Push out materials (i.e. common language handout or common formative templates for note-taking) encouraging the use of common language and common formatives across contents for consistent, corporate branding and messaging. 

Develop a communication channel for admin and paraprofessionals to use common language in interactions with colleagues and students. 

Create a viable curriculum with corporate messaging like the one here: https://curriculum.newvisions.org

Align with MTSS

Create or recommend content for differentiated PD 

Observation culture?? Find out who are the literacy rockstars and spotlight their work. Encourage observations.

Inventory and catalogue book rooms in each department for whole faculty transparency

textbook audit - to teach text features and ways to use reference materials.p

Check s and balances system to monitor and tweak over time. 

System for using hallway space and curating classroom libraries

Campaign for corporate buy in from admin, faculty, and support staff

Cross Curricular Literacy Cheat Sheet or Resource Menu

-More reading articles

    - Reading comprehension, main idea, supporting details
-letter writing

-Write about their answers

- Not a grammar focus; NoRedInk isn’t the answer

Need Access to SAM platform for Reading Inventory to sort by classes

Potential Messaging (from Immings)
literacy team?

We are entering a year of recalibration.  We need to return to core academic values that impact our school culture and practices, reminding ourselves of best practices, learning updated strategies based on newer research, and assessing whether we as a whole school and we as individual teachers are aligned with what we know to be our academic values.  As we learn together through Professional Learning there may be strategies that are not "brand new" to some of us, but we need to take these opportunities to reflect on our own practice and re-align ourselves.  Our hope is that there are teachers who have remained calibrated and can share their professional practices, helping others of us refine what we do to continue to advanced Gainesville High School.

Per Ms. Hill
I would like to see the Literacy Goal used as a way to pull the school together. Schools can become naturally fragmented by subject.  However, GHS faces staff overturn, building (logistical) issues, tremendous growth and changing demographics concurrently. 

Drop Everything and Read could easily be used as a way to pull the school together.  For 15 minutes a day, we would all have ONE common goal.  Imagine 2400 people sharing an experience.

Print and Release Digital and Poster-size Word Wall and District Annotation Guide (Wooten)

Ask for transparency to determine the budgeting process for realistic planning (Powell)

Ask construction instructor for help constructing bookshelves for classroom libraries (Rowland)

Retrieve RI book recommendation list

Faculty Meeting Debut - 
Distribute FAQ Sheet (Castleberry)
Cosmo Quiz (Toney) 
Get support from admin regarding DEAR time. Use ten minutes at the end of second period to support independent reading... consider using homeroom schedule?  (Rowland to ask for Faculty meeting time 10-15 minutes)

Video for rollout (highlighting program goals, resources, contact person)

Get PL support from Nick (Taiwo)

Cosmo Quiz data dig and differentiated PL prep

Repurpose Reader’s Den

First Book Gift Cards to Teachers?

Literacy Night? Virtual?

Distribute one book to each student? How? Funding?

Confirm slide theme: In an effort to stick to branding, should we use school colors?? 

Introduce literacy team for full transparency 

Define literacy

Ask for voluntary participation in DEAR (RED) time

Preview and reintroduce district annotation guide (distribute digital copy??)

Design department slides

Design staff interest survey

Next steps:

Decide to deliver presentation to faculty as a whole or to individual departments. It seems we are leaning to department deliveries

Incentives for teachers to participate 

Should we package in a short video as well?

Meeting Discussion Items
DEAR time added into the schedule

Funds for a book for each child

Funds for printing annotation guide for every teacher

Time in faculty meeting to introduce DEAR testimonials, FAQs and a quiz for Literacy PD

Other ideas worth mentioning:

Initiative to get students signed up for library cards through the Pines system

Bookshelves through construction class?

Reading Inventory Book Recommendations

Longterm work

Literacy Framework

Common Language/ Common Formatives (Corporate branding)

Accountability (Checklist for admin)

-Both teams agree that PL should be focused on literacy and that falls under the Lit Team's purview

-The PL Team has crafted a PL Framework and Nick shared that document 

-The Lit Team agreed with all of the recommendations and stipulations set forth by the PL Team (differentiated PL, etc.)

-Lit Team clarified that growing literacy at GHS will involve a cultural and mindset shift; online platforms and quick-fix applications are not sustainable

-We clarified that pre and post-assessments for this initiative will not yield immediate quantifiable results, that we must be patient and trust the process 

-What we can do is build in reflection pieces during pre-planning, mid-year, and in post-planning as pulse checks to gauge teacher and student engagement with the initiative 

-We need to push for RI access ASAP if data collection will be an administrative requirement but keep in mind that studies show that growing lexiles at the secondary level is difficult (we cannot have unrealistic expectations for immediate gains) 

-Summer workdays are a MUST to build this PL curriculum 

- We are moving the meeting days to Mondays @4 due to unavoidable conflicts in scheduling

-Look over the framework and begin drafting our PL Courses

-Decide on a reasonable timeline for delivery, reflection, implementation, and accountability

-We need to discuss the order in which we deliver the pillars of literacy through PL

-Determine interest for summer workdays 

-Check-in with previous action items 

• Universal Language Word Map

• Summer PL work time 

• Our PL Plan for next year 

   -for this first year, our priorities will be the following two initiatives:

1.) RED Time across the school. 

        a. Access to books (will share feedback on classroom library initiative) 

        b. every day for 10 minutes?

2.) Literacy PL(universal language word wall/interactive media is incorporated here): 

        a. meet with Department heads or content team leads and coach them through our Four Pillars of Literacy using the framework discussed in the previous email,

        b. give one strategy and one product per pillar (to start!) for those leaders to disseminate to their teams and,

        c. request a follow up reflection piece via google forms two weeks later. 

For   language teachers the main insights from the research that Folse analyses are:

Vocabulary is crucial to both communication and comprehension;

Vocabulary needs to be explicitly taught and learned; it will not develop quickly enough through simple exposure to written or spoken language.

For   non-language teachers the main insights are:

It is important to be aware of the English words and phrases that are likely to cause the most difficulty for ESL students. [More]

Learning a subject entails, to a large degree, learning the vocabulary of that subject.

Much of the vocabulary that ESL students need to succeed in a subject is not specific to that subject. [More]

ESL students should be encouraged to have a bilingual dictionary with them every lesson - and make appropriate use of it. 

As promised below we have included links to references and tools mentioned in the presentation. 

In the presentation, we mentioned author and educator Penny Ur. Based on her work, here are some additional tips for explicitly teaching vocabulary.

-Spend class time explicitly teaching vocabulary because they don’t just “pick it up.”

-Don’t usually ask students to guess words from context. (frustration, failure, no learning, time-wasting)

-Review again and again…recycle often

-Teach multi word items - lexical chunks, phrases, expressions

-Use online profilers like this one: 

-Use gamification

-Yes/No pages (pre learning/ post learning concept checks)

-Personalize examples

make it interesting with open ended responses

-Avoid lexical sets at first

-Teach a word and what goes with it - collocations 

Be sure to watch Penny Ur’s “20 Teaching Tips on Vocabulary” for more ideas for explicit vocabulary instruction: https://youtu.be/6FQZrtikKqE

What are the components of 'knowing a word'?
knowledge of the word's polysemy (multiple meanings), connotation, spelling/pronunciation, part of speech, frequency, usage/register, and collocation.

Reference Links
TPR Math Lesson: Slope https://youtu.be/N8Gobp_eP3E
TPR Studies
https://www.tpr-world.com/tpr-articles.html
Brain Research https://www.tpr-world.com/mm5/graphics/TPRarticles/TPR-BreakthroughinBrainResearch.pdf
Further Reading
Asher, James J. (2003). Learning Another Language through Actions (6th edition). Los Gatos, CA: Sky Oaks Productions, Inc.