K-3 Professional Development

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Professional Learning and Coaching

High-quality professional development (PD) is critical to ensure that all teachers and school leaders have what they need to be successful in their classrooms and schools. Effective PD can change mindsets and build new knowledge and skills necessary to provide students with effective instruction that positively impacts their literacy achievement.

Just like high-quality student learning, adult learning and PD should be intentional and designed to meet the individual needs of educators. PD opportunities should be ongoing, connected, and part of a long-term learning and improvement plan.

Coaching is one of the highest forms of evidenced-based professional development. Job-embedded coaching supports educators as they translate new knowledge and skills into new and/or improved classroom practice. Educators need support as they take new ideas, translate learning into actual practice, and change their own teaching behaviors and practices.

K-3 Professional Development

Students learn how to read during these primary years, and the teacher is the most important variable for ensuring that all students have effective reading instruction. Teachers serving in grades K-3 must know and understand the science of how children best learn to read and be able to identify those students who are struggling in order to provide targeted interventions.

To build educator’s capacity in understanding the science of reading, it is helpful to start by seeing the several decades of reading research distilled down into a conceptual model. Using the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Rope as theoretical models to understand the process and science of learning to read, teachers can better understand the instructional needs of students. Both models show the importance of and the interdependency between decoding/word recognition and language comprehension in order to become proficient at reading. They recognize that reading is not a singular skill, but the weaving together of interconnected processes.

In addition, these models provide a way to think about assessment and instruction, so teachers must understand how to utilize the models to guide their reading instructional practices. According to these models, K-3 reading instruction must be comprehensive and deliberate and include:

Decoding/Word Recognition so that students can accurately and swiftly decode printed words. Developing decoding skills involves:

Phonological awareness so students have the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual phonemes (smallest units of sound) of words which is the foundation for phonics instruction. It includes skills of segmenting words into syllables, manipulating sounds within words, and identifying onsets and rimes.
Phonics so students understand letter-sound correspondences and can decode unfamiliar, printed words by applying sound/symbol relationships and blending sounds to form words.
Sight recognition of familiar words so students recognize words they’ve already decoded and have in their long-term memory automatically and effortlessly when seen in print.

Language Comprehension so that students can make meaning from spoken words and the text that they decode. Developing language comprehension skills involves:

Background knowledge that allows students to call on their own life experiences and knowledge of the world to understand different texts.
Vocabulary knowledge so students can build their storehouse of vocabulary in order to comprehend the printed words they decode from the text.
Language structures including grammar and written syntax so that students can understand how sentences are formed and how they convey meaning.
Verbal reasoning so that students can develop their ability to make predictions, make inferences, draw conclusions, compare and contrast, combine ideas, and construct meaning.
Literacy knowledge so students can recognize the organizational differences and purposes between different text formats such as fiction or informational text.

Dr. Louisa Moats (2020) identified four major areas of knowledge that should be included in a core curriculum for pre-service and in-service teachers with a goal “to bring continuity, consistency, quality, and comprehensiveness to the many different programs, organizations, and systems through which aspiring and current teachers receive information about how to teach reading.” The four areas are:

Knowing the basics of reading psychology and development.
Understanding language structure for both word recognition and language comprehension.
Applying best practices in all components of reading instruction.
Using validated, reliable, efficient assessments to inform classroom teaching.

In early elementary grades, leaders must create a school culture and a system within the school that supports effective literacy instruction. Lead for Literacy, operated by Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, identifies four reasons that literacy leadership matters:

School leaders directly impact student achievement. School leaders are second only to teachers in their impact on student learning (Fullan & Pinchot, 2018; Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008).
School leaders promote equitable outcomes. School leaders play a critical role in supporting the literacy needs of all students, including those with or at risk for literacy-related disabilities, by designing and evaluating effective schoolwide reading plans within multi-tiered systems of support (Eagle, Dowd-Eagle, Snyder, & Holtzman, 2015).
School leaders build strong literacy teams. School leaders improve teaching and learning by promoting staff motivation, commitment, and a positive school culture (Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D., 2006).
School leaders are instructional leaders. School leaders actively support implementation of evidence-based literacy practices by providing access to high quality professional development and coaching/feedback opportunities (Steiner and Kowal, 2007).

Professional development for teachers and school leaders impacting students in grades K-3 should be connected to each LEA’s Move On When Reading literacy plan. It is essential that PD is based on data gathered and be relevant to what the literacy team specifically needs to build their knowledge, skills, and capacity to achieve intended literacy goals. Further, the professional development plan should be comprehensive and include effective measures chosen and implemented to move the needle and boost educator capacity such as adopting LETRS or using literacy coaching to improve instructional practice.

Professional development can be differentiated to include individual plans for specific teachers' identified needs. It can also be targeted to impact special groups such as new teachers or specific grade-band teachers at a school or district.

The Arizona Department of Education has professional learning supports in place for school leaders and teachers who wish to boost their knowledge, skills, and learning in the science of reading in addition to courses to prepare for the K-5 Literacy Endorsement.

Resources for K-3 School Leaders

IES Practice Guide-Foundational Skills to Support Reading and Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3^rd Grade

https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide/21

A Comprehensive K-3 Reading Assessment Plan: Guidance for School Leaders

https://www.centeroninstruction.org/a-comprehensive-k-3-reading-assessment-plan-guidance-for-school-leaders

Intensive Intervention in Reading (7 Modules)

https://intensiveintervention.org/training/course-content/intensive-intervention-reading

K-5 Literacy Endorsement (Arizona Department of Education)

https://www.azed.gov/standards-practices/k-5literacyendorsement

National Center on Improving Literacy School and District Resources

https://improvingliteracy.org/school

School Leaders Literacy Walkthrough Tool