Tips and Tricks for Literacy Coaches
Meet Chrissy Beltran:
Began as an upper elementary teacher in Texas
Moved into a literacy coach role within a school for 5 years
Now has a coaching and consulting business that helps teachers and coaches grow their schools when it comes to literacy.
Check her out!
Website: Buzzing with Ms. B
Instagram: buzzingwithmsb
YouTube: Buzzing with Ms. B
Courses: Instructional Coaching Courses
Three Moves Literacy Coaches Should Make at the Beginning of the Year
The beginning of the year can be tough - there’s lots to do, lots of overwhelm, and the tasks ahead seem daunting. But it’s important to start it off right, because it can set the tone for the entire year. Below, Chrissy shares three tasks that literacy coaches can do to begin the year on the right foot.
First things first: Chrissy states that it’s foundational to introduce your role as a literacy coach to teachers and staff and let them know what they can expect from you. Before these three steps, be sure to define your role within the school and in what ways you’ll be helping them.
Identify the knowledge base by visiting the classrooms and then create a plan.
If we want to grow a school, we must know the practices and knowledge that are essential for kids to learn to read. Figure out which framework you’re working from and go from there.
Identify the knowledge base and shared knowledge base of the teachers. We do this by:
Visiting classrooms
What’s missing and what’s being done correctly?
Does it seem like the teacher understands how kids learn to read and write?
What structures do the teachers have in place?
What are their teaching methods like?
What is their schedule like and is it appropriate? Is there anything missing?
What vocabulary are they using?
Conducting surveys
Create a survey about what they know about specific things and what areas of literacy they want to learn more about.
If it seems like teachers need direction here, giving them choices is helpful.
Chatting with the principal
See what’s been done in the past, what framework the school has adopted, and get a bigger picture for what literacy looks like in the school.
Create a plan during PLC
Chat about your observations: share the strengths you saw, acknowledge what areas need growth, and discuss a shared vocabulary.
Create a plan of how you’re going to build the knowledge moving forward with a solid agenda.
Advice: Ensure that you’re creating relationships with teachers during this process and work alongside them. When we go in and do a complete overhaul, we’re going to naturally get resistance. They will buy into the process a lot more quickly and willingly when they obtain knowledge and vocabulary.
Establish, improve, and grow a word study curriculum
Questions to ask when you’re looking at a phonics program:
Does the program teach phonics in a cumulative, sequential order with an actual scope and sequence?
Does it include explicit instruction? Are the lessons targeted? Are the skills explicitly taught?
Do the kids have opportunities to listen, to speak, to read words and connected text? Do they write using those skills? Are we looking at different ways of interacting with this specific skill?
Does it include aligned assessments? Sometimes curriculum may or may not come with assessments and there will always be some gaps, but it’s good to know what’s in place.
Does it include components that are vertically aligned and developmentally appropriate for different grades? Can the program you’re using grow with students, from phonological awareness (early years) and morphology opportunities (older years)?
Are there whole group components and intervention components?
How well is this curriculum being implemented across grade levels? We must spend time learning about it, organizing it, and having it be easily accessible.
Consider peer observation so teachers can watch great lessons in action.
Build writing across the curriculum in content areas
Kids interact with the world through literacy. If we want our kids to comprehend what they're reading, we must build background knowledge - which is why we cannot cut corners in content areas.
Content areas like science and social studies can be enhanced through writing.
We must teach reading and writing across the curriculum. This helps students learn strategies on how to think through reading.
Building strong content builds strong readers. The more kids read, the more they know.
Writing must be used throughout the school day. Students can write what they’ve learned in math, social studies, science, etc.
Students can do this through low-stakes notebook writing and quick writes. This tells students, “Writing is a normal part of every day, and I read and write to think.”
When they do this, they’re reinforcing what they’ve learned in that content area, as well as practicing sentence structure, grammar, etc.
For more support, check out Ms. B’s free video series for coaches! You’ll get five videos for five days where she focuses on five different priorities for literacy coaches to dig into in the fall semester. At the end of the five days, be on the lookout for a coupon code to her course, The Confident Literacy Coach!
