Friday, August 7, 2009

Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy for Vertical Teams Initiative


For three days next week in Williamsburg, VA instructional teams from nine middle schools in Virginia will participate in professional development on using literacy strategies in the core content areas. The workshop is the first activity of a yearlong sustained professional development initiative provided by the College of William and Mary's School Leadership Institute and SURN and is funded by the Virginia Department of Education. The presenters for the workshop are the award-winning authors of Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy book, Jan Rozzelle and Carol Scearce.


The workshop will lay the foundation for the work that instructional teams will do in their schools. The blog, emails, iTuneU SURN site, etc. will be used to grow the learning community that will begin to form next week. Each Monday, different instructional team members have been asked to post their experiences using literacy strategies in their content area. All are welcome and encourage to comment, query, and offer support.

5 comments:

  1. This sounds like a very worthwhile program....I look forward to following the blog.

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  2. This program was outstanding. I am excited to begin the school year and start implementing the reading strategies in my collaborative classrooms. I always am in awe over the picture books that we were given. My school partner and I are already planning activities and lessons utilizing all of the materials given. We especially love the Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy book as one of the best resources out there..

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  3. The three day conference was incredible. What can one say about the presenters, Jan Rozzelle and Carol Scearce?! The way they taught the strategies to us by demonstration was phenomenal. Their example made the idea of implementing the strategies a realization. Like Monique Lee, my school partner and I were so fired up at the conference we planned 1/2 of our literacy lesson right there.

    One thing about Rozzelle and Scearce's research: it just makes sense. Teaching English/Math/Science/History and Literacy just goes together. While they are separate entities, the core subject and literacy go hand in hand. For my brief four years of teaching English, I always thought by default I was teaching literacy, but I haven't been doing so the best way possible. This year, I anticipate my reading scores to increase a great deal because I believe the "Magnificent Seven" will work wonders. I will be keeping you all posted on the progress throughout the year. Best wishes to all!

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  4. I too am excited about using the new strategies that I learned at the conference. I truly came away from the conference energized about the new school year! Thanks to everyone for all the work put into making it such an informative and fun conference. I am proud of myself that I have downloaded music to my iPod and that I have been using it the classroom this week. I purchased a cable so I can play my iPod through my computer wall speakers at school. I also purchased a fabulous picture book to use for my lesson plan. Our KFMS Literacy Team met before school started to work on an in-service that we gave to introduce our literacy initiative to our peers during our annual faculty back to school retreat. We held a contest and our faculty voted on the literacy motto for our school. Our motto is: Literacy Makes Connections! We will be teaching the different Magnificent 7 Strategies at faculty and team meetings.

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  5. This is a wonderful opinion. The things mentioned are unanimous and needs to be appreciated by everyone.

    Power Tools

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