Teaching & Learning Alliance-Supporting Academic Leaders and Coaches

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Mar 2

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👩🏽‍🏫Today is TeachingTip Tuesday! We are discussing a framework of the various ways to lift the rigor of your teaching. As you adjust the rigor of one component, consider the scaffolds you will need in the others. 🧮

First, here are several components of a lesson:

📘The text : Consider the text complexity -not just the level, but the language, the themes and ideas.

💭The thinking: Consider the ways you ask students to grapple with their learning. Are they doing the bulk of the work or are you?

✍️The task: Consider how students are engaging with the content. Are they using tech?

🗣The talk: Consider how students use language to support and extend their thinking.

✅Now, as the text is increasingly more challenging, consider adding more sentence stems to the talk to support students. As the thinking you are asking them to explore is sophisticated, consider keeping the task simple to start.

Let us know how this framework supports you in your teaching and learning. 💙

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Feb 25

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday! Today we’d like to shout out Jacqueline Woodson and her books. Her use of poetry to write long form is captivating and draws in students who might not think of themselves as readers.

📖If you don’t know these titles, we recommend grabbing them at your local bookstore or checking them out at the library:

💙Each Kindness
🏡The Other Side
👧🏽Brown Girl Dreaming
📖And her newest book , Before the Ever After published by @penguinrandomhouse

Thank you Jacqueline for using your words to shape our imaginations, cause us to reflect and inspire our actions.💙

@jacqueline_woodson

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Feb 24

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📝It’s Writing Wednesday! This is a simple idea for shared writing experience that could be adapted for littles up to adolescents (and adults!)😎

1. Share a powerful short video. (We used the Pandas in DC Zoo sledding)🐼
2. Students respond with one word. They may write it on a sticky note or shared class Jamboard 📒
3. Play with the words to create a class poem. Read & Enjoy together 📖

This could be adapted for whole group or small group instruction. It’s a great way to introduce a new topic to students, build share understanding and create collaborative culture. 💙

✅ How would you use this idea with your students?

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Feb 23

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🖤As we are teaching & learning during Black History Month, our students are combining great literary analysis skills in both reading and writing. 📚

📝This simple template was used with students to help them write a short essay highlighting the character traits using evidence from the texts they were reading.

✅An introduction explains how the person made a difference in the world

💙The thesis is the heart of the essay with two supporting paragraphs unpacking the evidence to support that claim.

🌍The conclusion allows the student to reflect on their study of the person impacted not just the world, but their own worldview.

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Feb 19

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It’s Phonics Friday! 🔤While many of us are facing snow ❄️ and indoors even more than usual, we were reminded of a quick activity that you can adapt for any phonemic awareness or phonics skill you are hoping to reinforce with students.

🕵🏾‍♀️Scavenger Hunts are a huge hit with pre-k, k & 1 students. 👏🏿

✅What you’ll need: sticky notes & pen. Kids don’t have sticky notes at home? They could just place the paper near the item.

👓What you can find: Initial sounds, ending sounds, middle sounds, digraphs, blends, the possibilities are endless.

Swipe ➡️ to see if you can figure out what begins with B. 🅱️

Happy Hunting! 💙

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Feb 18

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday! Today we’d like to shout out Cornelius Minors and his work. He has helped us grow in creating a classroom culture that starts with teachers listening and seeing our students for who they are really are. 👓

💥His @heinemannpub book “We got This” is a must read for teachers! You could also check out his interview with @officialascd around equitable human centered grading. It is 🔥

Thank you Cornelius for the way you always honor the work of those who’ve gone before you and in so doing bring us along with you as we grow.💙

@corneliusminor

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Feb 17

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🗓Today is #Randomactsofkindness Day. 💙 In the midst of all the heavy and hard we are all facing, we are reminded of the great quote Dr. Dyer in Palacio’s Wonder.🚀

“When given the choice between being right and being kind. Choose kind.” ☺️

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Feb 16

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Feb 12

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Feb 11

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday. Today we’d like to highlight Gholdy Muhammad and her framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy.

📖 We’ve been reading her book @scholasticinc “Cultivating Genius” in our book club this year and are so challenged and charged with restoring equity and excellence in today’s classrooms. Her work drawing from history and then unpacking the 4 Pursuits is powerful:

1. The Pursuit of Identity 🆔
2. The Pursuit of Skills 🖇
3. The Pursuit of Intellect 💭
4. The Pursuit of Criticality 👓

🙏🏽Thank you Gholdy Muhammad for your shaping us. 💙

📸Photo credit: @makeredorg

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Feb 10

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✍️Writing Wednesday: Do you know about the Rule of Three? 3️⃣

💡This is a simple strategy to show your students in their own writing. Once you know about it, you’ll start seeing it in all the books you read. Authors love to use the “power of three” to build on to ideas, add emphasis, or build suspense.

(See what we did there!) 🥳

✅Check out the three examples above from simple picture books to complex novels:

1. Ezra Jack Keats, A Snowy Day ❄️
2. C.S. Lewis, Lion Witch & the Wardrobe🦁
3. Patricia Polacco, Thank you Mr. Falker 👨‍🏫

Whether you are writing morning messages, making google slides, or working on literary essays you can model the Rule of Three and see how it can lift the level of your students own writing. 💙

🏷Tag a teacher who could use this idea 💡 in a lesson!

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Feb 9

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Feb 4

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday. Today we’d like to highlight Sonja Cherry-Paul and her incredible work in anti-racist literacy.

📖 One book that particularly helped us this year was her “Flip your Writing Workshop” from @heinemannpub . She was doing flipped classroom before it was “cool” or before all of us knew how much we needed to because of remote or hybrid learning. Our teaching of writing has been tremendously impacted by this work. ✍️

🙏🏽Thank you Sonja Cherry-Paul for your advocacy, your brilliance and your belief in the ability of all students to thrive. 💙

📸Photo credit: www.sonjacherrypaul.com

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Feb 3

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📕Did you know today is World Read Aloud Day?🎉

Here are a few new titles that we are loving to add to your read aloud list. 📚

🥳Parker Looks Up by Jessica Curry & Parker Curry
📓New Kid by Jerry Craft
💜Sulwe by Lupita Nyongo
🧱What we’ll build by Oliver Jeffers
🦶Run Wild by David Covell

Whether you have a new title or a beloved book, we hope today is filled with stories that shape our imagination and change how we see our selves and others for the better. For that is the power of literacy. 💙

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Feb 2

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💻Tech Tip Tuesday! 💡This one is super simple, but really helpful if you are using breakout rooms in Zoom. Did you know you can “auto close” break out rooms?🤗

⏳No need to keep track of “how long groups have been working” You can set them to come back to the main room after an allotted amount of time. 🎉

📹 watch the video of just how to set it up.

Step 1️⃣: Create breakout rooms
Step 2️⃣: Click the options widget at the left of the screen
Step 3️⃣: Select “Auto Close break out rooms after ___ minutes. Fill in your time!

Voila! That’s it! Hope it helps in your small groups for reading and writing. 💙

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Feb 1

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Mentor Text Monday. 📖
🖤On this first day of Black History Month we are highlighting “Dream Builder” a beautiful picture book about Philip Freelon, the architect who helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 🏛

👨🏾‍🏫Learning of Philip’s own story - his struggles with reading and strengths in art, the mentorship of his Pop Pop and the making of architect is beautiful model not just of overcoming obstacles but black joy that acts as a mirror or window for students. 🪞🪟

💙 Have you heard of this beautiful book? Let us know how you use it with your kids.

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Jan 29

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🎯It’s Phonics Friday! Today we are highlighting how you can use #Jamboard to create simple and effective words sorts and word building activities.

💙The one highlighted today helps kids build simple onset & rimes, sometimes known as “word families”. You can create one board, duplicate it and share it with small groups whether online or in person!

💡Want more ideas for using Jamboard to support phonics in small groups? We’ve got more coming your way!

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Jan 28

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🙏🏽Thank you Thursday. Today we’d like to highlight Kathy Collins for how she has helped support our growth as educators. Most recently, she encouraged a host of coaches and administrators at our Coaching Summit about what brings true joy in teaching and learning. 💙

📖Specifically her @heinemannpub book “I Am Reading” has been transformative in supporting early and emergent readers, even in the midst of this school year.

Thank you Kathy! Cheers to you! 🥳

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Jan 27

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🥳Today we’d like to highlight the incredible coaches and administrators from Hawaii, DC, Boston and more, who over the past two days were together for the Coaching Summit to inspire Joy, Inspiration & Possibility. 💭

💝What a gift to gather and share ideas 💡, learn from incredible keynotes and presenters and leave with renewed vision for coaching.

These are our “words” for Wednesdays that we hope you can experience in your teaching and learning, too! 💙

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Jan 26

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