Getting families involved in dreaming for the future

My school serves a population of students who struggle financially and many suffer from generational poverty. We know, from the research, that children in generational poverty have difficulty setting goals, and seeing that their futures could be different from their childhoods. This is why it's so essential to involve parents and kids in dreaming about the future and all the possibilities for their kids. We also use this as an opportunity to talk about what it takes to achieve those goals.  

  One of the really important things we do as a school is "Family Dream Board Night." Dream Boards are posterboards that are full of a child's dreams for the future. Our kids start planning their dream boards at home, including their future career, homes, education, family life, car, pets, and hobbies. Teachers often provide fun materials such as magazines to cut pictures out of, printed pictures from the internet, tissue paper, stickers, sequins, and fun foam.   Then they get to take home a piece of posterboard to create the dream board at home. They can use magazine pictures or draw their own images for each element of their future lives.   

The dream boards are usually really incredible, enlightening, and hopeful. They show us things that our kids think are important, and what they hope their lives are like when they grow up. Many of our kids want big families, pets, and houses with pools.

They want to be teachers, open their own extermination companies, and become police officers. Their boards are charming and earnest, full of childhood dreams.

A group of teachers vote on the boards and we choose one from each grade level to win first place. We also choose a "most creative" board - this year it was a board with a drawstring curtain you could pull back to see the goals inside! We display those boards on the stage on easels and give the kids certificates and a prize donated from our state university and their future high school.

We  plaster the boards all over the gym, cafeteria, and hallways, and then we have our Family Dream Board Night.

On Family Dream Board Night, the families wander through the rooms and hallway, reading their child's board and all the others, appreciating each child's creativity and dreams.

The hallway looks incredible, full of student work. It's so inspiring to walk down the hall and see what each of our children wants in their lives.

Of course, we give away books. We always give away books!

And we have some fun stations. At this station, students get to create a sentence strip comic book about their future lives.

Our kids "Dress for Success" with paper bag creations! They get to decorate a paper bag to dress up for work!

Of course, we have a reading nook so our kids and parents can "Read to Succeed." We want them to have positive reading experiences together!

 

 

 Our kids make little cutout people into their future selves! They love these little "Career People."

We have such an incredible time with our Family Dream Board Night - it's such a special event that our children and parents love!

Want to have your own Family Dream Night?

Grab the stations set at TPT

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Pirate Family Literacy Night

  Arrr you ready for Pirate Family Literacy Night?    Ha! I crack myself up. Every year we host our families for a fun night of reading and writing activities in a theme.    Pirates is a fun theme with tons of possibilities.   I mean, think about it. There are hook hands and peglegs and  ships with huge sails.    There are treasure maps and jewels and deserted islands.   You can say Arrrrr! a lot, and wear scarves and hats. What's not to like?   So how do you put together a family literacy night, a la pirate?   Well, here you go!  










About a month before Literacy Night, I start the planning. I figure out what stations I'm going to have, what materials I need to make and copy.    I also find out who will be able to help out at a station or at the front of the school.   

Event planning form from my Instructional Coaching MegaPack

I cut, stack, and laminate (or I have the lovely volunteers at our school help with it.)   About a week before Literacy Night, I start putting samples and materials together. I go shopping and buy everything we need. I put together the bags for the door (including a bookmark and a reading pledge). I talk to our librarian to make sure we're ready with the free books we give away - one to each child. And I put together the snack station.    This year's snack was this adorable craft:  

  To make it, I stuffed plastic snack-sized bags with a popsicle stick (for spreading frosting), a mini chocolate doughnut, a pretzel stick, and a handful of goldfish. I also cut up little pieces of white paper for the sail and purchased the little paper plates and frosting.  

I downloaded How I Became a Pirate to play in the background while the kids were working on their snack.

At the front door, our librarian handed out books to our kids!

This was the Treasure Map station: a fun word family game. Kids made the pieces by cutting them out of yardstick and then put them in a paper bag. The kids and parents took turns drawing cards to fill up their treasure maps!

Kids and parents read these fun pirate partner plays with their hats and hooks on!

This was our reading station: Pirate Cove. We set up comfy chairs and spots to sit and read and provided baskets of books. Our super art teacher made this ship, too!

This station was a huge hit: Digging for Buried Treasure. I took two plastic wading pools and had some helpers fill them with balled-up butcher paper in yellow and brown (to represent sand).

Then I copied these gems and coins on cardstock and mixed them up in the paper balls.

Teachers read a card  with a prefix (at the big kids station) or a rhyming word (at the little kids station) and kids dug through the pools to find the matching words!

At the last station, kids wrote adorable stories about how they became pirates and then they made a paper plate pirate!

 

 

Want to learn more? Check out my How to Plan an Awesome Family Night video!

 

  Looking for fun pirate ideas? Check out my Pirate Theme Pinterest Board full of pirate inspiration.  You can get everything you need to run your own fun pirate family night at TPT!  

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4 Tips for New Literacy Coaches and Instructional Coaches

I am about to start my fourth year as a literacy coach at my elementary school. This has been an exciting journey and I love my job. Like any teacher who knows how important what they do is, at the beginning of each year I am plagued with doubt about my ability to perform this important role on my campus. My thoughts include:

* Surely someone is better qualified to do this.
* Am I prepared to support my teachers in their new learning?
* Do I have the energy to give all of myself another year?
* How do I best help all teachers; new and experienced?
* Where will I get new ideas instead of just using my boring old ones?
* Where do we go next?

I decided it might make me feel better to prepare a list of tips for new coaches. This would actually be evidence that I have learned something in the last three years; figured something out that I can turn around to you. And maybe it will convince me that I'm better prepared than I thought.

Tip # 1 Listen

When I was in the classroom, I was often wary of people "coming in to my room," to "tell me how to do stuff." I wasn't the only one - this is a pretty common feeling. Don't be one of those people who barge into classrooms to tell everyone how to do the job they're doing. Instead, start off listening. When teachers say, "That's not going to work," or "I don't like that idea," instead of getting defensive or upset, say, "What is it that you're worried about?" in an honest way. They can explain their concerns and maybe it'll help you solve the problem together.

It's not about what you want to do. It's about how you can all figure out what the best thing to do is. If you really come to the school with the attitude that it's a team challenge, and everyone has a voice, you will make a lot more of an impact than if it's the Ms. Chrissy Show. Chrissy can think reader's notebooks are the best thing ever, but nobody cares what you have to say if all you do is talk. Helpful things to say include:

• Can you explain what you're worried about?
• Tell me a little more about that.
• Have you tried that before?
• What could we do to make a difference?
• How can I help you with this?
• Here, have some candy. (Candy is a very effective planning tool)

Big Idea: You gotta listen to the people. 

Tip #2 Be organized

The two most important things I own: my calendar and my notebook.

Get a system, and get it fast. These are the kinds of things that happen (regularly) that make me thankful that I figured out an organizational system.

• A teacher stops me in the hallway and says, "Oh, I know we're meeting on Thursday at 10:00, but I have an ARD at that time, so how about Friday at 2:30?"
• I get an email in March that reads, "I can't seem to find that BOY data I sent you in August. Do you have a copy?"
• My principal says, "What date did we provide that training about levels of rigor last year?"
• Central office sends an email that says, "Instructional coaches, please ensure that all of your teachers entered in their MOY data online."
• At a grade level meeting, teachers ask for their students' performance data on a test from three weeks ago.
• At the end of the year, everyone has to turn in everything. This means you could potentially have to provide copies to teachers again of everything they've ever handed to you. (And occasionally they'll request things they never handed to you at all, in the hopes that you might have it :)

They're not beautiful, but they are organized.

So get a system. My system involves one notebook (for the entire year - I don't write anywhere else), a calendar (paper and pencil; not electronic) a four-drawer filing cabinet, a hierarchy of folders on my laptop, and my literacy coaching binder. I carry my notebook, calendar, and a pen everywhere I go, no matter if I'm just heading to the bathroom. The one time I don't have it is the one time a teacher will stop me to schedule something really important, and I need to make a note that says, "Find parent conference letter for Ms. SoandSo".

This system helps me to know where everything is, and in the everyday occurrence off-chance that someone needs another copy of something from seven months ago, I can usually find it. And it doesn't even bother me that much, because the truth is that teachers are busy, sometimes frazzled, and I probably lost lots of stuff when I was in the classroom. So the big idea here is: Save everything and write everything down, and figure out a way to remember where you put it. 

Tip #3 Budget your time

This is tough. Everyone will want a piece of you.

On the first day of school in my first year as a coach, I was so lonely. I sat at my empty guided reading table in my empty room and thought, "Nobody needs me. I miss my kids."

That has never happened again. Now I sometimes wish I could turn out the lights, lock the door, and hide so I can go to the bathroom.

Honestly, now I schedule everything on my calendar. Even things that don't need to be done at an exact time. I schedule all of these kinds of things that would normally require scheduling:

• PLC
• Grade level meetings
• Meetings with leadership and central office
• Trainings
• Due dates
• Planning with individual teachers
• School events
• Scheduled observations
• Working with students
• Observing students in the classroom for RtI

And I schedule these kinds of things that usually don't really require scheduling:

• Classroom visits: "Visit second grade writing" in the time frame I want to visit them, or if I'm visiting some teachers one day and some another day, I'll write in the teachers' names. 
• Time to work on documentation: "Finish Reading At-Risk BOY"
• Time to work on assessments: "Third Grade Reading Fiction/Poetry Test"
• Time to work on materials for teachers: "Fourth Grade Point of View Materials"

It's like a to-do list with a time frame. 

Tuesdays look fairly blank because we have PLC all day - meetings, meetings, meetings!

And this year, I'm considering adding these elements to my schedule:

• Go to the bathroom.
• Eat lunch.
• Walk from one meeting to the next (rather than scheduling them all back to back!)
• Breathe.

Big tip for budgeting your time: If it has to be done while students are in the classroom, schedule it first. For example, if I want to observe third grade reading to see how our character study lesson plans are going, I need to schedule that at the time third grade is teaching reading. I shouldn't work on documentation at that time, because I can do that after school. To quote my mother: "You always have time for the things you do first." It's true. Try it out. You'll see.

Tip #4: Know Your Job Description
This one is pretty important. Your principal (or possibly your district) has an idea of what your job is. If you have a different idea of what your job is, and you continue doing that job for any length of time, one of you will end up being pretty unhappy. When you apply for any instructional coaching position, it's necessary to ask the principal, "What are the three most important things I need to spend my time on? Where will most of my time be spent?"

My principal (God bless her, like for reals) knows that the only way a school grows is through time spent with teachers. Most (by which I mean more than half) of my responsibilities revolve around supporting teachers in some direct or indirect way:

• Planning with teachers
• Training teachers
• Meeting with teachers to debrief data
• Modeling lessons for teachers
• Observing classroom lessons
• Providing feedback to teachers
• Writing assessments so teachers don't have to

But of course, there's a whole list of other stuff that I do that, although it does support teachers in some way, isn't directly working with teachers:

• Monitoring awards assemblies or special campus events
• Having a walkie-talkie (I hate walkie-talkies!) for use in fire drills and lockdowns
• Making copies of DRA so teachers don't have to
• Sitting in leadership meetings, weekly
• Training at the district level, whatever they want me to train on
• Attending district and other level trainings
• Planning and running school events like Family Literacy Nights
• I'm sure there's more, but I'm getting a little a little overwhelmed thinking about some of it.

So make sure you and your principal or admin are on the same page. It will make a huge difference in how both of you see your purpose and productivity!
 
Literacy Coaching is incredibly rewarding and interesting; each day is a new challenge to figure out with my colleagues. I love love love it, even when I feel like I'm underwater. Hopefully these tips will help you feel like you are underwater less often.

Looking for more resources to help you get started as an instructional coach? Check out my ebook, The Start-Up Guide to Instructional Coaching.

   

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What Do Instructional Coaches Do?

About three years ago, I made the move from teaching third grade (previously, fourth grade) to being a Literacy Coach. It was a big one. I accepted the position in July, and then I cried about it every day for over a month. Then school started and I had no time to cry. (Except for the first day, when I sat in my new Literacy Coach room, devoid of students and new school supplies, and pathetically thought, "No one needs me. I'm useless. I've made a huge mistake."

That was the last time I ever felt that way, by the way. Now I feel like, "How many places can I be at once? If I can only be in three places at once today, maybe I can accomplish what I wrote on my schedule."

Because now I know the answer to the big question: What do literacy coaches do all day?

I've been asked that question by many people from online teaching land. They're teachers who are interested in becoming literacy coaches, for the most part. And a few of them have been teachers who just accepted the role as an instructional coach at a school and are really nervous. I understand. So here's my best attempt at describing what we do all day. Keep in mind, this totally depends on your district, principal, and job description. Every school has its own needs. These are just the things I do the most.

1. We support teachers.

This is, by far, where I spend most of my time and it's the most important thing! We have to build our teachers up!  Supporting teachers can take on a lot of vestiges. It can include...

     * Modeling lessons or strategies in the teachers' classrooms.

     * Setting up teachers to observe each other.

     * Planning with teachers using our curriculum from the district, state standards, our resources, and our ideas!

     *Meeting with teachers about specific concerns or questions they are having. Teachers may have me come in and observe students and meet with them afterwards to discuss what they can do to help them. They may have concerns about how their kids did on a recent assessment, so we sit down and look at the tests together and figure out next steps. Or they may even just want to discuss scheduling issues or worries, or advice. 

     *Doing tasks that will help teachers out. Of course, this has to happen within reason. For example, I couldn't take a day to make all the copies the teachers need for their upcoming lessons. But if it would help an entire grade level for me to lay out a rubric they brainstormed and have it made into posters, I'll do it. Or maybe they're trying to build an assessment that tests certain standards. I'll write it for them and save a copy for next year. I make the copies of our DRA for the teachers to save them time.

     *Visiting classrooms. I pop in to classrooms across the school every week or two to see how we're doing. I can evaluate how kids are receiving the instruction and look for areas to address in upcoming PLCs or professional developments.

     *RtI: I schedule, coordinate, and sit in on RtI. We host meetings a few times a year, provide suggestions/feedback/next steps to teachers, and hopefully meet our students' needs.

2. We work with small groups of students.

You have to be careful with this one. While I love working with students, and I miss having a class of my own (as demonstrated by my pathetic outcry on my first day), it would be very easy to spend your entire day working with students. This might sound fine, until you think about how your job is to support and help grow teachers and your entire school. If you are meeting with six students in a small group for forty-five minutes a day, that's almost four hours a week that you aren't working with teachers. It adds up, surprisingly fast. So choose your groups carefully and limit the time you schedule to work with them. We identify students on the cusp of success and I work with them on a regular schedule. I review the data the teachers have about those students and I plan lessons to address their areas of need.

3. We analyze data.

Data can be less-than-fun, and we have to be careful about what it actually means. Interpretation can be inaccurate when we don't consider all the necessary factors. However, as a literacy coach, you have to understand what is happening in your classrooms, so it's important to keep up with how the kids have demonstrated their skills on the assessments they are given. Then, this data has to be shared with teachers to discuss what you will do about it! We meet once a week with each grade level to discuss any new data and figure out what to do next.

4. We plan and deliver professional development to the campus.

 

This is very important. The best professional development models are the ones where the trainer stays on campus! You can follow up with teachers and see how the learning is panning out in the classrooms. I have conducted trainings on school instructional initiatives like guided reading, shared reading, word study, writing, district required assessments, understanding state assessments, and depths of knowledge. 

 

I've also hosted school-wide, grade level, and optional book studies on various books and topics. I  throw in a little professional development during our PLCs where we plan for new units. During that time, I try to share new strategies we might want to include in our upcoming plans.

5. We plan and run school-wide events and programs.

 

This is a very fun part of my job. School-wide events include family literacy nights, our fun book buddies program, reading and English camps, and our new reading lounge. I also write a family literacy newsletter a few times a year and help run our 25 Book Campaign and our Read Across America celebration. I put up bulletin boards and displays for different events or themes, work with the librarian on our bookmark design contest, and I host the Harry Potter Book Club! 

I started building up our multiple copies lending library and we have our end of year writing contest coming up. Honestly, these events can be kind of stressful, but if that was all I did all day, I'd have a blast! Who doesn't love to plan an afternoon making golden snitches and figure out where to find enough griddles for a Book Buddies Breakfast!

6. We do whatever the principal wants us to do.

I'm very lucky. My principal is an intelligent, kind, and excellent person. I have been blessed to work for someone who understands literacy, kids, and schools. You might not be so blessed (just sayin'). The things my principal wants me to do, while they sometimes mount up and can be almost insurmountable, are usually good things. We  meet once a week for a few hours on a leadership team to plan next steps and see how we're doing. Sometimes we might be to help out at awards ceremonies, or spend some time in a particular classroom. We might work with another person to coordinate trainings, or to pull in a group of kids for intervention. We also will be asked to administer small group state testing, or other boring but necessary stuff. So it can be a mixed bag. Choose your administrator wisely.

7. We do whatever central office wants us to do.

Again, it's a mixed bag. Sometimes it's great stuff - my latest assignment is to assemble the awesome Scholastic guided reading library they purchased us! But sometimes, it's to deliver trainings to other campuses or to attend meetings that may or may not meet my teachers' needs. It's all part of the job!

 8. We are always thinking about how to help our school.

 

I collect books that "might be good for something," and I make connections with organizations who can donate books to our campus. I write grants and hunt for great blogs and ideas to share. I read professional books to figure out what we can do to improve the way we work with children and each other. I participate in Leadership meetings every week to monitor our progress and think about next steps. And most of all, I worry. I worry about our people and our work all the time. Just like you do. I consider the teachers my class, because they are my responsibility, just like a teachers' kids are hers. And I care about them and want them to be successful. 

   

Does this sound familiar to you instructional coaches? If you're looking into being a coach, just know it's a great job. I love what I do. Anybody about to make the move out of the classroom?

I've put together a nice bundle of freebie pages from my Instructional Coaching MegaPack to help you out.



If you're just getting started as an instructional coach, this resource is for you! It's my ebook, The Start-Up Guide to Instructional Coaching: How to make a real difference on your campus. It's over 80 pages of information to help you get the ball rolling on your campus!

 Getting organized? Need some documents that you don't have to make from scratch? Check out my Instructional Coaching MegaPack on TPT! It's full of fillable forms, printable documents, calendars, planning tools, and documentation forms.

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