Do’s and Don’ts of Teaching Practices

It is summertime! There are many reasons why summer is my favorite season but one of them is that the pace is slower and it allows me to spend more time engaging in an activity that is one of life's simple pleasures. Reading. I recently read two blogs on the Edutopia website, “What Doesn't Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon" by Nell Duke and ”5 Highly Effective Teaching Practices" by Rebecca Alber that I would like to share with you...
Donna Mastrovito | July 19, 2016 | 2 Comments
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“The Write Stuff”

The February issue of Educational Leadership Magazine, “Helping ELLs Excel”, was of great interest to me as a Keys to Literacy teacher trainer. Much of the work I do is with teachers who are from urban districts where the ELL population is quickly becoming the majority of the students they teach.

I was particularly interested in the article “The Write Stuff” by Carol Booth Olson, Robin Scarcella and Tina Matuchniak. This article reported the grim statistics of the 2011 NAEP scores in which only 1% of ELL students scored at proficient or above in writing....
Donna Mastrovito | February 16, 2016 | 0 Comments
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Balanced Assessment Systems

“You can either fight assessment or embrace it. However; you cannot be a high performing school without embracing assessment.”

Do you agree with this quote from Lynn Fielding?

I know one thing we can all agree on: There is no shortage of assessments taking place in schools! DIBELS, DRA, DDM's, Benchmark Assessment, MAP, ANET, MCAS, ACCESS, PARCC., etc..........sound familiar? ...
Donna Mastrovito | October 20, 2015 | 1 Comment
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Stopping the Summer Reading Slide

As a reading specialist/coach for many years, part of my responsibility was to work collaboratively with teachers to develop summer reading requirements for students. We were aware of the research showing that if students are not engaged in reading activities over the summer they could lose up to 3 months of their reading progress and low socioeconomic children are at the greatest risk. We did everything to ensure that it would not happen to our students! We would take great efforts to plan a summer reading kick off, organize book drives and create packets so that we could send each student off for the summer well equipped, only to be disappointed when less than a quarter of the students returned to school in the fall with their packets completed.
Donna Mastrovito | June 23, 2015 | 0 Comments
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Creating a Word Conscious Classroom

Word consciousness is "awareness and interest in words and their meaning" (Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2008). While word consciousness is just one aspect of effective vocabulary instruction, I believe it is the most important way to motivate students to read and build their vocabulary. Teachers who share their love for words (logophilia) and who provide engaging opportunities to interact with words across all content on a daily basis will ignite this word learning passion in their students.....
Donna Mastrovito | May 19, 2015 | 4 Comments
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Pen and Paper Reign Supreme

Technology has certainly made our lives easier, and who isn’t grateful for that? But, there are certain things I prefer to do the old fashioned way. For example, I still balance my checkbook using a pencil and paper – never a calculator. For some reason, I feel more confident about the results when I do the work myself. Similarly, when I attend a workshop, I leave my laptop at home in favor of a traditional pen and notebook so I can take notes by hand.

I marvel at my friends who are able to use technology with ease to accomplish these same tasks. For me, the act of “putting pencil to paper” helps me process content much more deeply. All of my life, I attributed this to my learning style, but I recently read an article in The Atlantic that gave validity to my preferred method of note taking.....
Donna Mastrovito | December 23, 2014 | 0 Comments
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ACCESSING KEYS TO LITERACY PD DURING SCHOOL CLOSURES

We are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and the impact on our employees and the schools where we provide professional development.

During this time period when onsite, face-to-face training and coaching is not possible, we offer multiple options for accessing our literacy PD content and instructional practices.

If you are a current or new partner, explore our website or contact us to learn more about:

info@keystoliteracy.com
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