How we support you
The challenges in education are unlike any in recent history. Teachers are expected to have a wide range of instructional skills, extensive knowledge in literacy and other content areas while cultivating a culture within their classroom community to positively impact student growth.
The TLA elementary team, all former classroom teachers, is comprised of experienced literacy consultants with decades of experience supporting systemic change. The elementary team is uniquely positioned to develop and offer customized support for literacy coaches, reading specialists, special educators and classroom teachers.
How can Teaching and Learning Alliance help PreK-Elementary Schools?
We work together with district & building leadership, literacy coaches and classroom teachers to design and implement effective professional development. Our workshops and coaching are evidence-based while remaining customizable to the needs of the partnership.
Foundational Skills Workshops & Coaching
Strong readers need a strong foundation. Word study, including phonemic awareness and phonics, is an essential component of comprehensive literacy instruction. All children need explicit instruction in systematic phonics in order to help them become strong decoders and encoders. This has been an essential part of our work for decades.
We can support you with you phonemic awareness, phonics, structural analysis, morphology, vocabulary and spelling through workshops and coaching. We also have our own preK-3 program that is research-based, sequential, multi-sensory and fun! Find a sample our own phonics curriculum here .
Reading Comprehension Workshops & Coaching
Reading is meaning-making. All of our work, whether focused on foundational skills or reading comprehension, consistently includes opportunities for children to transfer and apply what they are learning to real texts where comprehension is the end goal. We help you develop instructional routines that cultivate motivated skillful readers. Our workshops and coaching topics include interactive read aloud with accountable talk, strategic small group instruction designed around student goals, joyful and effective whole class instruction, and strategies for creating robust and engaging text sets to support knowledge building and vocabulary.
Writing Skills Workshops & Coaching
Writing instruction is essential and often overlooked. We have found that many teachers do not think of themselves as writers and as a result have less confidence in teaching writing to their students. Our workshops and coaching elevate both the teacher as writer and the student as writer. We use looking at student work protocols to help us determine goals for teaching and learning. This process helps to strengthen not only the curriculum, assessment and instruction, but also the JOY in the classroom. We can support you with curriculum development, interactive writing, grammar and more.
Capacity Building & Sustainability
Thriving schools embrace a culture of ongoing learning. We work together with leaders in the classroom, reading specialists, coaches and administrators to develop and implement look-fors, peer inter-vistitations and learning walks that continue the work and build momentum for lasting change.