The Literacy Coach's Game Plan: Making Teacher Collaboration, Student Learning, and School Improvement a Reality

Literacy coaches, teachers, principals, and administrators alike share the common goal of student achievement-but when schools are practically overflowing with assessment data of all types, where do you begin to create a plan for improving literacy instruction across grade levels and content areas? In fact, the answer already hangs on every bullentin board, fills every journal, and is part of every literacy program a school might choose: Student work is "the way in"

Instead of using assessments to merely label, grade, or determine whether students should move on to the next grade level and then neatly file the data away, The Literacy Coach's Game Plan shows you how to use student work to better understand how individual students are progressing, to make clear and public grade-level goals to differentiate the curriculum, and to ultimately plot the course of effective instruction.

Authors Maya Sadder and Gabrielle Nidus present a detailed, easy-to-use plan for translating coaching initiatives into higher student achievement, offering

Approaches for developing strong relationships with teachers built on trust and communication

Suggestions for facilitating planning sessions with teachers, engaging in meaningful classroom observations, and preparing authentic schoolwide initiatives for professional development

Ideas for working with teachers to find trends in a class's work, as well as techniques to help set goals based on individual students' work

Support as you find a balance between your daily activities and the additional ones you know will bring about true change

Tools to respond to the difficulties most coaches face

No more waiting for standardized tests to tell you how you are doing as a school! By using the strategies in this book, your individual coaching sessions and professional development workshops can remain continually focused on student progress.