WSQ 5

Ch. 5 Synopsis
This chapter focuses on a school wide literacy approach system.  For a literacy curriculum implementation to be success 3 pillars must be in place: principal and curriculum leader involvement and a vertical leadership team.  The principal needs to be apart of the development.  Not only do they support teachers, they encourage.  Principals are to be active participants in the implementation and sustainment.  Curriculum leaders over see the main details of the SBC process.  Last, the leadership team, which is comprised of teachers, must be sold on the idea.  They help get other teachers on board.  With these 3 pillars in place, the next steps will come easier.  In this chapter a "To Do Cylce" was introduced.  Basically it discussed the school having a school wide vision plan that is a living and breathing vision that everyone knows.  Once the vision is established, teachers and staff come up with the end of year goals.  These goals keep everyone on track and give a clear picture of where everyone is headed.  During the evidence based systems stage, teachers develop tasks, text, and scoring tools tied to the end of year goals.  These gather students progress 3 times a year.  It also helps with differentiating instruction.  Using the evidence based systems, teachers can develop evidence based teaching.  The way to sustain these pillars and "To Do Cycle" is by allowing teachers to dicuss their assessments 3 times a year.  Then the last step comes in, Curriculum documentation.  Teachers create a reference guide to help keep practices in place.  At this stage teaches are able to see the fruit of their labor.  It all comes together.  With SBC process teachers are able to maintain a literacy program that works for their school.

Questions 1
I think the school I was before basically used this model.  We had principal, literacy coach, and leadership team support.  This group did a good job winning the acceptance of the teachers.  There was a lot of planning and collaborating .  I remember making a vision statement.  We were required to learning and practice it.  So all in all it was set up very similar.  The problems began when we had a new principal come in 2 years into the process.  She was not a proponent of the new literacy.  She didn't really support.  At that point it began to be placed on the back burning of the priority list.   I'm not sure how you keep a program movement going when the principal doesn't see the importance of it.  I think if I'd been the literacy coach, I'd try to lay out evidence of how it had improved the school. Try to get data of before the implementation and data of the school now.

Question 2
When we implemented literacy 1st, we were all required follow a similar whole and small group lesson format.  This made grade levels pretty similar is the way they taught and what they taught.  We weren't told what to teach.  We were just suppose to all follow similar outlines.  This helped with curriculum alignment and across grade level planning.  Everyone in the school was required during the summer to attend a 2 week professional development workshop on the new program.  This really helped everyone understand what the goal was.

Question 3
This was a hard question.  I don't feel the school I was at did a great job with teachers reflecting .  Maybe this is because I was only their for the first two year of implementation.  Therefore it was pretty intense completely changing a schools curriculum.  The time was used to talk about what to add and change, instead of what you could do better.  We had a state rep for Literacy First come and observe each of our classrooms.  She would post conference with us and give us quick suggestions.  That's really the only time I remember specifically focusing on reflection.  I got to observe peer teachers in their classrooms teach.  This helped me reflect on my own teacher, which allowed me to improve.

Julie- At a child development center, do you have school wide literacy curriculum?  Or is it more open to allow teachers to choose what they want?  Either way, how do you implement and monitor that? Have you ever had to implement new curriculum.  how did that go?  Would an SBC process be beneficial in your setting?

Erin- Have you been involved in a SBC process?  If so, was it similar to this SBC process implemented.  Did it help with the transition?  If it wasn't, do you think this process would have made it a smoother transition?

Ch. 4 and Ch. 6

Ch. 4
Literacy Learning in the Early Years
This chapter discuss how important fostering the emergent years when learning literacy.  Research has shown that early literacy skills prove later success in school.  The chapter cites a source that mentions children who are not reading by 3rd grade are in grave danger of not graduating high school.  It's important to get this message out about how important emergent literacy is to policy makers, administration, and parents. Early Childhood programs have increased over the years.  More money from the state is used to fund these programs.  Yet, not all programs are created equally.  A new idea has emerged called Kindergarten Early Assessment.  It was developed to meet and identify the needs of income children.  Another important area is for on going professional development that allows teachers to learn and exchange ideas.  The chapter discusses the importance of standards, specifically CCSS, for early childhood.  The success of programs largely depends on teachers who understand and meet these standards.  To foster a quality early childhood program there are a few strategies that are typically included in curriculum.  Literacy should be a source of enjoyment.  When reading is kept enjoyable, students are motivated to read.  Working on vocabulary and discourse patterns help children build knowledge.  It also activates their prior knowledge.  One way to do this is by sharing and discussing books.  Use print anyway you can.  Children will begin to learn that print means something and that you can make meaning of that something.  Allow children to read a variety of text.  Students will understand that text is a part of everyday life.  Explicit teaching can be taught in the following areas: comprehension, alphabet knowledge, phonemic awareness, phonics and writing.  Giving children hands on opportunities to practice this ideas will help develop the necessary skills.  Also keep learning fun by offering experiences.  Another important aspect of early childhood is monitoring progress and assessing students.  Assessment should be a part of the lesson.  It should take a lot of time for preperation.  It's also on-going.  Keeping records, checklist, and observing are easy ways to assess students.

I think the role of the literacy coach within early childhood is to educate parents and the public.  Early childhood education is beginning be an important  issue to policy makers and society, but there still is education needed to tell why it's important.  Literacy coaches can become involved in early childhood programs, such as OPAT, that go around and help educated parents about the importance of early literacy skills.  I think a literacy coach becomes an advocate in a since.  Having been an early childhood educator, parents did not seem to understand they were their child's first and foremost teacher.  I can remember explaining to a parent that they could go to the library and borrow books.  She'd never been to a library.  I've done a little research in this area and I'm passionate about emergent literacy within the home and school programs.  I think informing administration and law makers would help with the fight for quality early childhood programs.

Ch. 6
Adolescent Literacy
This chapter begins by discussing the evolution of adolescent literacy.  In the 1960s and 1970s the idea of content area reading emerged.  Literacy was a part of all disciplines.  "Every teacher a teacher of reading" become a phrase well known.  Though instructional practices worked against this idea of literacy was a part of all content areas.  Therefore the segregation of reading class and content area classes began.  This idea of teaching reading was the reading teachers problem.  In the 1990s content literacy  evolved.  This approach showed students how to read with meaning and purpose in any area.  Students learned to think within disciplinary text.  Therefore today, there is a debate between old school and new school ways of teaching.  For students today it's important they read a variety of reading materials.  Explicit teaching needs to happen in middle school.  Assessments need to show students strengths and weaknesses.  Teachers need to be about to model and provide explicit teaching of comprehension and studying strategies.  Reading specialist are needed more than ever in the adolescent reading setting.  It's clear there needs to be a revolution of continue support of literacy throughout a child's schooling.  Literacy coaches are needed to help teachers develop to help a growing population of children who do not know how to read.  Literacy coaches need to understand their role within each discipline.  Each content area the coach takes on a little bit different role when supporting teachers.  Professional developments need to be tailored to supporting teachers in learning reading strategies with their content area.

A literacy coach's job is to understand their role within each content area.  They support and listen to teachers frustrations with their classes.  They help develop plans that will help students understand literacy with each content area.  Literacy coaches that work collaboratively with content area teachers will see successful teachers and students.

Connecting the chapters:
At first when I read these chapters I thought these topics couldn't be more different.  Yet, the more I thought about it the more I realized they are very similar.  Early childhood, like adolescent literacy seem to be left out of the great debate when it comes to supporting literacy within these areas.  Policy makers are not talking about these ages typically when mandating reading instruction and laws.  They usually focus their efforts on 1st through 6th grade, the main age span literacy is taught.  It is important as a literacy coach to advocate for both ages.  I had this visual pop in my head.  In a way I see early childhood, elementary and adolescent as a bell curve.  The majority of instruction and attention in directed towards the middle of the bell curve, which would be elementary.  Then the outliers would be early childhood and adolescent.  Yet, what parents, administration, and policy makers aren't understanding is if we begin supporting emergent literacy, maybe some of these adolescent struggling readers wouldn't have the problems they are having.  Another key point I thought about was what happens to student just fall through the cracks in elementary because they didn't receive emergent literacy.  Then once out of elementary, they will have little to no support in middle and high school.  Therefor as literacy coaches, we need to commit to getting the word out and educate the importance of fostering both areas.

Questions:
Julie: As a director, what have you seen within the emergent literacy development?  Have you noticed within the last 10 years an increase in funding?  An increase within parent awareness of emergent literacy skills?  Do you have parents that seem clueless on what it means to foster literacy?

Erin: As a first grade teacher, do you see kids coming to your class having little to no early literacy skills?  What is their biggest weakness when they arrive to you?  Do you think having more early childhood programs would make teaching them to read easier?    

Week 9 Professional Development 3

After meeting with everyone via adobe connect this weekend, I am on track for developing my PD.  I did not realize how far off I was.  I was developing task 3 and my task 3 was not very specific.  Thank you guys for your input and I feel better now.

I have developed my task 2 around the top two topics based on my survey.  They are technology integration and student motivation.  My school also liked the idea of large group setting with small group discussions.  The 2nd most popular PD setting was teacher observation.  After reviewing these needs, I figured they were pretty open to all types of PD settings.  For technology integration I suggested a faculty meeting that would allot 30 minutes for several weeks to discuss strategies.  Then the teachers could get into small groups and adjust the material to fit their grade level.  I also thought having  stations set up in the library, during the day, that teachers could attend while on planning.  The stations would have videos playing that showed how certain technologies were being implemented.  Also handouts would be present on the table.  Teachers could take the papers and implement the ones they thought were useful.  If teachers wanted to attend a small group PD for technology integration, they could go to an article study or participate in an online discussion.  I'd make the online similar to how we blog each week.  I also thought a lesson study would be helpful.

The 2nd topic teachers wanted to learn more about was student motivation with literacy.  If teachers attend a large group they could for to a faculty meeting with peer demonstrations.  I also thought using a 2 minute PD video at the beginning of each faculty meeting would be fun. It's a way to showcase teachers and what they are doing in the classroom.  If teachers wanted to attend a small group PD, they could do a book study over You Gotta Be the Book.  I think this book would help with literacy motivation and gives a lot of great ideas and would be good to have a discussion about.  I also would like them to be able to watch the literacy coach modeling a lesson that incorporates motivational strategies for literacy.

I haven't started task 3, I'm still deciding which part to elaborate on.  I originally began elaborating on the lesson study, but I realized I would be able to make it as personal as I needed to.  I thinking of talking about a book discussion as my task 3.  Any ideas which would be the best to do a task 3 on?  

After view the video I think all the types of leadership roles are present in my task 2 except moderator.  I don't have any PD that would include many speakers that I'd have to plan to link them together.  But after learning about the moderator role, I think I could definitely add some type of PD that included this role.
Questions: Do we need to mention in task 2 what role we take on in each PD plan? or do we only mention this is task 3?

Week 8 PD 2

I enjoyed this weeks readings.  I think these chapters have been the most helpful for me.  It seems to be exactly what my teachers are wanting according to the survey I conducted.

I really liked the idea of the lesson study.  I thought the chapter explained it in good detail.  I am considering using this for my PD plan.  My survey indicated my teachers wanted to observe a teacher as their primary way of attending PD.  I think the lesson study would give them ownership of the material.  They could come up with their own ideas and collaborate on ways to implement the ideas.

My survey also indicated that the teachers I surveyed would attend a large group with small group discussion PD.  I have been thinking of using a faculty meeting setting to introduce the idea of lesson study to my teachers.  This way we could, as a group,  discuss what a lesson study is and how to implement.

What do you think about having a faculty meeting and then doing a lesson study as my PD plan?  Is this the right direction of task 2?