Literacy Coaching Corner

The Clinton County RESA Early Literacy Coaching Team want to welcome you back to the 2021-2022 school year! We are excited to begin the important work of literacy learning. We also, want to acknowledge your hard work, patience and perseverance over the past two years. We celebrate your dedication to your students and your professional learning throughout a less than ideal year. Clinton County educators have clearly demonstrated time and time again that they will do what is best for students and families and we thank you!

*This newsletter will serve as an introduction to us, our work, and services available to you this year. For the following months, we will be providing more detailed information on the Essential Instructional Practices and resources you can use directly with your students!

Watch the video below to get to know the CCRESA Early Literacy Coaching Team a bit better!

As we begin the school year we want to take a moment to reflect and recognize the document that drives our work, The Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: K-3. We have been working with districts across the county through the use of this document in the form of coaching cycles, school-wide professional development, and a network made up of classroom teachers (Literacy Leader Network). Taken from the document:

We believe that the use of these practices in every classroom, every day could make a measurable positive difference in the State's literacy achievement. They should be viewed, as in practice guides in medicine, as presenting a minimum "standard of care" for Michigan's children.

We look forward to continuing this work as we move through the school year. Reach out to any of the Early Literacy Team if you would like more information about the essentials.

Literacy Coaching revolves around the ten Essential Instructional Practices and is based on a structured coaching model to support you in the best possible way in your classroom to ultimately lead to student achievement.

Coaching typically works in a cycle in which we might do all or some of these supportive activities including conferencing, modeling, observing, co-teaching, and using assessments.

If you are looking for support in:

• Motivation and engagement
• Read alouds
• Differentiated instruction/ small groups
• Phonological awareness
• Letter-sound relationships
• Explicit instruction
• Writing
• Vocabulary
• Content knowledge
• Reading materials and reading opportunities
• Observations and assessments or
• Family involvement

then we would love to support you using the coaching structures. Reach out to your local coach for more information on getting started!

We will also be supporting school-wide professional development and offering additional book studys and webinar opportunities throughout the year.

Remember that any coaching work you do, you will have the opportunitiy to earn SCECHs! Even for one on one coaching! :)

To begin, K-3 Early Literacy Coaches are all part of a statewide network of ISD and building coaches. This network was initiated by the State of Michigan Early Literacy Task Force in an effort to boost student reading and writing scores by focusing on research-based practices for teaching literacy.

All coaches start with three days of training which consists of:

1. Instructional practices. This training provides coaches with a foundation for what research-based practices are and how these practices can be applied to any curriculum or program
2. Coaching practices. This training provides coaches with an understanding of how to work with adult learners and systematic ways to work through coaching cycles.

Other training includes:

• Quarterly day-long training
• Annual Three Day Advanced Coaching Institute
• K-3 Essential Modules
• MAISA study groups
• Three Day Coaching Intensive (housed in schools working with teachers, students and coaching leaders)

Leaders of the ISD Early Literacy Coaching Network are continually finding ways to provide coaches with the knowledge and skills they need to bring to their teachers, always with student success being the ultimate goal.

The Literacy Leader Network was started in 2020-2021 with teacher representatives from our K-3 buildings. The purpose of the network is to have teacher leaders gain an understanding of the Essential Practices in Early Literacy K-3 and to work collaboratively with coaches as well as share knowledge with colleagues.

Literacy leaders include:

• Anna Hungerford and Cadi Drayton from Ovid-Elsie
• Sharon Brown from Pewamo-Westphalia
• Amy Verhougstraete and Erin Larson from DeWitt
• Michelle Clark from Bath
• Tammy Wilson and Elissa Rowland from St.Johns
• Brenda Epkey and LeAnn Schafer from Fowler

We are excited to work with these teachers again this year and hope that you will use your building leader as another resource on your literacy journey.

The early literacy coaching team has created the Clinton County RESA Literacy Website to provide general literacy and Early Instructional Practices resources for teachers professional learning. You will also find past issues of the Literacy Coaching Corner housed there. We recently updated the site to include upcoming professional learning development opportunities for teachers of Clinton County.

This summer we launched the Clinton County RESA Family Literacy Website. On the homepage of this website we posted a parent pledge for parents to pledge to make reading a priority over the summer. We were excited by the amount of families in Clinton County that made time for reading in order to avoid the summer slide.

If you didn't get a chance to look at our website, take a look and perhaps pass along the resources to your families. All of our summer newsletters are archived and available for sharing. Based on our analytics, parents engaged with these newsletters, but we know we did not reach everyone.

Fall is still a great time to share these resources. How To Read to Your Child is a great resource to share with parents. The video is posted below with additional resources found within the website.

Gail Cook

gcook@ccresa.org

Supporting Bath and Pewamo-Westphalia School Districts

Cecilia Stajos

cstajos@ccresa.org

Supporting Fowler and Ovid-Elsie School Districts

Ashley Windgnagle

awindnagle@ccresa.org

Supporting DeWitt and Ovid-Elsie School Districts