Lit Coach Notes
JEN MUNNERLYN FEBRUARY 2010 ACS, ABU DHABI
Here comes Carrie!
As you know, Carrie
Ekey is coming this
month.
She will be working with all grade-
level teachers from KG1- Grade 5.
Lone will send out a schedule of these
meetings. I realize taking time away
from your kids is stressful, however
having a consultant like Carrie here for
an entire week allows us to really dig in
and work through some important
topics.
KG1 is moving to a full day
and will be using a new program
called Creative Curriculum. This
program will allow KG1s work in
literacy to flow directly into the types of
skills and philosophies we use with our
Reading and Writing Workshops and
Continuums. Exposing our new “full-
dayers” to an environment rich in
print, authentic literature, and plenty of
Check my blog for reflections on Writing
Workshop, Parent Communication,
Interesting blogs and more!
reading and writing experiences is the
goal.
KG2-Grade 5 teachers will
meet with Carrie to think about
how to use our instructional
aides to increase student
learning. As a school we are very
lucky to have TAs in every grade level.
However, knowing exactly how to
utilize these highly-skilled ladies in our
classrooms, on a daily basis, can be
difficult to pin down. Carrie will be
giving us ideas for using TA support in
Reading and Writing Workshop.
The Reading and Writing Teams
will work with Carrie on using
the Developmental Continuums.
Although all the teachers will be part of
the discussions about using the
developmental continuums, assessment
notebooks and student notebooks in
our full-staff meetings (Monday and
Wednesday, Feb. 22 and 24), Carrie will
ES TEAM: Heather, Laura,
Farah, Nandita, and Alison
www.literacybytes.com
conduct more intensive training for the
Reading and Writing Vertical Teams.
Everybody knows Carrie!
I worked
with her in Shanghai an
d Laura did
so in Denver. Although she
has an
international presence, she
was
most recently consulting
in New
York.
Representatives from these teams will
share with the grade levels what is
accomplished and learned.
W h a t E l e p h a n t ? Wo r d
Study!!! We are ready to begin
thinking about Word Study and where
we c a n g o w i t h b e s t p r a c t i c e
approaches in the future. Carrie will
offer some general hints, tips and
guidelines for teams and especially for
the WS Team who will have their first
meetings with me in April.
How Exciting!
These five ES teachers, myself, and three MS
teachers will be attending for ACS!
 Collaborative Goals
AT A GLANCE-
K-2 and 3-5 A few of the FEBRUARY MEETINGS WITH JEN
We have had our first set of
collaborative goal meetings. This
work, aimed at helping us practice DATE MEETING TIME
using protocols to examine student
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY KG2 DRA DURING
data, is important to the identified
10TH ANALYSIS COMMON
next steps of the school. So far,
PLANNING
both groups have found the TIME
protocols useful in pushing their
thinking further. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3-5 WRITING 3:30-4:30
10TH CELEBRATION
Of course, as with any new (AND PROTOCOL)
undertaking, this process will be FOR UNIT 3
reviewed, refined and tweaked to
ensure we get the most out of every SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14 - RR SESSION 9 FIRST
PD DAY SESSION OF
meeting.
PD DAY
At this point though, I
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14 - K-2 GOAL: PM LAST
celebrate two things:
PD DAY ANALYSIS SESSION OF
1. We are continuing the PD DAY
collaborative work which has
FEBRUARY 21-25: CARRIE KG1-5 SEE
been one of the most influential EKEY HERE SCHEDULE
sources for learning this year.
(According to many of the ERD
Surveys.)

2. We are digging into data.

Although it might not seem like Be sure to see the ES Meetings Q3
much, it is a solid start. Document Lone will send out.

EARLY RELEASE DAYS

Type to enter text

Early Release Days are important
professional development
opportunities for teachers. Here is a link
to a post at the National Staff Development
Counsel’s blog: http://www.nsdc.org/
learningBlog/post.cfm/fixing-pd-s-respect-
problem If you read it, let me know what you
think.
After our last Regie Routman
session KG2-5 teachers were asked to
complete a survey about the
effectiveness of ERDs. The results of the
survey will be discussed at the next RR
session, February 14.
Thank you for taking the survey! :-)