Remember to Pass it on

As I reflect on Cornerstone’s Winter Conference held in Stamford, CT just a few weeks ago, I’m reminded of how quickly we forget.  The conference was packed full of information on science inquiry and literacy, non-fiction writing, vocabulary development and phonics just to name a few! You might be wondering how to share all of it with your colleagues.  Here are a few suggestions with related resources available for download when you read this article on our website at www.cornerstoneliteracy.org.

If phonics caught your attention as an area of need for your staff, you could begin by:

1. Doing a walkthrough in your school to see how teachers are teaching phonics. 
1. Is there a regular time each day that students are getting phonics instruction?
2. Is the phonics instruction done as a whole-group activity so that students “hear” it in order to learn it?
3. Is there consistency in the scope and sequence of what is being taught within and across grades?
4. Is there rigor in the pacing of the teaching and learning?  Do your teachers know that the “letter of the week is dead”?  If not, you may want to share this article with them, “Letting go of Letter of the Week” by Bell and Jarvis.
2. Playing a phonics game with your staff to see how well they know their phonemes.  It is a quick and easy way to remind everyone of the 44 phonemes that children should learn.  You can use the same game from this Assessing Phonics’ Power Point. 
3. Sharing some of the key research highlighting the importance of phonics by distributing the “Putting Reading First” booklet. or watch the phonics videoconference held last October.
4. Watching the Cornerstone phonics video, “There’s No ‘F’ in Phonics”
5. Examine Tower Hamlets Phonics Scope and Sequence which also includes the four part phonics lesson. Click Here to Read

If non-fiction writing is a hot topic for some of your teachers, get a small book study going with your new book, Make it Real: Strategies for Success with Informational Texts by Linda Hoyt.

If your life is full of “pebble words” when you really want “rock words”, it is time for more attention to vocabulary development.  Read this article, “Integrating curriculum through the learning cycle: Content-based reading and vocabulary instruction” by Spencer & Guillaume.

If you don’t seem to have enough time in the day to address all of your students’ scientific questions, it might be time to look at a cross-curriculum study of science and literacy: 

1. Begin with the “5 E’s” scientific inquiry process chart which summarizes the article, “Integrating Science and Literacy Instruction With a Common Goal of Learning Science Content” by Pratt and Pratt.
2. Some teachers may want to extend students’ journaling by introducing science journals.  One article to get them going is, “The Art of Reviewing Science Journals” by Shepardson and Britsch.
3. If a grade-level team is about to plan a unit of study around a science literacy topic, they may want to begin their planning using the “backwards planning” suggested in Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins or they could develop a concept map.  To read up on concept maps, go to http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/
   TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm or http://www.utc.edu/Administration/WalkerTeachingResourceCenter/
   FacultyDevelopment/ConceptMapping/

If you want to know more about the WILF or the Lesson Study experience the Stamford Coaches had developing their science literacy units of study, consider emailing them or setting up a videoconference with them.  The Coaches worked very hard and learned a lot in the process.  We thank them for learning they provided all of us!

So, as the days and weeks are passing you by and testing is about to make you cry, remember how important it is to pass the learning on!