Minutes from Wednesday, November 5th

The Reading & Literacy Committee met Wednesday morning to discuss how the Literacy Action Plan will impact the School Improvement Plan and what changes in the timelines were needed to effectively initiate much of the plan's ideas.

Starting off with celebrations, Ms. Book proceeded to inform the committee of her success with her students and vocabulary. In particular, her students are beginning to use the taught vocabulary in their writings. Ms. Book expressed that it was vocabulary strategies such as the KIM strategy that appeared to have helped. Ms. Lepore continued with celebrations as she described that she had observed students "stepping up" in her classes. Specifically, her students are involved in a self-selection of novels and assignments, but she has seen students working with other students as peer coaches and assisting students with key understandings. Kudos to Ms. Book and Ms. Lepore for their outstanding teaching!

Next, the R&L Committee examined the Literacy Action Plan and its timelines for discrepancies and areas that needed updating. Overall, the committee agreed that many of initiatives of the LAP were already active, some particulars needed to be brought up again and maintained for true effectiveness.

Look to this blog for updates to the LAP as the R&L Committee continues to make adjustments and prepares to add the LAP to the School Improvement Plan.

Minutes from Wednesday, September 17

The Reading and Literacy Committee met at 7AM in the Board Room to discuss the following:

Present: Jennette Gonzalez; Jim Smith; Bethany Abercrombie; Mark Lippstreuer; Dolores Miller; Giovanna Portanova

I. Celebrations:

Thanks to Jim Smith for reading the Word of the Day.
Thanks to Monica Hansen for creating word of the day laminated posters.

II. Updates
A. Words of the Week - see celebrations
B. Secondary Reading League’s Conference - offered to committee members. Presenters include Chris Tovani. The Conference is Saturday, November 8, 2008.

III. Discuss Chapter 2 in “Creating Literacy-Rich Schools For Adolescents”
A. Universal Literacy Instruction - Seven Defensible Strategies
B. Pro / Con issues -Good ideas that come from everyone. Successful schools appear to have developed common language. The strategies are transportable from subject to subject and can be seen in every content area.

IV. Needs Assessment
A. Student Survey - may need to wait until we have information from faculty
B. Faculty Survey - need to know what is actually be used in the classrooms. Jim Smith will develop a "survey" that will ask for teacher examples regarding the seven defensible strategies. This can occur for the first 15-20 minutes of a team meeting. The strategies will be collected and reviewed by the R&L committee to develop and share common strategies.

Adjourned at 7:50 AM

Minutes from April 30, 2008

The Reading and Literacy Committee met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the following topics:

1. Blogs & Student Writing

2. Literacy Coaches - concerns, responses, & what now

3. SIP Team Restructuring & Choosing a new R&L Committee Chair

4. Review past year's goals

Members present: Jim Smith (chair), Katarzyna Butryn, Debra Ridgner, and Ewa Adamska

Each point will be posted separately to allow members to view and post thoughts/comments separate from one giant post.

Celebrating Blogs!

To start the meeting, we briefly discussed the use of Blogs as a means for communication with others about what we do. Two articles, one from eSchool News discusses how blogging may be a means to help teens with their writing. The second was from Tom Parillo who sent an article on technology writing and teens to the English team. Both articles suggested that teens write often, but don't see their texting as writing. However, teens that were blogging were found to actually improve their writing because of the processes involved in formulating their thoughts. If you would like copies they're available in the reading office.

Literacy Coaches

We first discussed some of the concerns regarding the idea of Literacy Coaches. It seemed as though some people were under the impression that to volunteer to do this, you would allow yourself to be evaluated, or judged, by either administrators or worse - your peers. A quick review of the language of the memo clarified that it stated "classroom visits by their colleagues will be provided."

Despite this, there were only two teachers who responded to the memo and both have are concerned about their future employment for next year due to cut backs. The Committee discussed the implications of this including a brief discussion regarding whether our school was ready or not. This is an interesting point that I would encourage members to discuss.

Is Ridgewood ready for teachers to be trained as expert content-area literacy teachers?
On a final note regarding this, members present suggested that the idea of coaches be tabled until next fall when things are more settled. Are there other ideas?

SIP Restructuring & Committee Chair

Members were made aware of the changes that the SIP Team will be making for the next school year. Among those changes, Jim Smith announced his decision to co-chair the SIP Team with Michelle Kumor. Therefore, a new Reading and Literacy Chair must be selected before the end of the year. Committee members were asked to consider people already on the committee, or consider someone new.

Any thoughts?

Goals

Finally, the Committee reviewed the goals from last year. We discussed what we were able to accomplish, including items that were never on the goals list. Committee members were asked to review the goals, assess what was accomplished and why and which were not and why. In addition, members were asked to think about goals for next year.

If you like to discuss any of those accomplishments or what you wished we had accomplished, you're encouraged to do so here.

Responses to Literacy Coach Memo

There may be some questions regarding the memo that was provided to teachers today requesting volunteers to be trained as literacy coaches in their content area. As chair of the Reading and Literacy Committee, I would like to address some concerns that may arise and offer this blog as a forum for further discussion so that we may ultimately better serve our students.

First, the idea of a content area literacy coach was developed as a result of the types of responses received following the introduction of the District's Literacy Action Plan. As the Reading and Literacy Committee carefully reviewed the responses, the prevailing concern was how were teachers going to be trained and learn the literacy strategies necessary to make the action plan a reality. The committee discussed what the most efficient and best practice professional development plan would accommodate teachers' needs. Therefore, it was decided, by the committee, to focus training on specific teachers who would then train their peers using the time and resources already available. Furthermore, the committee used research to make the decision that peer-to-peer training and collaboration from another expert in the same content area was best practice.

Next, the amount of work necessary for this to work is outlined in the memo. The decision to have specific dates and times was left out until it was clear who would be volunteering. Therefore dates and times would be decided by those volunteering so as to work with their personal schedules.

Third, professional learning communities require ongoing collaboration. Thus, the planning and reviewing of lesson plans is already in place.

Finally, the first set of observations would be by the trainer, or the district reading specialist, and the peer observations would require either release time or using a planning period to observe. The observations for the purpose of learning and training were understood not to be evaluative. However, because literacy is a priority, it may be inferred that evaluators will want to see teachers using best practice literacy strategies in the classroom.

On behalf the Reading and Literacy Committee, I encourage and welcome any and all responses.

Welcome Reading & Literacy Enthusiasts!

This might be an efficient method for our committee and other interested parties/individuals to share thoughts, ideas, or concerns regarding reading and litearcy at our school or in general. What are your thoughts about it?