Leading Professional Learning

Disciplinary Literacy: A Select Research Bibliography

Summary: Literacy researchers across a range of disciplines have been looking at the unique uses of literacy particular to their disciplinary activities. If you and your site colleagues are interested in further study of the research literacy, this is a fairly extensive bibliography. Original Date of Publication: June 2019

Stories of Impact: The On-Site Work of the New York City Writing Project

Author: Elaine Avidon, et al. Summary: This e-book includes powerful chapters written by teacher-consultants about the individual and collective impact of their work and its alignment to their site’s mission and beliefs about professional learning. Reading select chapters would support fellows in imagining different kinds of school coaching; alternatively, the...

#engchat: Community, Conversation and Collaboration for English Teachers

Author: Meenoo Rami Summary: The creater of #engchat, Meenoo Rami, describes how #engchat began as a weekly online chat for English teachers and has grown into a platform that has thousands of followers and hundreds of weekly tweets and retweets. Read a little about #engchat here and then join the...

Changing Times: Adapting the Invitational Summer Institute to an Online Environment

Author: Ken Martin Summary: Ken Martin, director of the Maine WP, shares lessons learned as the site transitioned from a traditional face-to-face summer Invitational Institute to a year round, online institute. This thoughtful and comprehensive study reviews the rationale for moving to an online institute documenting the successes, struggles, and...

Resources for Supporting an Online Writing Community

Summary: For a team interested in developing and supporting an online writing community, this introduction to the NWP’s former E-Anthology describes the role of responding to writing in developing community, gives helpful hints about responding online, offers a response protocol, and provides an example of a productive exchange between responders,...

“Out of Our Experience: Useful Theory,” Excerpt from Teacher Research for Better Schools

Author: Sheila Clawson, Marion S. MacLean, Marian M. Mohr, Mary Ann Nocerino, Courtney Rogers, and Betsy Sanford Summary: Teacher researchers detail their inquiry journeys highlighting theories that influenced or explained their thinking about practice, about teacher and student learning, and about school change. Useful in teacher inquiry to demonstrate connections...

Incorporating Multigenre Writing in the Social Studies Classroom

Author: Kari Scheidel Summary: Noting the gap between the level of sophistication of her students’ writing in writing workshop and in social studies, teacher Kari Scheidel reflected upon her teaching practice, asking “How do I use writing effectively in social studies?” and “How do I find time for it?” In...

Planning for Study Groups: An Advanced Institute at the NWP in Vermont

Author: Patricia McGonegal Summary: This article describes the design and development of an advanced summer institute where teacher-consultants prepare to lead study groups in their own schools. Within this experiential institute, teacher leaders immerse themselves in the practices and theories essential to making study groups productive and powerful; they participate...

Ten Prompts to Help Turn Your Demonstration into an Article

Author: Art Petersen Summary: This brief list of prompts is designed to help teachers think about turning teaching demonstrations into professional articles. The prompts could help launch a writing retreat or encourage teachers to move towards publishing their classroom inquiry projects.

Getting Inside Inquiry: Teachers’ Questions Transform Their Practice

Summary: Useful for teams interested in planning teacher inquiry programs, this resource tells the story of a collaborative inquiry project carried out among teachers from writing project sites in Oklahoma and Nevada that not only transformed their individual teaching practices but also supported them to start teacher inquiry communities at...