Hands On Heads Literacy Coaching 

Dear Principals,

Coaching

Rather than asking ‘How do you think that went?’ or ‘What did you think of the lesson?’ to a teacher being observed, try these 3 reflective questions, using a coaching approach to literacy:

1. Which part of the lesson do you think had the most impact on student learning because of *insert goal? How do you know?
2. If you were to teach this lesson again, what’s one thing you’d adjust and why? And one thing you'd keep and why?
3. What evidence did you notice of student understanding or engagement during the lesson?

For more coaching questions, download my 25 Literacy Coaching Prompts for Literacy Leaders here.

Classroom 

A MAZE/CLOZE isn’t only to be used with DIBELS. Have your teachers use this strategy to build comprehension (connection to The Big 6) and expand vocabulary (connection to The Reading Rope).. A CLOZE can be used as a reading response across all year levels for familiar texts and for retrieval practice of explicitly taught vocabulary.

When completing a CLOZE outside of assessment purposes, not only are students practising how to complete a CLOZE, but they have an opportunity to 'show what they know' and to:

• use background knowledge of a familiar text
• recall previously taught vocabulary
• draw on grammar knowledge and context clues to insert the correct word
• see a constructed mentor text

Here's an example of how I introduced a CLOZE (a text response essay mentor text) to a literature study unit with Jackie French's 'Fire' →

To your literacy success,