Banting, Whittier, Meadowbrook, Hadfield, Prairie and Hillcrest-PCL Schools

This week we continued our professional learning with coaches and principals as we grow our instructional leadership in literacy.

Elementary Principals took a deep dive into the seven principles of apprenticeship learning:

(1) Observation and responsive teaching. Teachers must become expert observers of what students are doing, especially in small groups and design instruction based on strength and needs.

(2) Modeling and Coaching. Teachers use gradual release of responsibility with demonstrations and explicit language. Principals should be looking for modeling in small group instruction.

(3) Clear and Relevant Language for Problem Solving. Teachers use language prompts that enable children to initiate planning, monitoring, and regulating actions for resolving problems with efficiency during literacy activities. Each of us needs to understand the language used to prompt problem solving.

(4) Adjustable and Self-Destructing Scaffolds. Teachers provide adjustable scaffolds that are removed when they are no longer needed. Scaffolds can be linguistic and non-linguistic through thoughtful logs and anchor charts as a few examples.

(5) Structured Routines: Teachers create predictable frameworks with organizational structures that promote children's independence. Have we ensured that our schedule is set up to support this work? Teachers should be meeting with students in guided reading groups or LDG's often (3-5 days a week with students who struggle and 1-2 days a week with students who are advanced).

(6) Assistant and Independent Work. Teachers provide balanced opportunities for children to work at assisted and independent levels. Purposeful planning for assisted and independent practice opportunities make learning stick! There should be only 2 goals for independent practice: automaticity and transfer.

(7) Transfer. Teachers teach for the transfer of knowledge, skills, and strategies across shifting circumstances and for varying purposes. Teachers must teach for transfer and principals must know how to look for it.

"The single most influential component of an effective school are the individual educators within that school." ~ Marzano