Middle School Literacy Coaching From The Coach 's Perspectives

My early reading experiences reflect the history that Vogt and Shearer (2011) describe in the first chapter of Reading Specialists and Literacy Coaches in the Real World. The basal reading programs of the 1970s and 1980s included “leveled readers, phonics activities, and a great deal of comprehension skill practice, usually found on the pages of the accompanying workbooks. The programs also included highly structured, detailed teacher’s guides, with different lesson plans for each of the three instructional groups” (Vogt & Shearer, 2011, p.13).

For example, in the Tobin and McInnis (2008) qualitative study, teachers were provided two, three hour workshops about how to differentiate their literacy instruction in the classroom. The professional development courses played a role in the increase of literacy skills of students. This finding correlates to research conducted by Connor et al (2011). In a quasi-experimental study, 33 teachers, at seven schools, were put into two randomized groups. Only one group received professional development and provided varying types of literacy instruction to their students. 70% of the students at the beginning of the study were unable to read. Connor et al. found more of an increase in student comprehension in the differentiated classrooms with trained teachers, than with the non-differentiated instruction, untrained teacher classrooms. Results were measured with a reading comprehension test conducted at the beginning and end of the school

CCSS and teachers together need to be viewed as “sponsors of literacy” (99). Scherff discovered that her teaching strategies already fit into the CCSS, which inspired her to develop a chart including critical and higher-order questions and discussion starters along with the CCSS nine anchor reading standards questioning approaches for each level. Two doctoral candidates were asked to collaborate and describe how the CCSS fits into their role as teachers. The first candidate, Allison Wynhoff Olsen describes her initial fear of the standards and how to implement them in her classroom. Her mentor showed her how to bundle and combine aspects that met CCSS. It is important to work with the standards because “educators have agency to help all students work toward powerful literacy education” (104). Olsen introduces Simon’s article “Starting with What Is’: Exploring Response and Responsibility to Student writing through Collaborative Inquiry” to show a new way of reviewing student papers collaboratively with other teachers instead of “individually from a deficit perspective” (105). This kind of approach encourages students to more freedom to express themselves and create a “broader social change” (105). Teachers must incorporate the CCSS in their classroom; however, they must also take into consideration the needs of each student and adjust their teaching strategies to reach the common goal of promoting literacy. The second candidate, Emily Nemeth describes two students demonstrating different learning styles and how teachers needs to keep in mind the needs of each unique student when designing classroom plans following the CCSS. She stresses the importance of supporting preservice teachers with “theoretical and pedagogical framings” to accompany the CCSS they must abide by in the classroom (109). The CCSS fails to take

Author note: This paper was prepared for the American Federation of Teachers by Louisa C. Moats, project director, Washington D.C. site of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Interventions Project, and clinical associate professor of pediatrics, University of Texas, Houston, Health Sciences Center. Her work is supported in part by grant HD30995, “Early Interventions for Children with Reading Problems,”

Secondly, One of the people most interested in my literacy performance other than my mom was my fifth grade teacher Mr. Greg Monroe. Most students didn’t appreciate his teaching style but I did. Up until this point in my literacy development, I had excelled easily. It wasn’t until I met my teacher that year that I realized everything wasn’t going to be so easy. For the first time I had to actually study rather than to just know the information like normal. Mr. Monroe taught me that I needed to push myself to be better than good, even if it feels like I can’t. Teaching students to go beyond the norm was Monroe’s approach, and I feel as if his approach was extremely helpful as well as encouraging. He taught students to set goals and to develop aspirations. The fifth grade is the last stepping stone to becoming a middle school student which warrants new responsibilities for the students. Mr Monroe made sure that students graduated from his class not only with

The role of a literacy coach is to work with struggling readers, assist the classroom teacher in terms of teaching literacy, model and assist with various components of the literacy block, and help the teachers grow in their knowledge and teaching of literacy. It is also important that the literacy coach is very knowledgeable about literacy, so they are able to help classroom teachers and struggling readers. The literacy coach should work hand in hand with the classroom teachers for each grade level to develop a curriculum that is age appropriate, covers all of the required standards, and engaging for the students. In order for students to be successful readers and writers, they must get a strong foundation in kindergarten and consistently build upon that foundation with each grade level. The literacy coach needs to provide ample professional development

This is a very important component in education to be aware of and when you are a teacher. I interviewed a first-grade teacher at my local elementary school to gain more information about the processes that our local schools go through for professional training, interventions, and in the classroom to ensure that students are developing their abilities in reading. My main focus was on what our school’s process was, how support is given, professional training offered, and what more is needed to be done to increase success for students.

Vacca, Gove, Lenhart & Burkey, 2012). A teacher’s belief system is formulated around what he or she knows about literacy learning and teaching literacy. A teacher’s beliefs can be based off ones own personal experience with reading and writing as well as practical experience which is obtained from working and learning with students throughout his or her career. A teacher also uses ones professional study to formulate beliefs. This practice helps a teacher expand on his or her knowledge when teaching literacy. Even though teachers all share

For this analysis I used the survey adapted by Patty, Maschoff, and Ransom. This survey helped me realize how my school is achieving in their instructional and literacy program. I talked to my principal at my school (Stetson Hills) and discussed the topic with her and helped get an idea of how the school was doing. I’m a physical education teacher and I’m not in tune as much as I should be with our literacy program so I’m hoping this class will help me learn more about how to help my school improve the literacy program and my own personal understanding.

Coaching is paramount to helping teachers improve their craft. There are a variety of different coaching models that a coach can consider. A coach will consider many factors when making the decision on what model to use. Some schools or districts may have a model in place that they want all of their coaches to use. When a coach needs to decide on the coaching model, he or she will use, will consider a variety of elements. The two coaching models I will discuss are the instructional coaching method and the content coaching model. The information I gather about my colleague will determine the best coaching model to use when we collaborate with one another.

coaching has been examined as a staff development model useful for teachers at all school levels and across all career stages. Specifically, researchers have studied peer coaching of pre‐service teachers (Lu, 2010) and novice teachers (Boreen et al., 2000; Portner, 1998); roles and responsibilities (Killion, 2009) and characteristics of coaches (Reiss, 2009); technology integration in the process of coaching (Barron et al., 2009; Scheeler et al., 2010). peer coaching emerged in the early 1980s as a strategy to improve the degree of implementation of new curriculum and instructional

According to the Medford School District 549C, an instructional coach is defined as a teacher who has both content and instructional expertise particularly in reading, writing, and/or math. The Instructional Coach focuses on enhancing teacher ability to provide instruction that (1) builds student understanding and skills, (2) is academically rigorous, (3) addresses the curriculum standards and frameworks, and (4) enhances student sense of engagement in and ownership of learning (Medford 2008). When deciding an interview candidate, I chose our instructional coach because of the intricate part they play in the development and implementation of the curriculum at the school level. During our interview, I posed several questions to cognize her viewpoint of the role of stakeholders in local curriculum development as well as its execution. These premeditated questions were asked to guide her thinking as she reflect upon curriculum development. The nine questions and subsequent responses are as follows:

Meeting with district and building based literacy coaches to meet the needs of new teachers.

* In the educational field, the teaching learning cycle is a model used in contemporary teaching in both school and adult educational settings. Rothery (1996 in Derewianka & Jones 2012, pg 43) who originally developed the model used this to aim at disadvantaged children for teaching literacy and writing in the KLA (Key learning areas) who were from socially disadvantaged areas. Over time the model has been phased across other areas of the English language such as listening, speaking, reading as well as writing. The key involvement of the teacher also known as ‘expert other’ in the teaching learning cycle is guiding the learner to understand key concepts in academic literacy through use of scaffolding strategies to transform students

This reflection paper addresses as a student and counseling professional how I feel as though I have been readily prepared to teach in higher education and areas, concepts, strategies, and thoughts on how I have evolved through this course. This course has made me think more into how the most powerful, durable, and effective agents of educational change are not the policy makers, the curriculum developers or even the education authorities themselves; they are the teachers. It further contends that the quality of the educational changes that teachers have the skills and opportunities to effect will only be as reliable and proficient as the teachers’ individual capacities for reflective practice and the development of self-knowledge (Stepien, 1999). These aspects of teacher development have, historically, been largely overlooked in the preparation and promotion of effective teachers. The emphasis has been more explicitly focused on the development and demonstration of teachers’ understanding of content knowledge and the associated pedagogies and in their capacities to understand their students as individual constructors of knowledge in diverse social contexts (Bosworth, 1999).