Martin Luther King School in New Haven, Connecticut is in its third year of Cornerstone work. Because we were both new coaches last year, and because we had several new faculty members at our school, we decided to work our way through all of the comprehension strategies one more time. We also wanted to use our comprehension strategy instruction as a means of building community across grades—a great need at Martin Luther King. This is what we did:

We chose a picture book for each strategy which would be used throughout the school. Every teacher received a copy. As coaches, we selected the first book, Something Beautiful by Sharon Dennis Wyeth for use with the connecting strategy. We thought about what should be included in a good explanation of connecting and how the modeling would look with that particular book. We wrote up a lesson plan for this and presented it at a staff meeting. We also included an activity that we hoped the whole staff would try. The activity was the "Connection Chain" and by the end of the study, every child in our school had written a personal connection to this story on a paper chain link. The completed chain extended through much of our building.

Because our connecting focus was so successful, we decided to continue with the strategy questioning. This time, a committee of teachers got together and chose the book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox. This team also planned the introductory lesson as well as the activity, and presented it to staff. Children were asked to think of one question based on this text and then to provide an answer. Their questions and answers were displayed on hallway walls and bulletin boards.

Next we moved on to determining importance. A different team of teachers selected My Dream of Martin Luther King by Faith Ringgold. The children reflected on either a fact or dream in the story that was important to them and wrote about it. Their work was again displayed throughout the school.

This month we are concentrating on synthesizing and the story chosen is another picture book by Mem Fox, Koala Lou. We look forward to seeing what this committee will invent for a school-wide lesson.

We hope to continue this whole-school focus this year as we embed comprehension strategies into genre studies. We found that in addition to introducing teachers to some great picture books and reinforcing their understanding of strategies, this committee approach also helped teachers in our school to work together collaboratively and to take on leadership roles.