Leading The Way In Literacy

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Leading The Way In Literacy

Classroom visits offer a comprehensive view of teaching and learning

By Bonnie Houck and Sandi Novak

October 2017

Vol. 38 No 5

Schools and districts are required to have improvement plans that specify instructional and curricular ideas to enhance teachers’ ongoing practice and assist students in performing at higher levels. Yet little has been done to examine the specific knowledge that principals need regarding literacy teaching and learning or how districts can build literacy leadership capacity. Leaders need a system to collect and analyze timely and useful information about current instructional practices in their schools and how students engage and collaborate in the process of learning. These data must be collected consistently for instructional growth and without the intent of using them to evaluate individual teaching performance. A Better Way Many districts need clear classroom data focused on the literacy culture and instructional practices being implemented in

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Authors

Bonnie Houck and Sandi Novak

Implementation tips for district and school leaders

To effectively implement literacy classroom visits, district and school leaders must:

Ensure successful training and ongoing support for conducting literacy classroom visits.

Provide consistent structures for analyzing literacy classroom visit data to determine professional learning needs and the impact such learning is having on instruction and student learning.

Model nonevaluative, action-oriented feedback about the literacy classroom visit to teachers to inspire growth and change.

Offer strategies for providing the professional learning identified by literacy classroom visit data as needed to improve literacy instruction.

Guide the use of literacy classroom visit data to monitor the implementation of the knowledge and practices gained through professional learning experiences.

Bonnie Houck ([email protected]) is an education consultant, author, and professor. Sandi Novak ([email protected]) is an education consultant and author.