Full Description
"This rich resource walks middle and high school literacy leaders through a comprehensive process for conceptualizing, initiating, and, most important, sustaining a schoolwide literacy learning program. The authors clearly know teachers and schools, and their reality-tested tools will prove invaluable in guiding and supporting middle and high school literacy leaders."
—Doug Buehl
Author, Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning
A systemic and sustainable approach for improving adolescent literacy and learning!
Taking the Lead on Adolescent Literacy provides educational leaders with a user-friendly and comprehensive planning process for developing a new literacy initiative—or for dramatically enhancing a current plan--that has the power not only to raise student performance levels but also to positively impact graduation rates, employability, and higher education success.
Using a five-stage framework that has been field-tested nationwide for more than a decade, the authors provide an array of resources to guide in-depth planning, implementation, and monitoring to ensure sustained results, supported by examples from literacy-rich schools, checklists and assessments, and a glossary of terms. Each stage in the process builds upon a school or district's existing capacities and focuses on six detailed rubrics that can be implemented at every stage to help ensure long-term success:
Student motivation and engagement
Literacy across the content areas
Literacy interventions
Literacy-rich environment, policies, and culture
Parent and community involvement
District support of school-based efforts
Helping educators build the critical skills in students for communicating and making meaning within an increasingly complex world, this book shows how a sustained focus on literacy can serve as a powerful lever for school improvement.
Contents
Foreword by Andres Henriquez
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Part I. The Model, Process, and Rubrics
Rationale for a Schoolwide Focus on Literacy
Why Focus on Literacy?
How the Literacy Leadership Process Was Developed
The Five-Stage Literacy Leadership Process
How to Use the Literacy Leadership Process
Introduction: The Literacy Action Rubrics
Description of the Rubrics
Using the Literacy Action Rubrics
The Literacy Action Rubrics
Part II. Schoolwide Change in Five Stages
1. Stage 1: Get Ready
Step 1: Build an Effective Literacy Leadership Team
Step 2: Create a Vision of a Literacy-Rich School
Step 3: Use Data to Establish the Need for Literacy Improvement
Next Steps
2. Stage 2: Assess
Step 1: Identify School Strengths
Step 2: Summarize Key Messages From Your School Data
Step 3: Assess Current School Implementation Using the Literacy Action Rubrics
Step 4: Draft Literacy Action Goals
Next Steps
3. Stage 3: Plan
Step 1: Develop an Implementation Map for Each Literacy Action Goal
Step 2: Solicit Feedback From the School Community
Step 3: Revise Literacy Action Goal Statements and Implementation Maps
Step 4: Publish the Formal Literacy Action Plan
Next Steps
4. Stage 4: Implement
Step 1: Organize for Action
Step 2: Monitor and Troubleshoot Implementation
Step 3: Monitor Progress Toward Goals
Step 4: Plan How to Sustain Momentum
Next Steps
5. Stage 5: Sustain
Step 1: Summarize Progress Toward Goals
Step 2: Revise Implementation Maps
Step 3: Analyze Success as a Literacy Leadership Team
Step 4: Plan How to Sustain Momentum
Next Steps
Part III. Supporting School and District Administrators as Literacy Leaders
6. The Principal's Role
Support Literacy Leaders
The Five Action Points of the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model
7. District Support
Communicate That Literacy Is a Priority
Provide Professional Development
Provide Specific Types of Fiscal Support
Establish Uniform Policies and Procedures Across the District
Use Data to Improve Instruction and Monitor Program Effectiveness
Develop and Implement a District Literacy Action Plan
Use the Five Action Points of the Taking Action Literacy Leadership Model
Review the District Plan to Ensure Alignment With State Planning and Advocacy
Resources
Resource A. School Vignettes
Resource B: Tools to Use When Implementing the Five-Stage Process
Resource C: Examples of Each Rubric Component in Action
Resource D: High School Case Study
Resource E: Matrix of Resources Available in Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy and Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy
Resource F: Glossary of Terms
References
Index
