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The Literacy Coach s Handbook A Guide to Research
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Author(s): Sharon Walpole, Michael C. McKenna
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Year: 2004
Language: english
THE LITERACY COACH’S HANDBOOK
SOLVING PROBLEMS IN THE TEACHING OF LITERACY
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The Literacy Coach’s Handbook: A Guide to Research-Based Practice
Sharon Walpole and Michael C. McKenna
The
Literacy
Coach’s
HANDBOOK
A Guide to
Research-Based Practice
Sharon Walpole
Michael C. McKenna
THE GUILFORD PRESS

New York London
To the literacy coaches with whom we have worked
© 2004 The Guilford Press

A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
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Except as noted, no part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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The Publisher grants to individual purchasers of this book nonassignable permission to repro-
duce all pages for which permission is provided in a footnote. This license is limited to you, the
individual purchaser, for use with your own clients or students. It does not extend to additional
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tution constitute a site license. This license does not grant the right to reproduce these materials
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walpole, Sharon.
The literacy coach’s handbook : a guide to research-based practice / Sharon Walpole, Michael
C. McKenna.
p. cm.—(Solving problems in the teaching of literacy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59385-034-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Reading (Elementary)—United States. 2. Literacy programs—United States—
Administration. 3. Group work in education—United States. I. McKenna, Michael
C. II. Title. III. Series.
LB1573.W364 2004
372.41—dc22
2004003282
About the Authors
Sharon Walpole, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of
Delaware, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in literacy education.
Upon graduation from the University of Virginia, she spent 3 years as a full-time school ad-
ministrator working with elementary teachers to develop schoolwide reading programs.
She has worked with literacy coaches in Iowa, Virginia, Georgia, and Delaware as part of
the Reading Excellence Act and Reading First Reforms. She was a member of the Center
for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement research team studying the characteristics
of Beat the Odds schools. Her research interests include the design, implementation, and
evaluation of schoolwide reading programs.
Michael C. McKenna, PhD, has been Professor of Reading at Georgia Southern University
since 1989. For 12 years prior to that, he was Professor of Reading at Wichita State Uni-
versity. He has authored, coauthored, or edited 12 books and more than 80 articles, chap-
ters, and technical reports on a range of literacy topics. He recently coedited the Handbook
of Literacy and Technology, and was awarded both the National Reading Conference’s
Edward Fry Book Award and the American Library Association’s Award for Outstanding
Academic Books. His research interests include comprehension in content settings, reading
attitudes, technology applications, and beginning reading.
v
Preface
The Literacy Coach’s Handbook represents a best-evidence summary of a series of

topics that we have found to be essential to address in school-based reforms. For
literacy coaches, we hope it is an informed overview of important aspects of their
work and also a resource to guide their continued professional development. It is
also an initial effort to summarize the research that is most useful to our work, the
wisdom of practice that we are gaining from and with literacy coaches, and the
challenges we still face.
In Chapter 1, we begin with the story of one literacy coach as she moved from
her university-based undergraduate training to the classroom, to important profes-
sional networks, and to her job as coach with its many challenges. We know many
coaches have had similar developmental experiences and few have had the chance to
reflect with others about those transitions. This chapter could be compared with rich
descriptive studies of the experiences of other coaches in other settings.
In Chapter 2, we define a schoolwide reading program as something that can-
not be bought from any vendor of literacy materials, however well constructed.
We argue that a schoolwide program starts with an assessment system to identify
the needs of the children to be served and then locates and allocates all available
resources: time, groupings, and materials. The schoolwide program also addresses
the needs of adults in the school by scheduling time and allocating resources to
support their continued growth as professionals. This chapter could be compared
with school-based case studies to examine the costs and benefits of different
choices in allocating and coordinating resources.
In Chapter 3, we identify and summarize important sources of research-based
advice about literacy development that are useful in schools. This advice, while
necessary to the work of a literacy coach, will not be completely sufficient without
expansion. In fact, we hope that the research summarized in this chapter will be
quickly expanded with new findings, as researchers learn more about what makes
vi
Preface vii
a difference in the literacy lives of children and teachers. Therefore, we have also
included strategies for locating information in handbooks, books, and journals.
Chapter 4 is a primer on assessment as it pertains to schoolwide initiatives.
Assessment in schools is complex, and it is particularly so for the literacy coach.
Viewed at the school and classroom levels, assessment data can establish goals for
schoolwide programs, and it can provide access to appropriate instruction and in-
tervention for all children. Assessment can also prove divisive. We (and, we hope,
others) will continue to examine this issue and to write about assessment systems
that provide essential information to answer important questions about achieve-
ment in schools and its impact on children and teachers.
In Chapter 5, we address the issue of instructional schedules. We consider both
the scheduling of protected time for literacy instruction and intervention in whole-
group and needs-based groups across grade levels and the content of that instruction.
We provide some scheduling choices that we have personally used with success, and
then we share sample schedules created by literacy coaches dealing with specific re-
sources in specific schools. We know literacy coaches who identify the creation of an
elegant school-level schedule as one of the most crucial steps toward establishing
their reading programs. They (and we) would benefit from evaluations of the rela-
tionship between specific scheduling choices and growth in student achievement and
additional case studies of scheduling successes and failures.
Chapter 6 discusses scheduling issues within grade levels and classrooms. We
identify essential components of instruction in a comprehensive reading program,
and then nest them within grouping configurations and within the precious min-
utes available for instruction. Our goal in this chapter is to provide a model that
each literacy coach must revisit and refine time and time again, making it more
and more specifically geared toward the resources in his or her reading program.
This chapter is about choices; we know that it could be compared with alternative
options, and we invite others to publish those options.
In Chapter 7, we take on one of the many obstacles in school reforms—the is-
sue of materials selection. While we identify many sources that literacy coaches
might consult for information about commercial materials for literacy instruction,
we actually argue that true coaching demands knowledge not of the “ratings” of
materials but of their actual day-to-day contents. We provide a template for close
examination of literacy materials that we have used to help coaches make in-
formed choices and also to better understand the choices that they have made.
Like most of our colleagues, we want teachers to have materials consistent with re-
search and with best practice; however, we know that how materials are used is
more important than what they are. This chapter would benefit from comparisons
with new research on the effects of particular instructional materials on various in-
dices of literacy achievement.
Despite the best efforts of teachers and coaches, some children still require inter-
vention in order to achieve and maintain adequate literacy skills and strategies. In
viii Preface
Chapter 8, we summarize the work of researchers who have helped us to concep-

tualize intervention and then we provide an overview of potential contexts for inter-
vention during and after school. We also describe interventions that have been suc-
cessful and provide sample intervention plans targeting specific areas of literacy
achievement. This is an area in which new research is sorely needed, especially re-
search on interventions for English language learners, special education students,
and preschool children, and interventions that target vocabulary development.
In Chapter 9, we review research on professional development and present
our own conception of the literacy coach as designer of a professional develop-
ment system responsive to the needs of adults and children. Such a system com-
bines work outside the classroom to build knowledge of literacy achievement,
literacy development, and literacy instruction with work inside the classroom in
modeling, observation, and feedback. We place this chapter close to the end of this
volume because literacy coaches cannot actually craft coherent professional devel-
opment systems until they have addressed the issues identified in previous chap-
ters. This chapter, though, is the heart of the literacy coach’s work—the part that
is truly new and exciting to us. Unfortunately, compared to the other issues ad-
dressed in this book, this is the area about which research gives the least direction.
It will take the combined efforts of many, many researchers and many, many liter-
acy coaches to produce descriptive and empirical evidence of the effects of differ-
ent professional development systems on the knowledge and skills of teachers and
on the literacy achievement of children.
In our final chapter, Chapter 10, we introduce an issue which we have only
just started to grapple with—the issue of levels of leadership and their interaction
in the success and failure of school-based reforms. We know that the most success-
ful coaches with whom we’ve worked have established their own leadership, but
we also know that they have done it in decidedly different ways. Some have as-
sumed administrative authority, some are partners with administrators, and some
are simply knowledgeable, flexible instructional role models. Identifying some po-
tential routes to successful leadership is the goal of this chapter. Once these routes
are identified conceptually, we know that they could be investigated descriptively
and empirically.
We are committed to learning more about extensive, supportive, and effective
professional development efforts in schools—efforts that improve the work of
teachers and the literacy opportunities of children. We maintain that literacy
coaches can be change agents. However, we need to work harder to understand
the roles that coaches might play, the choices that coaches might make, and the ef-
fects of those choices on schools, teachers, and children. We invite you to add your
voice to the voices of coaches quoted in this book (all of whom are real but pro-
tected by pseudonyms) and to our voices, by tackling real problems in real schools
and by writing about your successes and failures. That is the work that we have
begun here.
Contents
CHAPTER 1. What Is a Literacy Coach? 1

Literacy Coach as Learner 3
Literacy Coach as Grant Writer 8
Literacy Coach as School-Level Planner 11
Literacy Coach as Curriculum Expert 14
Literacy Coach as Researcher 15
Literacy Coach as Teacher 19
The Literacy Coach: A New Role 20
CHAPTER 2. What Is a Schoolwide Reading Program? 21

Schoolwide Research 21
Assessment 24
Grouping 31
Selection of Curriculum Resources 33
Allocation of Time 36
CHAPTER 3. Reading Research 45

What Is SBRR, and How Can You Get Some? 46
Phonemic Awareness 47
Phonics 49
Fluency 53
Vocabulary 55
Comprehension 56
Finding Answers 59
CHAPTER 4. Reading Assessment 65

Types of Tests 65
An Assessment Strategy 67
Interpreting Group Assessment Scores 68
Multiple Assessment Hats of the Literacy Coach 73
Improving Group Achievement Scores 77
A Final Word 87
ix
x Contents
CHAPTER 5. Instructional Schedules 88

Porter Highland School 89
McMillan Academy 91
Bradenton Elementary 92
White Oak School 94
Time for Teaching 95
A Word to the Wise 97
CHAPTER 6. Instructional Tasks and Procedures 100

Stage Theories in Reading and Spelling 101
Instructional Emphases 102
Instruction for Kindergarten Readers and Writers 104
Instruction for First-Grade Readers and Writers 107
Instruction for Second-Grade Readers and Writers 112
Instruction for Third-Grade Readers and Writers 116
Building a Program 119
CHAPTER 7. Selecting Materials and Programs 120

A Brief History of Basals 122
Today’s Basal Basics 125
Researchers React 128
Thoughtful Systems for Evaluating Materials 130
The Problem of Layering 155
The Political Context 160
CHAPTER 8. Intervention Programs 162

What Is the Best Intervention? 162
Why Intervene? 163
Who Needs Intervention? 164
Contexts for Intervention 166
Content of Intervention 175
Caveat 182
Intervention Planning 182
CHAPTER 9. Providing Professional Support 185

Research on Professional Support Systems 185
Knowledge-Building Sessions 190
Data-Based Presentations 196
Book Clubs and Study Groups 197
Observation and Feedback 199
Modeling 216
Professional Resources 218
Establishing Coherence 219
CHAPTER 10. Leadership 221

Conceptualizing Leadership 221
Issues of Authority 223
Supporting the Struggling Teacher 225
What about the Resistant Teacher? 227
Many Voices 228
REFERENCES 234
INDEX 243
CHAPTER 1
What Is a Literacy Coach?
Once there was a peddler who sold caps.

But he was not like an ordinary peddler,
carrying his wares on his back.
He carried them on top of his head.
First he had on his own checked cap,
then a bunch of gray caps,
then a bunch of blue caps,
and, on the very top,
a bunch of red caps.
—SLOBODKINA (1940, n.p.)
For a literacy coach, a stack of caps might be most appropriate. A literacy coach is
not a principal, not an assistant principal, not a reading specialist, and not a
teacher. On a given day, he or she probably dons each of these caps, but not for
long. In fact, a literacy coach is fashioning a new cap—one that fits better than any
of those, and one that is sensitive to the needs of the teachers in a particular school
building. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the many
roles of the literacy coach through an overview of professional standards and also
through the eyes of a literacy coach. The chapters that follow will provide more
specific discussion of the knowledge and skills that literacy coaches must have in
each of their roles.
Christy Harris (a pseudonym) is a literacy coach. Her job, funded by the
Reading Excellence Act, is to direct a reform of the elementary reading program in
a rural school. Her school is small, with 369 students in grades K–5, 20 classroom
teachers, two special educators, and four Title I teachers. In January 2001, her
school was in trouble. The information below comes from documents drafted at
that time.
1
2 THE LITERACY COACH’S HANDBOOK
Mt. Pleasant Elementary (again, a pseudonym) is isolated geographically, and

many of its families are struggling. There is no public transportation. There are no
day care centers or licensed in-home day care providers in the community. Few
children attend the free prekindergarten program offered at the school; the pro-
gram is not full. Most parents are employed, but there are few jobs paying living
wages. Twenty-two percent of Carsen (another pseudonym) County’s children live
in poverty; 55% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Forty-four percent of
Carsen County residents aged 25 or older have not earned a high school diploma.
The school-based team at Mt. Pleasant identified many problems within the
building. Curriculum was vague and implemented haphazardly within and across
grade levels. Teachers had insufficient professional development. There were few
materials for implementation of guided oral reading or fluency work, and the ex-
isting phonics program was not implemented with fidelity. There was no consis-
tent work to develop vocabulary knowledge, even though children appeared to
have weak vocabularies. Few teachers understood or taught comprehension strate-
gies.
Test data supported this fairly bleak picture. Mt. Pleasant Elementary School
was in the fourth year of Title I “needs improvement” status. Table 1.1 provides
mean third-grade scores on the Stanford Achievement Test—Ninth Edition in
2000. The mean for Mt. Pleasant was far below the national norm in all areas of
the curriculum. No classroom-based data were regularly collected at Mt. Pleasant
to inform instruction for struggling children.
In the pages that follow, we will update you on progress at Mt. Pleasant.
Christy Harris, Mt. Pleasant’s literacy coach, is driving the reform in collaboration
with an outstanding principal. Our intent is that you will be inspired by her story,
and that you will learn with her and from her.
TABLE 1.1. Mean Percentile

Scores on Stanford Achievement
Test—Ninth Edition for Mt.
Pleasant Third Graders, 2000
Subtest Score
Reading 33
Language Arts 29
Mathematics 19
Science 30
Social Studies 32
What Is a Literacy Coach? 3
LITERACY COACH AS LEARNER
Successful literacy coaches must make a substantial and permanent commitment

to their own learning. That message is surely not new, but it is communicated
more loudly, aggressively, and specifically now than ever before. Literacy coaches
are responsible for understanding both what is known about the process of read-
ing and the teaching of readers, and what is learned as that knowledge base ex-
pands. To illustrate, we will trace the evolution of language about phonics instruc-
tion through several widely distributed publications about the content knowledge
required of literacy leaders in schools.
In 1996, the International Reading Association and the National Council for
Teachers of English teamed to produce literacy standards for students in kinder-
garten through grade 12. These standards were broad and focused on meaning
construction across texts; the goal was to establish standards for readers and writ-
ers that could be applied across ages and stages of reading development and across
states. The third standard, quoted below, referred vaguely to the use of phonics:
Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and ap-
preciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other read-
ers and writers, their knowledge of word meanings and of other texts, their word
identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound–letter
correspondences, sentence structure, context, graphics). (International Reading Asso-
ciation & National Council of Teachers of English, 1996, p. 25)
Clearly, phonics is one of many textual features that students can use to under-
stand text; the standard’s implication for teaching was that teachers should know
about phonics as one of those systems that readers might use. What they should
know about it, though, was not specified.
Later documents were much more specific about what teachers should know
about phonics and be able to do with children. In 1998, the Professional Stan-
dards and Ethics Committee of the International Reading Association published
specific skill-based competencies for reading specialists and reading coordinators.
Some of those were more specific to phonics. In fact, these reading professionals
needed comprehensive understanding of instruction in word identification, vocab-
ulary, and spelling, defined below:
6.1 teach students to monitor their own word identification through the use of syn-
tactic, semantic, and grapho-phonemic relations;
6.2 use phonics to teach students to use their knowledge of letter/sound correspon-
dence to identify sounds in the construction of meaning;
6.3 teach students to use context to identify and define unfamiliar words;
6.4 guide students to refine their spelling knowledge through reading and writing;
6.5 teach students to recognize and use various spelling patterns in the English lan-
guage as an aid to word identification; and
6.6 employ effective techniques and strategies for the ongoing development of inde-
pendent vocabulary acquisition. (International Reading Association, Professional
Standards and Ethics Committee, 1998, pp. 14–15)
Phonics, although targeted more specifically, was still only one language system—
one that readers should be able to coordinate with syntax and semantics in word
recognition. The mandate to reading specialists and coordinators was that they
could teach children how to use these various language systems.
Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science (American Federation of Teachers, 1999)
took a different approach. In that document, the entire language structure of Eng-
lish—with phonetics, phonology, morphology, orthography, semantics, and syn-
tax and text structure—was clearly targeted, with specific knowledge and skills in
each area. The document called for a whole-scale refocusing of teacher-training
programs and professional development programs to expand this knowledge base.
Specific teacher skills in the area of orthography, quoted below, provide a sample:
Choose examples of spelling correspondences, patterns, rules, and exceptions.

Recognize and sort predictable and unpredictable words.
Adopt and learn a systematic plan for teaching decoding and spelling.
Link decoding and spelling instruction.
Evaluate the design of instructional materials. (American Federation of Teachers,
1999, p. 19)
Semantics and syntax were likewise defined and described, but never as language
systems readers would coordinate in word recognition. The emphasis was clearly
on phonics.
The Learning First Alliance (1998) also abandoned this vague language about
the role of phonics in word recognition: “The bottom line is that children have to
learn to sound out words rather than relying on context and pictures as their pri-
mary strategies to determine meaning” (p. 12). The alliance targeted professional
development for current teachers, recommending substantial commitment to
teacher training at school, in an effort to coordinate standards, assessments, and
curriculum. They identified models for that professional development with signifi-
cant follow-up activities. And they specified the content for that professional
development as separate categories of knowledge and skills, with potential profes-
sional development strategies for each category. That system of knowledge, skills,
and professional development is presented in Table 1.2 for phonics and decoding.
By 2003, the International Reading Association again revised its Standards for
Reading Professionals to focus more squarely on candidate performance. This
time, rather than define word recognition processes in very specific cognitive lan-
guage, the document referred directly to large-scale research syntheses in this area.
TABLE 1.2. Phonics and Decoding Competencies
Possible professional
Teacher knowledge Teacher skills development exercises
Understand speech-to-print Choose examples of words Practice various active
correspondence at the that illustrate sound–symbol, techniques including sound
sound, syllable pattern, and syllable, and morpheme blending, structural word
morphological levels. patterns. analysis, word building, and
word sorting.
Identify and describe the Select and deliver Identify, on the basis of
developmental progression in appropriate lessons student reading and writing,
which orthographic according to students’ levels the appropriate level at
knowledge is generally of spelling, phonics, and which to instruct.
acquired. word identification skills.
Understand and recognize Explicitly teach the Observe, demonstrate, and

how beginner texts are sequential blending of practice error correction
linguistically organized—by individual sounds into a strategies.
spelling pattern, word whole word.
frequency, and language
pattern.
Recognize the differences Teach active exploration of Search a text for examples
among approaches to word structure with a of words that exemplify an
teaching word attack variety of techniques. orthographic concept; lead
(implicit, explicit, analytic, discussions about words.
synthetic, etc.).
Understand why instruction Enable students to use word Review beginner texts to
in word attack should be attack strategies as they read discuss their varying uses in
active and interactive. connected text. reading instruction.
Note. From Learning First Alliance (2000, p. 15). Copyright 2000 by Learning First Alliance. Reprinted by
permission.
Table 1.3 provides a bibliography of those works in which this knowledge base is
communicated. Taken together, they represent a history of reading research; in ac-
cord with these standards, a reading specialist or administrator would understand
the current scientific basis for describing word recognition, and would also be able
to describe the development of this scientific knowledge base over the past three
decades.
This gradual movement—from a view of word recognition as a coordinated
cueing system that teachers help children to orchestrate, to a focus on specific con-
tent and process knowledge for decoding—did have effects on the knowledge and
training of teachers. Teachers were trained in specific years by teacher educators
with specific access to, knowledge of, and biases about reading development. Few
teachers had access to continued training as the knowledge base developed. Many
TABLE 1.3. References Informing the 2003 International Reading

Association’s Standards
Handbooks of reading research

Pearson, P. D., Barr, R., Kamil, M. L., & Mosenthal, P. (Eds.). (1984). Handbook of
reading research. New York: Longman.
Barr, R., Kamil, M. L., Mosenthal, P. B., & Pearson, P. D. (Eds.). (1991). Handbook of
reading research (Vol. 2). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Kamil, M. L., Mosenthal, P. B., Pearson, P. D., & Barr, R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of
reading research (Vol. 3). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Theoretical models and processes of reading

Singer, H., & Ruddell, R. B. (1976). Theoretical models and processes of reading (2nd ed.).
Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Singer, H., & Ruddell, R. B. (1985). Theoretical models and processes of reading (3rd ed.).
Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Ruddell, R. B., Ruddell, M. R., & Singer, H. (1994). Theoretical models and processes of
reading (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Preventing reading difficulties in young children

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in
young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Report of the national reading panel

National Reading Panel (NRP). (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based
assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for
reading instruction. (NIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services.
Handbook of early literacy research

Neuman, S. B., & Dickinson, D. K. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of early literacy research.
New York: Guilford Press.
teachers learned to support student decoding by teaching them to rely on syntax

and semantics; few developed comprehensive knowledge of the orthographic sys-
tem. Christy Harris was no exception.
Christy had always been aggressive about her own learning. She graduated
from a teachers’ college in 1990 with a BS in elementary education and started her
teaching career at Mt. Pleasant. Like all first-year teachers, she devoted much of
her energy that year to just getting through the day. Falls turned quickly to sum-
mers, though, and Christy gained experience and confidence, building classroom
learning communities with children in kindergarten, in first grade, and in second
grade.
By 1992 Christy had more questions than answers. She started a master’s de-
gree in an extension program of a regional university. She attended classes part-
time, taking two courses each semester and three each summer. In 1994, she
earned her master’s degree in elementary education. In terms of early reading de-
velopment, Christy learned many of the basics of whole-language instruction, and
she recognized the need for authentic children’s literature, but she acquired little
practical information about teaching reading. At the time Christy finished her
master’s program, only four of the nine works cited as the current knowledge base
for reading professionals (see Table 1.3) had even been published.
Christy was still not satisfied. In the summer of 1999, she began to explore
“balanced literacy” programs. A state department of education teacher trainer en-
couraged her to think about dividing her literacy time into “Four Blocks”: Guided
Reading, Self-Selected Reading, Writing, and Working with Words (Cunningham,
Hall, & Sigmon, 1999). What really appealed to Christy about the Four Blocks
approach was that it offered her a chance to both balance her time and to attend
more to phonics instruction. She also appreciated the Self-Selected Reading com-
ponent, which encouraged students to make better use of her classroom library. It
was her first introduction to the teaching of writing; she had not taught writing at
all. Four Blocks was an important steppingstone for Christy.
She quickly learned that there were teacher-friendly professional resources
available to guide implementation of Four Blocks (e.g., Cunningham, Hall, &
Heggie, 1994; Hall, Cunningham, & McIntyre, 2002), and also Web-based net-
works to support her (e.g., http://teachers.net; http://www.wfu.edu/~cunningh/
fourblocks). Christy bought and read the books, participated actively in Web-
based discussions, and forged connections with teachers and teacher trainers from
various states. By the summer of 2000, she was making professional presentations
at schools as they implemented Four Blocks programs.
Christy’s own interpretation of the Four Blocks structure is presented in Fig-
ure 1.1. She set up a literacy environment in which she observed children in their
own reading and writing, and taught short lessons to address needs that she no-
ticed. As Christy became more comfortable with management of her own Four
Blocks, she became less comfortable with the quality of the comprehension in-
struction she was providing. She again looked for new ideas. She found a profes-
sional book, Mosaic of Thought (Keene & Zimmerman, 1997), to inform her
work. As she had done with Four Blocks, she had Web-based discussions with
other teachers about using strategies from Mosaic of Thought, and she began to
include comprehension strategy instruction in her Guided Reading block.
Although Christy had earned a master’s degree, discovered a classroom-based
curriculum on her own, entered a professional network, begun to work as a con-
sultant, and amassed her own professional library—all evidence of a significant
commitment to keeping her own learning up to date—her professional develop-
ment was just beginning. In the fall of 2001, it switched into high gear. Chapter 3
will summarize much of what Christy learned. Beginning at that time, either di-
rectly or indirectly, she was introduced to the rest of the research listed in Table
Guided Reading Self-Selected Reading

• Christy used a mini-lesson each day to • Children chose books from a rich,
focus on comprehension. literature-oriented classroom library.
• Children read from a basal plus trade • Children selected a bag of books to read
books. each week.
• Children engaged in choral, echo, and • Children used the five-finger rule
partner reading. (counting difficult words) to avoid books
that were too difficult.
Writing Working with Words
• Each day, Christy taught a mini-lesson • Christy led word wall activities.
that she found in a teacher’s resource • Christy taught mini-lessons on word
book. families.
• Children selected their own topics and • Children used game-like procedures to
genres. work with word families.
• Children wrote freely in journals.
FIGURE 1.1. Christy’s Four Blocks organization.
1.3. Christy began her literacy coach training. This training, as you will see, corre-
sponded directly to the mandates the International Reading Association had set
for reading professionals. Through a combination of learning and doing, Christy
became the reading professional that she needed to be. In the following sections,
we describe Christy’s learning in relation to the International Reading Associa-
tion’s standards1 available at that time.
LITERACY COACH AS GRANT WRITER
The reading professional will be able to

12.3 supervise, coordinate, and support all services associated with
literacy programs (e.g., needs assessment, program development,
budgeting and evaluation, and grant and proposal writing.
Frequently, school-level reform efforts require money—money for new curriculum

materials, money for additional intervention personnel, money for professional de-
velopment. State and federal moneys, once available through pro forma grant
competitions, are increasingly competitive. They demand extensive research and
writing, and they require a commitment to scientifically based practices.
1
The standards at the beginning of each section below are from International Reading Association, Professional
Standards and Ethics Committee (1998). Copyright 1998 by the International Reading Association. Reprinted by
permission.
In the fall of 2001, Christy joined her school-based team in applying for a
competitive grant to reform their reading program. There was little time between
the announcement that the funds were available and the date the applications were
due. In October 2001, Christy attended her first state-level technical assistance
workshop. She left the workshop knowing that she had to start reading in earnest
and that there was little choice in what she should read. She started with Pre-
venting Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
That text introduced Christy to the need for systematic instruction right from the
start of school; she learned that parents and preschoolers needed support in lan-
guage development; and she began to focus her attention both on early interven-
tion and on prevention.
In December 2001, Christy attended a state-level best-practices institute along
with two colleagues from her district office, her building principal, and eight
teachers from her school. Together they attended research talks, attended informa-
tion sessions about the grant-writing process, met with state department officials,
and plotted. They carried more reading materials home with them: Teaching
Reading Is Rocket Science (American Federation of Teachers, 1999) and the re-
port of the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000). When they got home from the
conference, there was just over a month until the grant application was due.
Christy’s principal realized that this was an enormous opportunity for his
school, and that he needed Christy’s work to get it finished. He hired a substitute
for her classroom in those final weeks. Christy worked as part of a writing team,
with the principal, the district curriculum director, a professional from the local
community collaborative, and a Title I teacher. Together they wrote, and in the
process of writing, they were able to craft a new vision for reading instruction for
Mt. Pleasant Elementary.
The grant was submitted January 31, 2001. It contained a comprehensive de-
scription of the community, an analysis of 3 years’ standardized test data, a survey
of current curriculum and practice, and a plan. In a nutshell, the plan promised the
following:
• The school would hire a literacy coach.

• The school would restructure its schedule to allow grade-level teams daily
common planning periods.
• Teachers would assess student performance in phonemic awareness, pho-
nics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
• Teachers would deliver phonemic awareness instruction that targeted blend-
ing and segmenting.
• Teachers would use a structured phonics program.
• The school would provide teachers with professional development in adapt-
ing the phonics program to the specific needs of the students.
• Teachers would use guided oral reading procedures for all students in mate-
rials at the appropriate level, including materials designed to practice pho-

nics patterns in context.
• An intervention team would provide additional assessment and instruction
to struggling students in small groups in the classroom.
• Teachers would directly explain, model, facilitate guided practice, and plan
independent application of comprehension strategies.
• Teachers would read aloud daily to build vocabulary knowledge.
• The school would partner with community service providers to offer com-
prehensive family literacy services directed by a family literacy coordinator.
And then they waited.

By April 2002 (when awards were announced), Christy was already con-
vinced that they had to make their plan a reality, regardless of whether they were
awarded the money. She was convinced that the children of Mt. Pleasant Elemen-
tary deserved better instruction. She was also convinced that she had not been us-
ing research-based practices in her own classroom. Finally, she was convinced that
she could work with the members of her staff to update their understanding of
reading research and instruction, and that together they could support increased
reading achievement at Mt. Pleasant.
Christy’s team did win the support of federal dollars for the project. The
award, over $700,000 for 2 years, meant that the work could start in earnest. In
the chapters that follow, we will share much of the research background necessary
for winning these federal grants, and we will provide resources and models for
school-based teams to plan, write, and implement these grants.
In May, Christy was one of five candidates interviewing for the job of literacy
coach at Mt. Pleasant. She was not a shoo-in; in fact, there were candidates from
other states, and she had to compete for the job. She wanted the job, but she
would have gladly stepped aside for someone with better training. She had read
the federal reports, and she realized that the teachers needed to do different things,
but she was not certain that she knew what those things were. She was most con-
cerned that the literacy coach understand and maintain the vision for change that
had been crafted in the grant application. When Christy was hired as literacy
coach, it was with the understanding that she would continue to be aggressive
about pursuing her own professional development.
That summer, state-level professional development for literacy coaches com-
menced. Their first professional development experience was a summer institute—
a series of eight back-to-back 3-hour sessions. The summer institute was a crash
course in reading research and school change. The sessions began with the story of
a year’s work by a literacy coach in a federally funded school reform effort: creat-
ing a school-based assessment system; allocating instructional time for students;
creating professional development time for teachers; buying and organizing new
curriculum materials and a new text collection; reframing the curriculum for
explicitness in phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary and compre-
hension; collecting, analyzing, and presenting school-level achievement data; con-
ducting professional development sessions; and observing teachers and providing
feedback. It was a lot to think about in 1 week.
At the end of that session, Christy read Every Child Reading: A Professional
Development Guide (Learning First Alliance, 2000). She completed a survey de-
signed as a response to that document and rated a series of possible professional
development experiences as most beneficial to her, moderately beneficial to her,
slightly beneficial to her, or unnecessary. In the area of phonemic awareness, she
indicated that she needed to learn to critique instruction. For decoding, she
wanted to extend her current knowledge to focus more on word-sorting tech-
niques; she needed practice determining reading levels for individual children; she
needed to learn about how to review texts for beginning readers for their utility in
instruction; and she wanted to learn more about the use of spelling data to inform
decoding instruction. For fluency, she really wanted to work on devising a system
for collecting data and then interpreting assessment results to identify children for
intervention. In the area of vocabulary, Christy wanted very much to learn how to
choose words for instruction. For comprehension, Christy was confident in her
own knowledge and skills.
LITERACY COACH AS SCHOOL-LEVEL PLANNER

12.6 plan and implement programs designed to help students improve
their reading and writing including those supported by federal,
state, and local funding.
Literacy coaches, especially those who work in school-level initiatives funded

through state and federal grants, are site-based school reformers. They are charged
with working in every classroom so that every teacher can have the support he or
she needs to implement a specific, school-level program. They work with all teach-
ers to understand and implement a schoolwide reading program—a concept we
define in Chapter 2.
After returning from her summer literacy coach training, Christy worked with
her building principal to create a school-level schedule conducive to teaching,
learning, and professional development. Without any formal training in schedul-
ing, they relied on some general guidance that Christy had gotten in the summer
training, and they turned to a third-grade teacher who had a knack for it. Figure
1.2 shows Mt. Pleasant’s original basic instructional schedule.
Second
Kindergarten First grade grade Third grade Fourth grade Fifth Grade
8:30 Literacy Literacy Literacy
9:00 instruction instruction Specials and instruction
and
9:30 intervention
and professional and
intervention development intervention
10:00 Specials and
10:30 Lunch professional
development
11:00 Lunch
11:30 Specials and Lunch
12:00 professional Lunch
development
12:30 Literacy Specials and Lunch
1:00 instruction professional Literacy
and development instruction
1:30 intervention Specials and and
2:00 professional intervention
development
2:30 Specials and
3:00 professional
development
FIGURE 1.2. Mt. Pleasant’s instructional schedule.
Christy reframed the schedule for the four teachers who provided reading in-
terventions at Mt. Pleasant. Her goal was to move those interventions into the
classrooms. Again, this was no small feat. The planning process was iterative for
Christy, and this was not always comfortable for teachers; changes had to be made
along the way. There were many obstacles. The main ones were difficulties in
meshing the schedule with the rules for intervention provided by the state.
Children identified for state-level services had to be served outside of the language
arts block and outside of mathematics instruction. That left little time to use.
Christy held strongly to her commitment not to pull children out for reading inter-
vention. Interventions were conducted within the language arts block, providing
additional instruction for struggling children. The intervention schedule for one
Title I teacher at Mt. Pleasant is presented in Figure 1.3.
Finally, Christy had to plan (and replan) her own schedule. She needed to
schedule her time so that she could interpret data, observe teachers, and conduct
professional development sessions. She realized that this sort of strict scheduling
was essential:
Time Place Focus

8:45–9:30 First-grade classroom A Special education intervention
9:30–10:15 Regular education remediation
group
10:15–11:00 Kindergarten classroom A Regular education remediation
group
11:00–11:45 Lunch
11:45–12:30 First-grade classroom B Regular education remediation
group
12:30–1:00 Special education intervention
1:00–1:45 First-grade classroom C Regular education remediation
group
1:45–2:15 Special education intervention
2:15–3:00 First-grade commons Collaborative planning time
3:00–3:30 Reading room Individual planning time
FIGURE 1.3. Schedule for K–1 Title I teacher.
“I need to set a schedule. It is so hard not to be crisis-driven. I come in with

an agenda and end up in left field. If I set times during the day to do the
things I need to do, it will help me (and the teachers) manage my time
better.”
Christy’s dream schedule is presented in Figure 1.4. Even as Christy became more
consistent in her use of time, she always had to be flexible and respond to the
Time Place Focus

8:15–12:00 Classrooms Observing, modeling, and coaching in classrooms
12:00–12:45 Lunch
12:45–2:00 Reading room Planning for professional development
Reading professional literature
Selecting, ordering, and organizing curricular materials
2:00–2:45 Reading room Providing professional development for tutors and
intervention providers
2:45–4:30 Library Monitoring tutors
Scoring and interpreting assessments
Providing professional development
FIGURE 1.4. Christy’s dream schedule.

needs of administrators, teachers, and children. Her morning sessions were often
interrupted by meetings with central office personnel and last-minute administra-
tive paperwork. Her lunches were always spent discussing children and instruction
with teachers. She learned over time that she could both set a general schedule and
respond to individual needs. She compromised this way:
“I usually have a ‘to-do’ list, which may or may not get done. If a crisis hits,
forget it! One thing I have had to realize with this job is that I never com-
plete anything. That is not necessarily a bad thing. I have had to realize that
my job satisfaction must come from evaluating our progress over time, not
completing tasks.”
LITERACY COACH AS CURRICULUM EXPERT

12.4 select and evaluate instructional materials for literacy, including
those that are technology-based.
Among the barriers to effective literacy instruction are inexplicit, uncoordinated

instructional materials. Literacy coaches evaluate curricula currently in place
against research-based standards, and help to locate and implement new curricula
that are better matched to the research base and to the needs of children.
For Christy, curriculum selection was a high-stakes, expensive game. Her
teachers needed the tools to teach children. She selected curriculum materials to
correspond with the research that she was learning and with the needs of her
teachers and children. We will summarize the research that she reviewed in Chap-
ter 3, and we share the process she used in Chapter 7; Table 1.4 presents a pre-
view.
Christy eventually directed $67,000 of the money in her grant to the pur-
chase of new curriculum materials and leveled classroom libraries. She reviewed
these materials on her own, page by page. She participated in two different ma-
terials fairs; in a 4-day meeting during the summer of 2002, where she worked
as part of a team to examine core reading programs and intervention programs
for their match to research; and then in a 2-day institute in January 2003.
Christy found that many different publishers had materials consistent with re-
search in specific dimensions. For her school, she chose the program that ap-
peared best integrated in teaching and applying phonics knowledge, and whose
comprehension strategy instruction resonated with her; she knew that the pro-
gram would support her teachers as she built their knowledge of comprehension
strategies instruction.
TABLE 1.4. Research That Informs Curriculum Selection
Curriculum
area Relevant findings
Phonemic • Blending and segmenting are the most important tasks.
awareness • Initial lessons should be oral, but later lessons should
include manipulation of alphabet letters.
Phonics • The curriculum must include a preset sequence for

introduction of letter sounds.
• Instruction in how letters map to sounds must be explicit.
Fluency • Guided oral reading procedures improve fluency.

• Timed repeated-reading procedures improve fluency.
Vocabulary • New words should be taught before text reading.

• Lessons that include definitions and context are most
effective.
Comprehension • Comprehension strategies should be directly explained with

declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge.
• Comprehension strategies should be taught before, during,
and after reading.
LITERACY COACH AS RESEARCHER

10.2 administer and use information from norm-referenced tests,
criterion-referenced tests, formal and informal inventories,
constructed response measures, portfolio-based assessments,
student self-evaluations, work/performance samples, observations,
anecdotal records, journals and other indicators of student
progress to inform instruction and learning.
12.2 adapt instruction to meet the needs of different learners to
accomplish different purposes.
12.5 use multiple indicators to determine effectiveness of the literacy
curriculum.
14.2 conduct research with a range of methodologies (e.g.,
ethnographic, descriptive, experimental, or historical).
Literacy coaches are charged with answering questions few PhD-level researchers
would be able to answer easily. They are also questions with high-stakes conse-
quences for children.
1. To what extent are teachers able to implement the school’s curriculum?

2. To what extent are student needs being addressed by the school’s curricu-
lum?
3. In what ways must the curriculum be supported and/or modified to pro-
mote both teacher implementation and student achievement?
Building research skills has been extremely challenging work for Christy. Al-
though the model in the federal grant guidelines is clean and sensible, the reality of
school-based data collection and analysis is messy. In the summer of 2002,
Christy’s summer institute experience included a framework for selecting appro-
priate assessments for phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension
for each grade level. She also participated in a calendar-building exercise, where
she first marked specific times during the year when data could be reported to var-
ious stakeholders (children, parents, teachers, administrators, central office staff,
and the state); she then planned backward for the data to be analyzed, entered,
and collected, as well as for the training of personnel doing the data collection.
Clearly, all of these constraints on the data collection system meant that it was the
number one priority.
Christy chose assessments for phonemic awareness, decoding, and fluency
that summer. She investigated assessments that researchers had mentioned during
the technical assistance workshops. She used the Internet to gain access to test ma-
terials and reviews. She contracted for staff training with trainers recommended by
the test designers. Initial assessment training was scheduled for teacher workdays
before school opened in 2002. Training sessions included both collection and in-
terpretation of the assessment data.
Implementation of the assessment plan was an enormous challenge. Christy
decided to use a schoolwide assessment team (SWAT) approach, which we discuss
further in Chapter 2. The team members started by establishing interrater reliabil-
ity. The five testers first worked together: One child was tested by one team mem-
ber, with the other four observing and shadowing the scoring. They shared their
scores and resolved discrepancies. Then they called another child. When they had
reached agreement, they began to work as partners, still using one member to test
and the other to shadow and score. Finally, they were ready to work alone. This
procedure established reliability in the initial data set, and it also established trust
and respect among the team members.
After the data were collected, Christy struggled with some of the nuts-and-
bolts issues in data management. She struggled to organize her data efficiently on
the computer. Some of the big issues were managing such a large data set and pro-
viding timely classroom reports to teachers. By the middle of the year, Christy was
working with technology specialists in her district’s central office to design a more
user-friendly system that was geared directly to her needs.
Once the data were organized, Christy summarized the results and shared
them with her teachers. The first wave of data was very powerful for the teachers.
They saw that the children’s performance was unacceptable, and they felt com-
pelled to do something about it. As the year progressed, teachers realized that
assessment-based instruction was very difficult. Christy commented:
“One of the biggest weaknesses I see across the board is the fact that most all
of our teachers teach books and programs, not kids. There is very little infor-
mal assessment going on in classrooms. Teachers seem reluctant to evaluate
kids’ work to determine if their teaching is causing students to learn or not.
And when they do evaluate, they seem unsure of how to plan for small groups
or redesign lessons to teach students the skills they aren’t getting with whole-
class instruction. Breaking the barrier to show teachers how to teach small
groups effectively will be a huge jump in the project. Getting them to use infor-
mal assessments will help our students gain by leaps and bounds. One teacher
has discussed how difficult it is to do (and I realize this is so)—but I pointed
out to her how much better it will be to know each step of the way how the stu-
dents are doing, rather than teaching the book all year, coming down to the
end, and suddenly realizing that several children don’t know any of the mate-
rial that they have covered all year.”
This reluctance was gradually replaced with confidence. By the spring of year
1, teachers reported that the biggest change at the school was the use of data to
drive instruction. Even though changing their instruction to meet student needs
continued to be difficult, teachers were convinced that it was essential. Teachers
began to ask for more data and to use these data to design balanced, heteroge-
neous classrooms for the coming year.
Data analysis led to constant changes in the plan. For example, at the begin-
ning of October, Christy analyzed developmental spelling data (Ganske, 2000)
and realized that first graders were not able to apply specific phonics features in
spelling that they had already been taught in their phonics program. She pur-
chased additional reading materials to allow children to have more practice with
these features; she established a greater emphasis on spelling in the curriculum;
and she worked with the first-grade team to build these changes into their instruc-
tional schedule and into the interventions.
Adjustments were made in other segments of the curriculum as well. Data
drove adjustments, and teachers became partners with Christy in data collection
and in data analysis:
“Once the initial fluency assessment was given, we determined that most of
our kids were reading accurately, but with depressed rates. Using our core
materials, as well as passages with the same phonic patterns, teachers now
assess one child per day (they usually do more) and record their speed and
accuracy. In addition, they do various interventions with students. They can
choose between timed partner readings, repeated readings, and group timed
readings. They turn in a chart to me and they have graphs to use with indi-
vidual students. All teachers are sharing results and setting goals with stu-
dents.”
In her role as researcher, Christy had to learn to observe teachers in ways that
were helpful to them. She had to negotiate her role as observer, and doing this was
a roller-coaster ride. At first, she observed but was unwilling to provide any spe-
cific feedback. Later, she observed but was too critical. Gradually, she worked to-
gether with other literacy coaches and with her principal to build a metaphor for
observation. In terms of observation, Christy was the “good cop.” She would ob-
serve with these questions: “What can I learn about the curriculum today that can
help me to understand its strengths and weaknesses?” and “What can I learn
about individual teachers today that can make my professional development more
effective?” She had to abandon the “bad cop” role, which included observations
to answer this question: “Is this individual fulfilling his or her professional respon-
sibilities?” In order to do that, her principal had to assume the role of bad cop. His
observations of teachers became linked more closely to their instruction and to the
instructional initiative at the school. Christy noted that, by December, the system
was working:
“I think I have gotten bogged down, and I am now back on track. I realized
that I have turned into the bad cop. I need to step back and realize that my
job is not to enforce, but to model and offer professional development.”
As Christy grew into her role as researcher, drawing upon her skills as planner
and curriculum expert, she approached roadblocks in various places in the curric-
ulum. She eventually realized that the data supported her work with teachers:
“If student learning becomes the focus, then I can use shared decision mak-
ing to bring more teachers on board and cause ‘buy-in’ to what I am doing.
For instance, I plan to share info about our fluency weaknesses and assess-
ment data to get input from the team as to the direction of staff develop-
ment. In addition, this can help pave the way for study groups and small-
group staff development on a needs- and interests-based model. Many of
the teachers are beginning to recognize areas in which they need more
knowledge, which allows me to pull appropriate resources to meet these
needs.”
What Christy was learning was that the road to school change was long and wind-
ing, but that data she collected about teachers’ instruction and children’s learning
provided her with a road map.
LITERACY COACH AS TEACHER

13.2 initiate, implement, and evaluate professional development
programs.
13.3 provide professional development experiences that help
emphasize the dynamic interaction among prior knowledge,
experience, and the school context as well as among other
aspects of reading development.
13.5 use multiple indicators to judge professional growth.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is bringing unprecedented funding for pro-
fessional development to struggling schools. The legislation itself requires districts
to provide professional development to K–3 teachers and special educators. The
goal of the legislation is to provide sufficient support to develop the knowledge
and skills of classroom teachers so that they can change student achievement. We
will describe models for providing this type of site-based staff development in
schools in Chapter 9.
Christy designed a professional support system for her teachers. First, she ar-
ranged for curriculum representatives to show teachers how to use new materials
in their classrooms. The goal of these sessions was to support immediate changes
in teacher practice. Christy was able to work with these representatives so that
their presentations were targeted directly to the needs of the schools, and also to
the demands of the grant to use scientifically based instructional methods.
Christy used study groups to provide professional development herself. These
sessions were conducted initially after school every week. By January, Christy real-
ized that she needed more time and that this time should be during the school day.
She began to meet with each grade-level team weekly for 45 minutes. The goal of
these sessions was to build teacher knowledge targeted specifically to the needs of
each grade level.
Christy brought professional resources into the building. She purchased pro-
fessional books consistent with the initiative, and she lent them to teachers. She
also subscribed to The Reading Teacher for the school and joined the Interna-
tional Reading Association’s Book Club.
Christy used her role as teacher to address things she was learning in her role
as researcher. She was concerned that teachers were starting to recognize that stu-
dents needed intervention, but they were unable to provide it. She saw that as a
clear indication that she needed to provide professional development:
“It is a management issue. I see the need for professional development in

managing small groups. They have little experience (nor do I) in managing
several groups. I would like some guidance here as to resources and ways to
help them. They recognize the need, but it is a management nightmare for
them. I can sympathize, and am trying to decide how to get the resources
they need to be able to do this effectively.”
Christy learned to manage her professional development sessions so that they were
more interactive. She learned that teachers could work together productively, espe-
cially if they worked in groups to reflect on the implications of research in their
classroom work. She also learned that she had to be very specific about how new
ideas could be addressed within the framework of the curriculum and materials
that they were using.
THE LITERACY COACH: A NEW ROLE
In 2000, the International Reading Association released a position statement on

the roles of the reading specialist. This statement argued for a three-part role, with
leadership skills, diagnosis and assessment skills, and instructional skills all serving
the overall goal of improving student learning. In this book, we will argue that the
role of the literacy coach is to fulfill that leadership role in very specific ways. We
will argue that knowledge of diagnosis and assessment and knowledge of instruc-
tion are necessary but insufficient for literacy coaches. We will argue that a literacy
coach is a learner, a grant writer, a planner, a researcher, and a teacher.
Literacy coaches are the people who are directing continual school improve-
ment work at the state, district, and school levels. Through our work at the federal
level with the Reading Excellence Act program and the Reading First program and
through our collaboration with literacy coaches in Iowa, Virginia, Georgia, and
Delaware, we have learned some important lessons about that work. We hope that
this book will support professionals who wish to take on this role. Our caps are
off to them already.
CHAPTER 2
What Is a Schoolwide
Reading Program?
Despite what vendors of reading materials might argue, a schoolwide reading pro-
gram is more than a set of commercial materials provided for every classroom.
There is a lot of jargon to sort out. A comprehensive reading program is a set of
commercial materials addressing instruction and intervention for all learners at all
grade levels. A core program is a set of commercial materials used by all learners
at a grade level. We see a schoolwide program as more than curriculum and mate-
rials, however. A schoolwide reading program is a plan for using personnel, time,
curriculum materials, and assessments designed specifically to meet the needs of
the children it serves. In this chapter, we introduce some variables that literacy
coaches and other building-level leaders must consider in crafting and supporting
a schoolwide reading program. We rely on the experiences of literacy coaches in
working to design schoolwide programs.
SCHOOLWIDE RESEARCH
Research on schoolwide reading initiatives must weigh the effects of different fac-
tors, each of which can be targeted for reform: leadership and organization for in-
struction, curriculum materials, curriculum implementation, and teacher knowl-
edge. Researchers who consider all these things at once have much to say about
the characteristics of effective reform initiatives. Others have also located espe-
cially effective schools for study. These real-life models should guide building-level
leaders in the creation of their schoolwide programs.
21
Effective Schools
Johnson (2002) summarized nine case studies of high-performing, high-poverty

urban elementary schools. These schools had impressive standardized test scores,
including (but not limited to) high reading achievement scores. Johnson identified
several trends that were apparent across the sites:
• They targeted a visible, attainable goal that could be tracked across the
school year. For example, they focused on improving attendance or increas-
ing the number of books read.
• They focused energy on providing services to children, rather than on re-
solving personal or professional conflicts between adults.
• They set high, clear standards for children’s behavior, so that the environ-
ment was conducive to teaching and learning.
• They created a collective (rather than personal) sense of responsibility for
increasing achievement.
• They enhanced building-level instructional leadership, either through rede-
signing the role of the principal or by creating new curriculum support posi-
tions.
• They aligned their instruction with state and federal standards and with as-
sessments.
• By investigating needs across the school year, they supported teachers with
the materials and training that they needed to be successful.
• They allocated time for teachers to collaborate, to plan, and to learn to-
gether during the school day.
• They reached out to parents.
• They created additional time for instruction.
These characteristics of generally successful schools have also been found in

schools especially successful in supporting literacy achievement.
Researchers at the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement
undertook a large-scale study of effective schools (Taylor, Pearson, Clark, & Wal-
pole, 2000). They selected 14 schools in four different states with impressive liter-
acy achievement—specifically, schools with both better standardized test scores
and a larger proportion of children qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches
than their district neighbors (i.e., “beat the odds” schools). Surveys, interviews,
observations, time logs, and both researcher-collected and state-level achievement
tests were analyzed for two target classrooms at each level (kindergarten through
third grade). In that group of potentially very successful schools, three schools
emerged as most successful. They shared some important characteristics that sepa-
rated them from the other schools in the study:
What Is a Schoolwide Reading Program? 23
• They had strong links to parents (e.g., site councils, meetings, phone calls,
surveys, letters, newsletters, and work folders).
• They had collaborative models for specialists to support classroom teachers.
• They had better building-level communication about children’s achievement
and about curriculum implementation, both within and between grade lev-
els.
• They had a systematic procedure for evaluation of student progress, includ-
ing a regular assessment schedule, a system for sharing and reporting data,
and a system for using data in instructional decision making.
• They spent more time in small-group instruction, with those groups formed
and reformed on the basis of achievement.
• They had small-group early reading interventions, including both national
reform models and locally developed models across the elementary grades.
• They offered integrated, ongoing professional development programs for
teachers.
These schoolwide findings can surely be used to direct reform efforts. Other re-
searchers, working at virtually the same time in other settings, have reported al-
most identical characteristics of especially successful schoolwide literacy programs
(e.g., Mosenthal, Lipson, Sortino, Russ, & Mekkelsen, 2002; Taylor, Pressley, &
Pearson, 2002; Duffy & Hoffman, 2002).
Effective Reforms
Admiring the work of successful sites does not solve many problems for struggling
schools. For them, it is the process that matters first. How does a school move to-
ward the characteristics of effective schools identified above? Edward Kame’enui,
Deborah Simmons, and their colleagues (e.g., Simmons, Kuykehdall, King,
Cornachione, & Kame’enui, 2000) have provided a common-sense model of re-
form that they call the schoolwide reading improvement model. They propose five
stages for this model:
1. Describe the context thoroughly, including attention to curriculum, instruc-

tion, assessment, and interventions.
2. Form instructional groups, using the data.
3. Design coordinated instruction for all groups, adopting new curriculum
materials if necessary.
4. Set goals that can be evaluated through data collection during the year, and
adjust grouping and pacing plans accordingly.
5. Evaluate the success of the program for children at the end of the year, and
adjust instruction and intervention programs accordingly.
As we have worked inside schools to promote the creation of schoolwide ef-

forts, we have been informed by the work of our colleagues who are studying ef-
fective schools and effective change processes. You will see their influence below.
The topics that follow here represent our own efforts to bring this research into
practice—to work with schools to become exemplary sites through building-level
reform initiatives. The remainder of this chapter provides specific guidance for
those efforts, along with reports from literacy coaches as they have grappled with
these issues. In this chapter, we rely primarily on the experiences of Maya Burton
(a pseudonym), another first-year literacy coach.
ASSESSMENT
Given the evidence above that effective schools document progress at the building
level, we start with assessment. Assessment informs the design of a schoolwide
program in many ways; it documents the immediate instructional needs of chil-
dren and measures the success of the program in the long term. We will deal with
designing an assessment system in Chapter 4. Here we discuss broader issues in the
management of assessments.
Scheduling Assessments
School-level assessments should not be surprises to teachers. A well-designed read-
ing program has a clear schedule for conducting assessments. This schedule is cre-
ated before the school year begins and provided for teachers to use to plan their
work. Table 2.1 provides such a calendar. This calendar was presented to teachers
by Maya during preplanning and was then used with grade-level teams to schedule
the specific testing days and times for year two of the reform.
Maya learned about scheduling assessments the hard way. In her first year,
she started with an assessment calendar, but she didn’t share it with teachers dur-
ing preplanning, because it seemed too new and overwhelming. Later she realized
that this was not an effective strategy. As she rolled assessments out gradually, she
realized that teachers were not able to see the big picture; they felt that the assess-
ments were being added on top of one another, rather than working together to
form a school-level data set. The purpose of the assessments was also unclear.
Some of the teachers suspected that Maya and her principal were “winging it,”
thinking up new assessments somewhat impulsively as the year progressed.
Conducting Assessments
At the start of a schoolwide reform effort, a literacy coach faces a particularly dif-
ficult conundrum: Assessments are best conducted by the classroom teachers who
TABLE 2.1. Initial Calendar for Schoolwide Assessments
Kindergarten Grade 1 Grades 2 and 3

September Letter names Letter names Word recognition
Letter sounds Letter sounds Oral reading fluency
Spelling Spelling
October Phonemic awareness Phonemic awareness Oral reading fluency
Word recognition
November Oral reading fluency Oral reading fluency
December Letter sounds Letter sounds Comprehension
Spelling
January Spelling Oral reading fluency Spelling
Oral reading fluency
February Letter sounds Oral reading fluency Oral reading fluency
March Oral reading fluency
April Word recognition
Oral reading fluency
May Phonemic awareness Oral reading fluency Oral reading fluency
Comprehension
June Spelling Oral reading fluency Comprehension
Spelling list
will be using the data to drive their instruction, but assessment training takes time.
One thing is certain: Conducting schoolwide assessments without training to en-
sure that all testers can administer the tests reliably is a waste of teaching and
learning time.
One possibility for dealing with testing is a model based on gradual release of
responsibility; the literacy coach takes much of the testing responsibility at first,
and then scaffolds the responsibility onto the teachers. In the first phase, the liter-
acy coach works with a small schoolwide assessment team (SWAT) to test all chil-
dren. This team begins by simulating and practicing the testing with adults, moves
to group testing of individual children with reliability checks, and finally proceeds
to testing throughout the school. Classroom teachers can watch some of the test-
ing of their own students and start to familiarize themselves with the procedures.
In the next stage of testing, the SWAT members provide training to all of the
classroom teachers, and the teachers function as members of the team in their own
classrooms. In that way, the teachers can learn to administer the test and also col-
lect some of the data for their own students. Other members of the team are still
participating, to help the teachers to get the data collected with the least possible
time taken away from instruction.
Finally, responsibility can be released to the teachers to collect their own as-
sessment data. Using the assessment calendar, a whole staff of teachers can learn
to collect data that can be used to fine-tune their own instruction and look at is-
sues of overall program success. In order to do that, the literacy coach must first
provide an overview of the testing dates (as in Table 2.1), then schedule the actual
testing dates, then plan backward to schedule the training that teachers will need
to be ready to administer the tests.
Maya used the SWAT approach for two reasons: She didn’t have enough time
to train the teachers in the new assessments during preplanning, and she feared
that the assessments would take too much time away from classroom instruction.
She used her Title I and intervention teachers (six in all) as testers, because that
made a smaller number to train, and those staff members already had more experi-
ence with assessment. She was able to collect the data she needed at the beginning
of the year very quickly. The disadvantage of that SWAT decision was that when
the data were shared with the classroom teachers, the teachers struggled to inter-
pret it. They needed to know what the assessments were and how they were ad-
ministered before they could use them to inform their work. Gradually, then,
Maya shifted responsibility for assessments to the teachers in concert with the
SWAT approach.
Summarizing Assessment Data

We have worked with many schools that have collected extensive assessment data,
none of which is used for instructional decision making. The barrier is summariza-
tion; no staff member is actually charged with making sense of the data. This is
surely a process on which a literacy coach must focus attention. Sometimes it is
simply “math fear” that prevents building-level leaders from summarizing school-
level data. Actually, very little mathematical knowledge is necessary; certainly sta-
tistical testing is unnecessary. Literacy coaches would be well served by a computer
spreadsheet program that allows calculation of four figures—total number (N),
percentage (%), mean or average (M), and standard deviation (SD)—and by a
coding system for disaggregating data to show the performance of specific groups
of children (e.g., by grade level, by teacher, by socioeconomic status, by gender, by
ethnicity).
Table 2.2 provides an illustration. It is a summary sheet from a staff meeting
that a literacy coach conducted in 1999. The data are simple: the total number of
letter names and letter sounds each kindergarten child could produce, given a
sheet of random letters. The data are summarized for two separate groups. The 9
at-risk children began the year with a mean score of 1.5 letter names and a stan-
dard deviation of 1.8. The small standard deviation score means that the individ-
ual data points were close to the mean score. By January the mean had risen to
TABLE 2.2. Kindergarten Letter Name and Letter Sound Data, 1999
Letter names, Sept. Letter names, Jan. Letter sounds, Sept. Letter sounds, Jan.
At risk (N = 9)
M = 1.5 M = 5.6 M = 1.4 M = 5.1
(SD = 1.8) (SD = 5.2) (SD = 1.6) (SD = 3.0)
Progressing (N = 48)
M = 17.1 M = 22.9 M = 6.7 M = 17.0
(SD = 7.0) (SD = 3.7) (SD = 5.4) (SD = 4.0)
5.6, but the standard deviation was much larger. There was low achievement over-
all, but the individual children varied more in their scores than they had in Sep-
tember. The at-risk children were responding to instruction at vastly different
rates. The pattern was the same for the letter sounds.
The cohort of 48 students who were on track (progressing) exhibited a differ-
ent pattern. They entered school with a larger mean score for letter names (17.1)
and a large standard deviation (7.0), but by January they had progressed to a
mean score of almost 23 letter names with a smaller standard deviation (3.7). Re-
gardless of their initial status, the progressing students were responding to instruc-
tion in fairly similar ways, and they were close to mastery. The same pattern was
true for these children with respect to letter sounds.
Table 2.3 provides another example from the same school. This time, the data
were instructional reading levels (a broad concept that combines measures of de-
coding, fluency, and comprehension). A schoolwide assessment system allowed
teachers to collect that data, and then it was summarized to help in program plan-
ning. Data here are reported as percentages of the whole cohort of second graders.
Almost half the children had instructional reading levels below grade placement
after the first two marking periods. At the end of the third marking period, how-
ever, there was a significant change: 86% of the students were reading on or above
grade level. The use of percentages here allowed the teachers to see the magnitude
of the change.
TABLE 2.3. Second-Grade Instructional Reading Level Data, 1999
End of first 9 weeks End of second 9 weeks End of third 9 weeks

42% below grade level 43% below grade level 14% below grade level
58% on or above grade 57% on or above grade 86% on or above grade
level level level
Communicating Assessments
If a literacy coach has scheduled building-level assessments, set up a system for

collecting the data reliably, and summarized the data, there is one step remaining:
Those data must be made public to all of the school’s stakeholders. There are two
internal sets of stakeholders (the entire staff and the individual classroom teachers)
and two external sets (the district office/school board and the parents). All of these
stakeholders deserve to know about student achievement.
One set of stakeholders is the full staff—all professionals and parapro-
fessionals who work with children in any capacity. In order to develop a shared
sense of responsibility for the achievement of all children, all adults should be well
informed about the strengths and weaknesses of the instructional program that are
identified in the data. Summary data, as described above, can be presented to
teachers in a “State of the School” Address. The purposes of such an address are
to share insights into the current achievement of children, and to take leadership in
using those insights to respond immediately to student needs.
Figure 2.1 is an excerpt from a handout shared with teachers during the
2000–2001 school year. The data presented are for first grade, although the for-
mat was exactly the same for all grades. The literacy coach presented data in this
form for all grades during one of four scheduled after-school State of the School
meetings—meetings the staff came to anticipate as essential in establishing new
goals during the course of the school year. All four State of the School addresses
began the same way. For each grade level, the literacy coach reviewed the goals for
that grade level in curriculum-specific language: text reading levels, text reading
rates, and reading and spelling words in isolation. Next, she reviewed basic initia-
tives in classroom instruction. In this case, the school was using a new basal read-
ing series to coordinate instruction in phonics, sight words, and text reading.
Finally, she defined current intervention programs. A daily intervention served
those children identified through the schoolwide screening, and a tutoring pro-
gram served those children plus the 17 next weakest-performing children in twice-
weekly sessions.
The next section of the handout, the “New data” section, told the whole staff
that the two interventions mentioned above were insufficient for all children to
meet the grade-level expectations. In fact, to translate instructional reading levels
into time, 15% of the children were months behind and 22% were several weeks
behind. For those children, then, an additional intervention was necessary. The
data drove the literacy coach to implement one right away; these children were in-
vited to an after-school program two afternoons each week.
Creation and delivery of a State of the School address legitimize a schoolwide
reading program. Initially, it is one of the most difficult tasks of the literacy coach;
eventually, however, it is the cement that binds the teachers’ collective instruc-
tional efforts to the evidence of student progress. It also holds building-level lead-
Literacy goals in first grade

Increased vocabulary knowledge
Accurate reading through end of first-grade materials
Spelling through end of letter name stage
Reading and spelling first-grade high-frequency words
Reading rate of 60 words per minute
Instructional program initiatives in first grade

New basal materials: Coordination of phonics instruction, sight word learning,
and text reading
Interventions
Daily small-group intervention with reading specialists for 13 identified children
Biweekly tutoring for 30 weakest-performing children
New data
Current instructional reading level goal = starting third preprimer in basal
Below goal
15% of children starting second preprimer
22% of children ending second preprimer
At or above goal
63% of children
New plan
All students below current benchmark invited to after-school program twice
each week to review and preview daily lessons
FIGURE 2.1. Outline of first-grade State of the School address, 2000–2001.
ers accountable to the schoolwide plan by forcing the whole staff to consider the
data and to contemplate additional efforts and programs in response to the data.
Another important set of stakeholders in the school consists of the individual
classroom teachers who are delivering instruction. Summaries of assessment data
across the grade levels should be communicated in public; analysis of particular
classroom variables should be communicated in private. At a basic level, individ-
ual teachers should compare the data from their children to the data across their
grade level to see whether their own classes are contributing positively or nega-
tively to the overall mean, and to identify those individual children whose achieve-
ment is especially low. As we see it, one job of the literacy coach is to help teachers
interpret their own data and to reflect on their own practices in relation to those
data in an environment safe from teacher evaluation. At times, classroom forma-
tion skews classroom performance (e.g., when all struggling children are clustered
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
life. I didn’t mean that I was going to retire from the world, but I shall
never let any one fall in love with me, never. That’s settled!”
“All right,” laughed Betty. “Now let’s settle where we’re going.”
“That’s settled too,” explained Babbie. “Mr. Dick Blake is meeting
Madeline, because I had to meet you. Then we are all to meet each
other for a grand lunch party, to celebrate Mr. Blake’s getting into his
scrumptious new offices,—the ones that your Mr. Morton arranged
for, you know. And to-night Mrs. Bob is going to take us all for dinner
to a new East Side place that they’ve discovered.” Babbie stopped to
survey Betty critically. “You don’t mind wasting to-day, do you, and
beginning on tea-rooms the first thing to-morrow? Your letter
sounded as solemncholy as Helen Chase Adams when she was a
freshman.”
Betty laughed. “How dreadful! Of course I don’t mind. But you
see, Babbie, this tea-room business is just fun for you, but for me it’s
dead in earnest. If we can’t make it pay pretty well, why, next year I
may have to teach.”
Babbie nodded vigorously. “I see. That’s a prospect to make a
person solemn, isn’t it? But by next year your father will probably be
rich again. And I don’t want you to think I’m not in earnest too, Betty.
I’m going into this thing head over heels, just to show a certain
person that he doesn’t make one least little speck of difference to
me.” Babbie’s big eyes flashed dangerously. “So to-morrow we’ll
pursue tea-rooms like anything.”
But ten o’clock the next morning found the three pursuers of tea-
rooms gathered rather languidly around Madeline’s dainty breakfast
table. Mrs. Bob’s party had been, as usual, a continuous
performance, beginning at a very foreign café in Little Italy, going on,
because the Italian dessert had proved disappointing, to a glittering
hotel on Fifth Avenue, thence back to a Yiddish theatre, whose
leading lady was Mr. Bob’s latest enthusiasm, and winding up, very
late indeed, at supper near the park, after which it took so long to get
home that Mrs. Bob declared she was hungry again and made
everybody come up to the apartment for more supper.
“If everybody in New York eats as often as we did last night, there
ought to be a good chance for tea-rooms,” said Babbie, sipping her
coffee meditatively.
“If it makes them feel so sleepy the next day, they won’t do it very
often,” suggested Betty prudently.
“Yes, they will, but they’ll order breakfast at eleven instead of at
ten,” amended Madeline. “Well, now,” she went on briskly, “how are
we going to work? Having decided to start a tea-room, what does a
person do next?”
“We have absolutely decided, haven’t we?” asked Betty, to make
sure.
“Of course.” Madeline waved a hand at the huge box of china that
an expressman had just delivered. “Coming over in the cab
yesterday, Dick read the story I wrote on shipboard—the one I
thought was going to make me a name instanter—and he says it’s
amateurish. That’s the most hateful adjective in the language of
Bohemia, and I’ll make him eat his words. But meanwhile I’ve got to
eat something more sustaining than words, and I’ve spent all the
money I had to live on this quarter. So I’ve got to get rid of that china.
So we’ve got to take it for a tea-room.”
“If you think this tea-room is being started to confirm you in your
extravagant habits, Madeline Ayres——” began Babbie, in mock
indignation.
“HOW ARE WE GOING TO WORK?”
“Well, the point is that we’ve decided to start it,” pursued

Madeline calmly, “and I might add that the china designated as my
latest extravagance is likely to be its chief charm, if not exactly its
reason for being. Now I should say the next question is where to
have it. And as it’s such a glorious day, let’s go out and explore.”
The exploring expedition, being conducted by Madeline in true
Bohemian style, bid fair to degenerate into a progressive course
luncheon, leading from one of her favorite tea-shops to the next.
“But it’s very instructive,” she declared in answer to Babbie’s
protests. “I’ve made a beautiful collection of menu cards for us to
consider to-night. I’ll get Bob Enderby to do us a design that will
make a regular hit by itself. What’s that, Betty? Of course a menu
design isn’t the principal thing. But it will be a beautiful feature, like
the china. Well, this is the sixth cup of tea I’ve had, so I don’t mind
stopping now. If you girls don’t like my methods, suggest something
else. I think we’ve had a most entertaining morning, and garnered in
loads of valuable ideas.”
“Well, but what have we actually decided?” demanded Betty, the
matter-of-fact.
Madeline told off the points solemnly on her fingers. “To have
waitresses with soulful eyes and, if possible, adorable French
accents. To remember that it is the special features that people tell
their friends to go and see, but the food must be passable too, or
they’ll never come twice. To have immaculate linen, and china that
matches. To provide dusky corners for romantic couples.”
Babbie sniffed. “I hate romantic couples!”
“They order recklessly,” Madeline argued. “Therefore, for
mercenary considerations, they must be encouraged.”
“But aren’t those things we would have done anyway?” pursued
Betty. “I think we ought to find a place and get started, and then look
out for the features.”
Madeline considered. “That sounds sensible. Well, then, let’s
discuss sites.”
“Wouldn’t it be a good plan to know something definite about
rents?” suggested Betty, who foresaw that Madeline’s next move
would be a leisurely promenade up Fifth Avenue, which would be
very pleasant but productive of no tangible results.
“Rents—of course. I’ll tell you what!” Madeline had had another
inspiration. “I know a man who is in real estate—the one we rent our
place from. I’ll call him up and ask him if he’s too busy to enlighten
us this very afternoon.”
Madeline came back from the telephone in high spirits. “He will
be dee-lighted to see us. Oh, dee-lighted is out of fashion, isn’t it,
since I went away? Well, proud and happy then. Come along. It’s
only a little way from here, and we can do up the whole thing before
dinner.”
But “the whole thing” proved much more complicated than
Madeline had supposed. The agent treated them in a businesslike
way, which was really very nice of him, Babbie said afterward,
considering their vague and even childlike ideas on the subject of
what they wanted. He had half a dozen suites on his books that
seemed to Madeline suitable, and she went over them easily,
suggesting their respective advantages to the other two girls, who
were less familiar than she with the ins and outs of New York life.
“This is really the best, I think,” she decided at last, pointing to a
Fifth Avenue address.
“It’s a rather expensive location,” suggested the agent politely.
“But perhaps that’s no object”—with a glance at Babbie’s exquisite
little figure.
“Oh, yes, it is,” Betty assured him solemnly. “You see we want to
make a lot of money. How much is the rent, please?”
The agent’s figures fairly took the girls’ breath away. “And I
believe they prefer a seven years’ lease,” he added.
“Seven years!” repeated Babbie incredulously. “Why, we shall all
be mar—dead in seven years, probably. A month’s rent at that rate
would take up about what I think mother meant to give me. But then
she’ll have to give me more. Which is the very cheapest place,
please?”
The agent pointed it out, but it was only cheap by comparison.
And then, as if matters were not bad enough already, he made a
disheartening suggestion. “You ought to have at least capital enough
to keep you going for a year,” he said. “You couldn’t hope to make
much the first year, you know. That’s usually reckoned a dead loss,
in conservative business estimates, I believe.”
The girls exchanged glances of consternation.
“We’re very much obliged,” said Babbie, with a fine combination
of dignity and her sweetest smile. “But I’m afraid we can’t decide on
anything to-day. We may be back——”
“That’s all right,” the agent cut her short. “Always very glad to be
of service. Good-day.”
“He doesn’t want us to come back,” Babbie declared hotly,
outside the door. “He’s afraid we wouldn’t pay the rent on time.”
“We probably shouldn’t, any such rents as those,” Madeline
assured her. “We acted like babes in the wood, I suppose. Never
mind. We’ll ask Bob Enderby and Dick. They’ll know what to do. You
were jolly right, Betty, about beginning on the essentials.”
That night Mrs. Bob’s sitting-room was the scene of a solemn
council of war. Dick Blake was scribe, Henri, the Enderbys’ cook,
who had once conducted what Dick irreverently described as the
slowest quick lunch place in town, was called in as an expert, along
with the girl in the top flat, because her two cousins had had a tea-
room, until one of them discovered that drawing caricatures of the
customers paid much better than selling them sandwiches and tea.
“But it was a splendid thing—that tea-room,” explained the girl
earnestly, “because Arline never knew she could draw until then. She
sat at the desk, you see, and took checks, and there wasn’t much
she could do, so she got to sketching and thought it was fun, and
went into an evening class, and now she’s got two things in the big
autumn exhibit.”
“Listen to that,” cried Mr. Bob with enthusiasm. “Which of you is
going to sit at the desk?”
“I suppose I am,” confessed Betty, “and I haven’t the least talent
for drawing, so there won’t be any great artist discovered in our tea-
room.”
“Well, my other cousin got married through the tea-room,”
explained the girl from the top flat, naively. “They sold candy there,
and she married the man they bought their candy boxes of. He’s a
millionaire.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Bob. “Now which of you is going to get the
millionaire?”
“Come, Bob, do be serious,” begged Madeline. “We want to get
at the facts.”
“A millionaire is a very valuable fact,” objected Mr. Bob flippantly.
“That’s all, Henri, except that we shall want an extra fine supper by
and by. Now, Miss Andrus, tell us some more about the profits of tea-
rooms, the legitimate ones, if Madeline insists upon it.”
But Miss Andrus was vague about “legitimate” profits. She only
knew that her cousin had had a darling shop, and had hated to give
it up. Then she went over to the piano and played dreamy music,
while Richard Blake and Mrs. Bob and the girls struggled with their
estimates.
When they had finished, Madeline’s brow puckered. “It’s going to
be too big for us to swing, I think. Mrs. Hildreth might give you all that
money, Babbie, but I don’t think we ought to take it.” She swept the
papers together. “Enjoy our society while you have it, ladies and
gentlemen. To-morrow we’re going up to Harding to open a tea-
room.”
“But, Madeline,” began Betty, “are you sure——”
“I’m not sure of anything except that rents are lower there,
because it would be absurd if they weren’t, and that those college
girls eat and eat, and they appreciate stunty features beyond
anything. Now Cuyler’s isn’t stunty and Holmes’s isn’t stunty. With
that china and the menu card that Bob is going to do for us—I forgot
to ask you before, Bob, but of course you will—and all the other
features that we can easily think up, why, at Harding our fortune is
made. I can’t see how we ever hesitated!”
“But if you go up there we can’t patronize you,” objected Mrs. Bob
forlornly.
“Oh, yes, you can,” Madeline assured her promptly, “you can
motor up. And Dick can see that your escapade gets into the society
columns of all the leading dailies. In a month it will be the fashion to
motor up from New York for a cup of tea.”
“Madeline,” said Dick severely, “you’re a persuasive sophist. Who
holds the controlling interest in this tea-room, anyhow?”
“Babbie, I suppose,” admitted Madeline cheerfully. “Because she
furnishes all the money—or all that’s worth mentioning, at least. But
Betty furnishes the sense, and I furnish the inspirations. Now what’s
the matter with that combination?”
“Aren’t you about through with your business?” demanded Mr.
Bob irrelevantly, from his place by the piano. “Because Miss Andrus
is hungry, and I’m starved.”
Betty partook of Henri’s famous club sandwiches and Turkish
coffee in forlorn silence. She ought not to have come. She ought to
have realized that Madeline’s haphazard methods were splendid for
getting up college “shows,” but not to be relied on when one’s bread
and butter had to be earned. Madeline was in a corner by the fire
talking earnestly with Mrs. Bob, who was saying something that
made Madeline hug her and presently rush over to Betty and Babbie
to explain.
“The lovely Mrs. Bob wants to invest in our tea-room,” she told
them. “You say your mother spoke of four hundred, Babbie. Well,
Mrs. Bob says she’ll put in the same, and after Betty’s salary is paid
and the other expenses, the profits are to be divided—that’s what
you said was right, isn’t it, Dick?”
“But half my profits go to Madeline,” Mrs. Bob took her up, “for
the inspirations.”
“Then I know mother will want half hers to go that way, too,” put
in Babbie, “and I shall take the other half, to pay her up for being
pessimistic about profits. She just laughed when I spoke of them.”
“Well, it will be all kinds of fun, anyway,” said Madeline.
“Goodness, but I feel as if the worst was over now! Does any one
know about early trains up to Harding? By the way, father hasn’t
cabled, so I suppose this domicile is to let. Just spread the report,
please, everybody, and I’ll come back in a few days to see about it.
It’s just as well, because I suppose I’ve got to live in Harding now. I
never could manage long-distance inspirations.”
The three girls departed early to pack and telegraph Mary Brooks
Hinsdale that her “standing invitation” to come and visit her should
stand no longer unheeded by her little friends of old.
So perhaps it hadn’t been a wasted day after all, Betty thought,
falling asleep while Madeline was still busily discussing where they
should live in Harding, and how much they ought to pay the tea-shop
for their meals, if they ate them there.
CHAPTER V
THE REAL THING
Mary’s “beamish” smile was dimmed when she met her guests
at the station.
“I’m just terribly glad to see you all,” she explained, “and to-
morrow we can begin to have some fun. But to-night I have an
awfully particular faculty dinner-party on, and what do you think? My
cook has gone and caught the jaundice.” Mary’s tone was positively
tragic.
“This is what you get for marrying a distinguished member of the
faculty,” Madeline told her, patting her shoulder sympathetically. “But
don’t you give that very particular dinner-party another thought, my
child. What’s the point of having a full-sized catering company
invade your happy little home if you don’t make use of them?”
“A catering company?” Mary stared. “There isn’t such a thing in
Harding.”
“Well, a tea-shop corporation then,” Madeline amended briskly.
“We are that, you know. We’ve come up here to establish ourselves.
Meanwhile we are not above displaying our talents for the benefit of
our very best friends. Betty says she can cook, and Babbie and I are
bursting with ideas for original menus and beautiful table
decorations. Have you a waitress?”
“Yes, but she’s very green and needs piles of coaching. Betty,
please explain a few of Madeline’s riddles.”
“Come up to Cuyler’s first,” suggested Babbie. “It’s such a very
long story.”
So the story was told, in all its ramifications, over many cups of
Cuyler’s hot chocolate, and Mary went into ecstasies over the idea of
a tea-shop in Harding, and into more ecstasies over the prospect of
having Betty, and probably Madeline, so near her. Then she returned
to the subject of her dinner.
“Would you really cook it, Betty?”
“Would you really trust her to cook it?” jeered Madeline.
“Yes, because there’s absolutely nothing else to be done,” said
Mary, so dismally that everybody else shrieked with laughter.
“Very well then,” agreed Madeline. “You and Betty go and do your
marketing, and Babbie and I will examine tea-room sites. We ought
not to lose any time, you know,” she added impressively, with a sly
glance at Betty.
“Don’t decide everything without me,” begged Betty innocently.
“Of course not,” Madeline promised, with a very solemn,
responsible air. “Come on, Babbie. Oh, I say, is that Polly Eastman
going into the bookstore?”
“Not at all likely,” laughed Babbie, rushing off. “I never knew Polly
to buy a book.”
The pursuit of Polly ended all serious business for that morning. It
transpired that she had just been elected a member of the senior
play committee, and she had resolved to buy a set of Shakespeare
in honor of the occasion. First Babbie and Madeline must help her
choose the books, then they must explain themselves, and as that
was “such a long story,” they all retired to Holmes’s to talk it over and
have ices. Then Polly had to hurry back for a noon recitation, and it
would be a shame not to rush up to the campus with her and say
hello to Georgia Ames. And Georgia, who also had a twelve o’clock
class, begged them, with tears in her big brown eyes, to hang
around till one, and then have “eats” with her down-town. So
Madeline wrote a note to Mary, who would be relieved not to have so
many people to lunch, and bribed a freshman friend of Georgia’s to
deliver it on her way home. And she and Babbie sat on the steps of
College Hall in the warm October sunshine, surrounded by a crowd
of friends, old and new, to all of whom Madeline confided, under the
strictest pledges of secrecy and with much delightful mystery as to
where and when and by whom, the fact that a new and particularly
“stunty” tea-shop was to be started right away in Harding.
“I should make my fortune as an advance advertising agent,” she
told Babbie complacently, as they hurried up to Mary’s after lunch.
“Getting everybody properly excited is awfully important, but I’m
afraid Betty won’t appreciate that, and will think we ought to have
found a place. Did you happen to notice any that would do?”
Babbie considered. “Why, any place down on Main Street would
do well enough, I should think, but they’re all full, aren’t they? I don’t
suppose any store would move out to let us in.”
“There must have been some vacant places that we didn’t
notice,” said Madeline cheerfully. “We’ll just tell Betty that we think
she ought to choose, as long as she’s going to run it. That will throw
the responsibility on her.”
“I don’t see how it will find us a place, though,” said Babbie
gloomily. “And we’ve forgotten the water-color paper for Mary’s
place-cards.”
Mary embraced her guests almost tearfully when, the dinner-
party having taken its staid departure, the cook and her assistants
returned to the “realms of day,” as Madeline poetically designated
the library.
“I had awful times explaining,” Mary told them. “They pricked up
their ears at the place-cards. The soup got them seriously interested,
and the salad positively went to their heads. I muttered something
about a new cook, and I could see every woman at the table
privately resolving to get her away from me forthwith.” Mary
chuckled. “When you get ready to establish a catering branch, I’ll
write you a screaming advertisement like this:
“Remember Mrs. Hinsdale’s Dinner and how
Envious it made you
And Patronize her Caterers, Betty Wales & Co.”
Betty smiled and then sighed. “We can’t establish branches until
we’ve started, can we? And we can’t seem——”
“Reproach us not, fair maiden,” Madeline broke in. “You are
hereby elected committee on rooms, isn’t she, Babbie? You go
ahead and choose, and we’ll agree to anything you decide.”
Next morning the committee on rooms announced her plan for a
systematic campaign. “I wish you two would come and help look, but
if you do, remember that we can’t stop to talk with Georgia or any
one else we meet, and we can’t do any shopping or eating until after
half-past twelve.”
But a brisk walk the whole length of Main Street only served to
confirm Madeline’s and Babbie’s fears. Every building was occupied.
“We’ll go in somewhere and ask what to do when you want to
start something,” Betty decided, bound not to lose faith in systematic
procedure. “You do the talking, Madeline.”
“Why, you might persuade some property owner to build for you,”
suggested the jeweler’s clerk, whom Madeline rushed in upon with
her question.
“Thanks, but we want to move in about day after to-morrow,”
Madeline told him grandly.
“Well, I presume you’ve all heard the old saying, ‘If wishes were
horses every Harding girl would ride,’” retorted the clerk with a grin
and a wink.
“Horrid thing!” said Babbie, when they were outside. “He thinks
we’re college girls off on some kind of a queer lark. We’ll show him!
Where next, Betty?”
Betty was staring up the hill with an air of profound
discouragement. “I think we ought to look at the side-streets,” she
decided at last. “I don’t believe it’s any use considering up-stairs
rooms.”
“I feel like the senior play committee,” said Madeline, as they
began their conscientious tour, hoping against hope that they should
find just the right thing lurking around some corner off Main Street.
“We read all the impossible Elizabethan dramas that anybody could
hear of, we hunted up Hindu plays, and made frantic efforts to hunt
up Japanese ones; and some particularly earnest member even
wrote a play herself. And all the time we knew as well as anything
that Billy Shakespeare was our man.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about this, where, please, is our
Billy Shakespeare?” inquired Babbie a trifle irritably.
Madeline smiled mysteriously. “We shall find him before the set of
sun,” she declared oracularly. “I have a leading to that effect.”
“Couldn’t you make it before high noon, just as well?” sighed
Babbie. “I’ve got on new shoes.”
Betty looked troubled. “Go home and rest, Babbie dear,” she
begged. “Two of us can do this just as well as three.”
So Babbie went off, after a few polite protests, and Madeline and
Betty finished up the cross-streets without seeing anything that could
possibly be turned into a “stunty” tea-room.
“Well, can there be anything up nearer the college that we
haven’t noticed?” asked Betty, trying to keep up the businesslike air
appropriate to systematic research, but feeling very silly and
completely discouraged.
“All boarding-houses, isn’t it, right down to the theatre?” said
Madeline.
“Shall we go and look?” suggested Betty timidly. “I can’t quite
remember what’s between the florist’s and that little white house that
a crowd of juniors had last year.”
“Nothing,” returned Madeline promptly, as they started up the hill.
“Don’t you know—there’s a wide lawn, and you go back across it to
that big barn that the riding man had for his horses? He’s moving
out, by the way. I met him yesterday, and he assured me that ’e
missed them queer moon-lighters most hawfully. He’s going to move
somewhere where he can have a big ring and some hurdles in a
meadow. I’m afraid I rather led him to suppose”—Madeline looked
properly conscience-stricken—“that we might be up this afternoon to
have a lesson in jumping. But it looks as if we should be too busy.”
“Do you think there’s any use hunting much longer?” demanded
Betty, who was fast losing courage.
“Of course,” Madeline shot back unhesitatingly. “Something will
turn up; it always does—if you turn it. Let’s make perfectly sure
about this nearer-the-campus proposition.”
But there was nothing there, and Madeline, not daring to suggest
refreshing themselves at Cuyler’s, after Betty’s strict prohibitions, led
the way up the high terrace to the back steps of Science Hall, where
they could rest and consider what to do next. Right across from them
was the little white house with the big barn looming up behind it.
“What a shame that isn’t a house,” said Betty sadly. “How did
such a tiny house ever happen to have such a big barn, I wonder?”
“It didn’t,” explained Madeline. “The barn went with the house
over on that other street—the one that used to be a big mansion—
and now is only part of a factory. But if the barn were a house, Miss
Wales, the riding-master wouldn’t be moving out of it. It would have
been appropriated long ago by some thrifty boarding-house keeper,
and we shouldn’t be sitting here staring at it and wondering whether
the owner could be persuaded to make it over into a house in hurry-
up order.”
“I wasn’t wondering that,” said Betty simply. “I was wondering if
we could possibly use it as it is. There’s nothing else that I can see,
and it’s an awfully nice barn. Don’t you remember how Mr. Ware
showed us through once when he first moved in, and how proud he
was that it was all paneled in solid oak, with those lovely great
beams in the ceiling? And afterward the pickle heiress’s father
wanted to buy the beams for his library, and he would have, too, only
the owner was in Europe and the pickle man couldn’t wait to cable.”
“Yes, I remember,” agreed Madeline. “It’s a beautiful barn, but it’s
a barn nevertheless, with stalls and mangers and grain-bins and
——” Madeline paused abruptly and stared across at the barn
through half-shut eyes for a long minute. “Why, of course it will do,”
she announced briskly. “Of all the idiots—to sit here gaping! Come
on!” And grasping Betty’s arm, she dragged her in a headlong race
down the terrace, across the road, and up the drive to the big barn.
“Oh, I’m so glad it’s open,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Now I
can show you. I see it all myself plain as anything. Long narrow
tables in the stalls—ideal nooks for romantic couples. Big sociable
round tables out here. Ferns and oak branches in the mangers. Bins
transformed into linen and china cupboards. Old sporting prints on
the walls—father has some beauties tucked away somewhere.
Gargoyles and candlesticks and Flemish lamps scattered around in
dark corners. Lights—let me see—oh, yes, carriage lamps for lights.
An open fire—we simply must have that—it’s the one thing lacking.
Why, Betty Wales, there’s nothing like it anywhere! People will go
crazy over it, and we shall make our everlasting fortunes. See, this
little room back here—it’s a harness-room, I suppose—is just the
thing for the kitchen. Why, it’s perfect, and the rent will be a mere
song. Come and tell Babbie this minute.
“And to think that it was Betty and not I who had the inspiration!”
Madeline sighed, as she ended her enthusiastic recital to Babbie and
Mary. “When Mrs. Bob and Mrs. Hildreth are paying me for supplying
them, too. It’s disgraceful.”
“But, Madeline”—it was the first chance Betty had had to get in a
word—“I only said I wondered if it would do, and I’m not sure yet.
Where could we put the range and the sink in that harness-room?
Barns don’t have furnaces, do they? Even if there could be an open
fire, that wouldn’t make it warm enough in winter; and I doubt if
carriage lamps would make it light enough. Those things are even
more important than your beloved features.”
“Betty,” said Madeline severely, “what is the matter with you? You
ought to be dancing around on one foot in your childish glee. You’re
not a practical person. You weren’t, I mean, when I knew you.”
“She’s growing up, silly,” Mary Brooks answered, with an arm
around Betty. “And it’s very lucky she is, if you’re going into this thing
seriously. Now you telephone your riding-man to see who owns this
stable, and then we can make sure it’s not already rented again, and
that the rent isn’t beyond you. And if everything is all right so far,
Betty and I will go and look the place over in the true scientific spirit.
You and Babbie can come along if you like, but I don’t consider it
necessary.”
“Hear the experienced-housekeeper-wife-of-an-experimental
psychologist talk!” jeered Madeline. “Run along and cast your evil
eye on my scheme if you want to. But it will work, practical or not
practical. It’s simply too lovely not to work.”
“I adore your logic, Madeline,” declared Mary admiringly. “You’d
better come too, after all.”
So, first having assured themselves about the rent, the four set
out. Babbie sniffed daintily as they went inside.
“Everything is to be varnished over,” Madeline explained, “walls,
floor, everything. Some of the rough places should be planed down a
little, but we’ll leave the dents alone. It will be a stunning effect in the
lamplight—quite like an old English castle.”
“The stalls are too narrow for two rows of chairs and a reasonably
wide table,” announced Mary, from the depths of one of them. “The
romantic couples will knock plates.”
“Then don’t have chairs. Build in benches on the sides, and take
away the mangers in some stalls to make more room for big parties
who prefer to be by themselves—the getting-into-societies
celebrations and all that kind of thing.”
“That sounds possible. Now about the kitchen,” pursued Mary.
“Betty, come and look at this harness-room again. I believe it might
do. There’s running water here and——”
Babbie sat down on the steps leading to the loft. “I’ve only said
‘oh’ and ‘ah’ so far, like the chorus in a Greek play, but just watch me
work at getting us started. And I may have a bright thought some
day.”
Just then the agent arrived, Mary and Betty came back, and all
four girls fired questions and suggestions at the poor man so fast
and furiously that he lost his head and yielded every point, promising
to shellac the whole interior, put up a stove that would “heat the
place red-hot,” and carriage lamps with reflectors that would make it
“blaze with light,” and a big fireplace at one end of the room, since
Madeline declared it to be an absolute necessity. And he guaranteed
to have the barn swept and garnished and ready for occupancy
within ten days. Meanwhile the girls could install the kitchen fittings,
and order their furniture.
“And engage a cook and decent waitresses,” added Mary
portentously. “And if you do that in ten days I shall be green with
envy.”
But Babbie did it, without, as she expressed it, lifting a little finger.
She happened to meet Belden House Annie on the campus, and
during their interview it developed that Annie had a pretty sister
Nora, who would gladly come and be waitress, and an Aunt Bridget,
who could “cook to the quane’s taste, or the prisidint’s.”
“We’ll have ‘quane’s’ style Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,”
suggested Madeline, “and ‘prisidint’s’ style the rest of the time. That
is, if that idiotic carpenter ever gets the tables right.”
The carpenter, Madeline declared, was wearing her to a thread;
but Babbie, who was pricking her pretty fingers hemming table-linen,
and Betty, immersed in lists of pots and kettles, groceries and
silverware, heartlessly refused to come to her rescue.
So Madeline relieved her mind by much grumbling, and in the
intervals of her supervision developed new “features” with a joyous
abandon that threatened to reduce the Hinsdales’ scholastic ménage
to chaos. Dr. Hinsdale came home one afternoon to find his study
darkened, the floor and table strewn with bits of multi-colored paper
and paste-board, and Madeline, in a studio apron, trying the effect of
her latest inspiration in candle-shades on the desk lamp.
“I’m going to make a different design for each stall,” she
explained cheerfully, without looking up when the door opened. “That
will be more interesting to make, and when a thing is interesting to
make it’s more likely to turn out well, isn’t it now? Oh, I thought it was
only Mary! I beg your pardon. I know I shouldn’t have come in here,
but they had table-cloths and dish-towels spread around everywhere
else. The first day it rains we’ll treat you to a free lunch, Dr. Hinsdale,
to pay up. Oh, you’ve got—there’s some one else! Why didn’t you
tell me?”
As Madeline fled precipitately, she heard “Prexy’s” pleasant
laugh.
“We’re disgraced forever,” she announced tragically to the
sewing-party. “Prexy will probably proclaim a boycott upon us at to-
morrow’s chapel.”
But he sent word instead, by Professor Hinsdale, that he wanted
to be counted in for the free lunch.
“He may, if he’ll let us tack our posters on the campus trees,”
agreed Madeline calmly.
“Posters!” cried Betty and Babbie in a breath.
Madeline nodded. “I’m designing one. It’s stored under the sofa in
Mary’s pink and gold reception room. I’ll get it. It’s all done but the
name.”
“Why, we haven’t any name!” cried Babbie.
“I thought you called yourselves Betty Wales & Co.,” put in Mary.
“That’s what we are, of course,” agreed Madeline, reappearing
with her poster, “so we’d better call ourselves something else, hadn’t
we? Everybody can see that Betty is a regular feature. A name
should bring out unexpected qualities. Besides, Betty wouldn’t want
her name to be stuck up on a sign.”
“That’s a good theory about the unexpected qualities,” said Mary,
“but I’d like to see you work it.”
Madeline sighed plaintively. “As if it was anything against a theory
that you can’t work it. I furnish the theory. It’s only fair for some one
else to furnish the name.”
“Old Barn Tea-Shop,” suggested Mary.
“Sounds sentimental,” objected Babbie.
“And rickety,” laughed Betty.
“The Coach-and-Four Tea-Shop,” from Mary again. “That’s
certainly the height of elegance.”
“But it’s humpy to say,” Madeline told her, “and possibly a little too
elegant for us to live up to.”
“The Saddle and Stirrup,” was Dr. Hinsdale’s offering.
“That’s lovely,” declared Madeline, “just like a quaint old English
inn. But it’s too—well, too sophisticated for us. College girls wouldn’t
take to it.”
“Tally-ho Tea-Shop sounds rather neat,” said Babbie reflectively,
“but I don’t know that it brings out any of Madeline’s unsuspected
features.”
“Why, yes, it does,” Madeline declared. “It suggests dash and
pleasant glitter and snap—and general stuntiness.”
“And ear-splitting horns,” added Mary sarcastically.
“But college girls love to blow horns,” Betty reminded her.
Mary grinned. “I adore it myself,” she admitted, “but I try to live up
to the dignity of my position.”
Madeline had been sketching in some letters rapidly on her
poster. “Tally-ho Tea-Shop fills the space I left most beautifully. I’ll
copy this in oils on thin wood, and we’ll nail a gargoyle to the big tree
in our front yard and let the sign dangle out of his mouth. Mary, be a
jewel and lend us your gargoyle. Ours are all needed inside.”
It was certainly a strenuous week.
“If anybody had made us slave the way we have over this tea-
shop,” Babbie declared, “we should have called it cruelty to animals
and children. And I don’t believe we could have done it except up
here at Harding, where everybody throws things together between
classes.”
Just to be sure that everything was “thrown together,” they gave a
private view, on the evening before the opening day, for the
Hinsdales, Georgia, Polly Eastman, and a few other chosen spirits,
who pronounced the Tally-ho Tea-Shop “very neat,” “a gem,”
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The Literacy Coach s Handbook A Guide to Research

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Collaborating for Real Literacy Librarian Teacher Literacy

Differentiated Reading Instruction Strategies for the

Attachment in intellectual and developmental disability a

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Reading to Learn: Lessons from Exemplary Fourth-Grade Classrooms

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The Literacy Coach’s Handbook represents a best-evidence summary of a series of

Chapter 8, we summarize the work of researchers who have helped us to concep-

CHAPTER 1. What Is a Literacy Coach? 1

CHAPTER 2. What Is a Schoolwide Reading Program? 21

CHAPTER 3. Reading Research 45

CHAPTER 4. Reading Assessment 65

CHAPTER 5. Instructional Schedules 88

CHAPTER 6. Instructional Tasks and Procedures 100

CHAPTER 7. Selecting Materials and Programs 120

CHAPTER 8. Intervention Programs 162

CHAPTER 9. Providing Professional Support 185

CHAPTER 10. Leadership 221

What Is a Literacy Coach?

Once there was a peddler who sold caps.

Mt. Pleasant Elementary (again, a pseudonym) is isolated geographically, and

TABLE 1.1. Mean Percentile

LITERACY COACH AS LEARNER

Successful literacy coaches must make a substantial and permanent commitment

Choose examples of spelling correspondences, patterns, rules, and exceptions.

TABLE 1.2. Phonics and Decoding Competencies

Understand and recognize Explicitly teach the Observe, demonstrate, and

TABLE 1.3. References Informing the 2003 International Reading

Handbooks of reading research

Theoretical models and processes of reading

Preventing reading difficulties in young children

Report of the national reading panel

Handbook of early literacy research

teachers learned to support student decoding by teaching them to rely on syntax

Guided Reading Self-Selected Reading

FIGURE 1.1. Christy’s Four Blocks organization.

LITERACY COACH AS GRANT WRITER

The reading professional will be able to

Frequently, school-level reform efforts require money—money for new curriculum

• The school would hire a literacy coach.

rials at the appropriate level, including materials designed to practice pho-

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