Teaching & Learning Alliance-Supporting Academic Leaders and Coaches

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Jul 29

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😎What a wonderful day with our friends down in Fort Bend, Texas for an in person summer institute.

✅ We learned, we laughed, we grew in our understanding of early literacy. We even did some dancing. 🕺🏿

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Jul 13

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😎 It’s Teaching Text Tuesday! Have you seen this lovely book “Papi Drives a Motorcycle” by Isabel Quintero ? The illustrations are incredible and the story is so uplifting. Here are a few ways we could see this being used as a mentor text:

📘Reading: Follow a character through a setting. Notice how the setting impacts the character. Character relationships impact each other.
📝Writing: Rule of three for suspense “the sun, the sun, the bright orange sun” Punctuation as power! Notice the difference it makes.
🗣Language: Alliteration “carburetor & carino” “drill and dedication”
🔤Vocabulary : Using context clues for Spanish phrases. Tier 2 words about riding “accelerator, boulevard, compressor, engine

✅ How would you use it in your classroom? 💙

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Jul 8

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😎 Our ongoing summer learning today is diving deeper into dyslexia.

✅ Here are some simple but helpful tips for supporting students with dyslexia:

1. 📘High Interest Decodables - If you are going to add to your classroom library this summer, we’d highly recommend looking for decodable that can be included to support
2. 🔤Systematic, Sequential, Multi-Sensory Phonics - Including the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic approach really helps kids to hold onto their learning, making those neural pathways stronger. We have found @educatorkathleen page packed with great ideas for multi-sensory word work.
3. 📊Writing with Graph Paper - This tip is the simplest, but having the individual boxes actually supports students in writing their individual letters and their corresponding sounds.

We hope these support your ongoing learning this summer, too! 💙

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Jul 7

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💙📚Summer book club on @thesixshifts. We are learning so much together. What professional books are on your list ? What should we add to ours?

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Jun 16

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TLA Staff Retreat 2021. 😎Growing together. Moving forward for a better future for all students. 💙

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Jun 11

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🎉It’s the end of the week and nearing the end of the school year here in Massachusetts. Today we’d like to offer a quick reminder of the critical importance of reflection as educators.

📓This doesn’t have to look like journal writing. You could sketch note, have kids interview each other, takes quizzes and surveys about the year. 🧐

🪞But in some way we need to provide opportunities for ourselves and our students to pause and reflect, notice and name: What worked and what didn’t?

✅These prompts have helped us:
👍What if we KEPT this from the past year?
✌️What if we LEFT this from the past year?
💭What if we DREAMT of this for next year?

What are you keeping? What are you leaving behind? What are you dreaming of? 💙

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May 27

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday. Today, in honor of his passing, we’d like to honor Eric Carle and his tremendous legacy in the life of children. His books like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” 🐛“Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you See ?” 🧸🐻 have been and still are formative for emergent and early readers in sparking wonder and joy. 🥰

Thank you, Eric Carle for bringing beauty into our lives. We are the richer for it. Today we honor your story well told, your life well lived. 💙

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May 19

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📌Today’s Tip: Plan your small group instruction with a clear trajectory in mind! This helps you avoid “one off” small groups and allows you to build skills and confidence in your readers. 💙

📚This simple four day trajectory could work as a sample for students who need more targeted instruction in a phonics skill.

📍Day 1: Explicit teacher instruction with the phonics skill & some orthographic mapping

📖Day 2: Shared Reading of a Decodable Text: This is “We Do” activity to work together to build experience with the phonics skill in larger context and not in isolation alone.

📝Day 3: Interactive Writing or Editing where the students helps write (encode) the words that are related to the phonics skill

🎊Day 4: Guided Reading or Practice with Independent Text: This allows the much needed component of transfer. With three days of sequential instruction and support we want to see how they student can apply the skill to reading and coaching in as needed.

📣 How do you plan small group instruction?

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May 13

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📣You’ve likely heard about the importance of phonological awareness in reading development. But many teachers we know feel overwhelmed with how to fit it in to an already full school day. 🗓

What you might not have considered is how simple and fun it can be to incorporate phonological awareness activities into your class routine. 🎊

✅Where to begin:

📚Check out some books with rhyming or alliteration and have silly read aloud time for 5 minutes during snack. We included just a few listed above!

🎵Sing! Young children LOVE to sing (you don’t have to have a great voice!) There are so many great songs that teach phoneme isolation, manipulation, syllabification, & rhyming! Sing them when you are lining up to go to the bathroom or as a transition from once subject to the next. ☺️

💙Finally, consider how it can be infused into whole class and small group instruction. Meeting with kids in small groups would be the perfect time to do some explicit specific instruction on key skills like segmenting syllables. 👋🏽

Phonological awareness is fun! And can be infused all throughout your school day! Where are you seeing it work in your class ? 📌

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May 12

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📣We are offering another round of this highly sought-after course!

🗓Join us on June 5th and June 12th. This course is designed to help you succeed as a teacher of reading and pass the Foundations of Reading Test in the following states: Arkansas, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, & Wisconsin.

💙Jennifer Yeager has successfully helped thousands of teachers improve their practice and pass the Foundations of Reading Test. This unique learning experience is not to be missed!

✅Participants will leave with:
* Confidence to take and pass the reading test
* A deeper understanding of the foundations of reading
* 10 Pre-Recorded Modules
* Study Guide

🏷Early Bird Special: $225/per person

🔗Registration link in bio!

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May 4

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💙 From all of us at TLA, we are so grateful for you. Teachers - you are resilient, remarkable and read-aloud enthusiasts. This week especially we are thinking of you and thankful for you. 💙

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Apr 28

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📍Orthographic Mapping is a fancy term that describes a process for helping kids store words into their long-term memory.

♻️This three step process:

1. 🤚 Tap it (tap out the invdividual sounds)
2. 🔴Map it (use Elkonin boxes and move counters according to the sound phonemes)
3. ✏️Graph it (Write the corresponding letters (graphemes) for each sound)

is one that you can add into your whole group or small group instruction to support students learning of regular and irregular words. 😊

Are you familiar with orthographic mapping? How do you use it in your classroom? 🏫

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Apr 15

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💙Thank you Thursday. Today we’d like to highlight Jennifer Serravallo. Her work has impacted so many classrooms over the past few years, but especially as she worked responsively this year to publish a book for teachers in the midst of a pandemic all about connecting with students online! 💻

📚Thank you @jenniferserravallo , for inviting us into your learning and leading us to be responsive teachers of reading and writing in the process. 📝

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Apr 14

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📊This simple chart from the new book @sixshifts has been one we’ve used multiple times already to highlight the importance of authentic decodable texts as a part of classroom instruction and students independent reading. 📚

✅Have you checked out this the book “Shifting the Balance” yet? We just wrote a short blog post explaining how it is organized, summarizing a few key take aways, and offering our recommendation! 💙

(Spoiler alert 🚨: Get a copy!)

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Apr 6

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💙Today we'd like to highlight this incredible new film: Reflecting on Anti-bias Education in Action: The Early Years.

🎥The film shifts the focus away from the talking heads of experts and on to the voices of teachers committed to equity and diversity on a daily basis.

🎞By taking viewers into diverse early childhood classrooms, the film seeks to demonstrate the importance of teacher reflection on identity, context, and practice in anti-bias education and provides a much-needed resource for teacher education and professional development.

Check it out! Link in Bio. 📝

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Apr 2

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We are so thrilled to be reading this book. 📘 The @thesixshifts by @janburkins and @kidcenteredclassrooms.

Already we’ve read the introduction and are both challenged and encouraged. We can’t wait to learn more.

What are you currently reading ?

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Apr 1

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💙Thank you Thursday. Today we’d like to honor Donalyn Miller and her work around fostering a love of reading in all students.

📚We have been fans of her work ever since reading Book Whisperer. 📘Her ability to match texts to students so that it sparks in them a joy and curiosity is inspiring.

💪🏿Her latest @scholasticinc book Game Changer reminds us that reading is a culture and teachers and school leaders can and should create a culture around access and choice and representation.

🤚Thank you @donalynm for being a voice for reading instruction that informs the mind and connects to the heart. We are better for it.

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Mar 31

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✍️Today is Writing Wednesday! This chart reminds of us of the importance of writing notebooks in kids lives. Writing is VULNERABLE! And often students are a little apprehensive, to try new things on a draft because they want it to be just right. 📝

📘Writer’s Notebooks are a safe space to:

1. 💙Captures thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, ideas that are not related to mini lessons or “academics”
2. 💭Generate ideas that could become longer, later.
3. 🧠Try out new writing techniques before trying it in a draft of a piece.

Do you use writing notebooks in your classroom? What ways have you seen them used?🙋🏽‍♀️

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Mar 30

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🙋🏽‍♀️Teacher Tip Tuesday: Today we are sharing tips for making your mini-lessons short, explicit & robust from Jen Yaeger. Here are a few:

🩳Short: Remember teaching points are often “tips of the day” not assignments for all to do. Teach just ONE thing!
🔮Explicit: Ask yourself: What am I teaching and how will the students do this?
💪🏿Robust: What you have to say matters! Every time you do the writing alongside your students you grow and so do they!

💙What would you add to the list?

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Mar 24

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✍️Writing Wednesday. Today we bring you simple but powerful reminders on the types of mini lessons. Most of us are familiar with I do, We do, You do. But there are other kinds of mini lessons to add to your toolkit. 🧰

1. BootCamp Lessons ♻️: In Writers Workshop go through the whole writing process in just one lesson.
2. Inquiry Lessons 💭: Take a look at a mentor text. Notice and name what the author is doing and try to apply it to your own writing.
3. Self Assessment🔎: Using a checklist or writing progression, go through your writing with a specific lens and set goals.

Which of these lessons will you be trying this week? 💙

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Welcome to Teaching and Learning Alliance

Get Started with TLA

For Leaders

For Coaches

For Teachers

Our Impact on Education

What Our Clients Are Saying

Resources for Success

Digital Tools for Instructional Coaching: What Will We Keep Moving Forward?

Reflections on This Past School Year

Book Review: Shifting the Balance

Foundations of Reading: Sign up for the Workshop Today

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