a bell, timer, paper, and copies of graphic organizers in sheet protectors. All of this will get you off to a great start.

Frameworks for D.I.

After writing up the basic lesson plan for differentiated instruction, the next step is to come up with a tight framework that will guide each minute of your time in the Teacher Learning Center. This is essential. Systemizing your routine is one way to ensure you will cover everything you want to cover and make sure there is not wasted time. I have come up with frameworks to help teachers systemize their TLC. Teachers have shared with me how helpful these frameworks are and how they have become much more targeted with their instruction. Here is a sample of one of the frameworks I created for a low group in an intermediate grade level:

This is the framework for the lowest group. Notice how it addresses the phonics needs of these students as well as the FRY words. It is very difficult for a student to comprehend on-grade level material unless the phonics needs are addressed. However, because the student is in the intermediate grade, we cannot ignore the comprehension needs either. A different framework must be created for each D.I. group. I have created each of these on my TPT site. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Differentiated-Instruction-Lesson-Planning-Template-and-Guide These have really helped our teachers at our school and the data has shown that it is working.

Getting Started with Differentiated Instruction

One of the best ways I have found to close the achievement gap is to be very targeted with differentiated instruction. We all know we have to analyze our data and group our students. But, many teachers then ask, "What's next?" The next step is to plan for DI. I have come up with an easy lesson planning template that many of the teachers use in our school. It's easy because teachers input their students' group data on the planning sheet. This makes it easy to determine what strategies you will use with your students. These strategies are listed right on the lesson planning template. Teachers circle the strategy they will focus on. After, they write a brief description of what the week will look like for that group. Take a look at it and let me know what you think. You can get this lesson planning template, the instructions for using it, a detailed framework of what to do in each group, as well as a description of each of the guided reading strategies listed on the lesson planner on my TPT site. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Differentiated-Instruction-Lesson-Planning-Template-and-Guide