Leading Professional Learning

Coaching Guide and Protocol

Summary: This coaching guide and protocol from the Southern Colorado Writing Project may be a useful resource for program leaders looking for ways to support teachers in presenting their work to colleagues. While the protocol lays out a schedule and rationale for meetings between presenting teachers and their mentors, the...

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...

Nurturing Middle School Readers through Reviews and Book Trailers

Author: Jeremy Hyler Summary: Are you and your students looking for an escape from traditional book reports? Is it time to go digital? Check out this brief description of a strategy for engaging students as book reviewers and producers of 30-second book trailers using Animoto. A side-by-side graphic compares instructions...

Resources For Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship: Spotlight on Common Sense Media

Author: Tiffany Chiao Summary: Concerned about students’ safe and responsible internet use? This resource describes Common Sense Media, an interactive website that helps kids navigate the Internet safely and interact with their peers responsibly and respectfully. The website also provides resources for parents and curriculum for teachers to serve those...

The National Writing Project: Scaling Up and Scaling Down

Author: Joseph P. McDonald, Judy Buchanan, and Richard Sterling Summary: How does the NWP simultaneously impact individuals and school communities? What can local sites learn about strategies for scaling up their work? Teacher leaders and project directors involved in developing grant proposals, partnerships, or research focused on scaling up professional...

Improving Assignments With the Writing Assignment Framework

Author: National Writing Project and Mary Ann Smith Summary: Featuring a range of protocols, tools, and student samples, the Writing Assignment Framework and Overview was designed as a resource for use in planning instruction and professional development. Growing out of work NWP did with the Authentic Intellectual Work framework, these...

The C3WP Badge Series: Public Criteria

Author: National Writing Project Summary: The College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) awards three badges to participants and leaders in C3WP professional learning and leadership opportunities.

Reflection and Practice on Leadership and Facilitation

Summary: This series of scenarios for planning professional development programs can serve as thinking and discussion guides for site leaders working with teacher leaders who are developing and delivering professional development. The scenarios guide leaders through a process of considering multiple brief PD requests, how they would put together a...

National School Reform Faculty: Learning Communities Protocols and Activities

Summary: This extensive collection of protocols and strategies from the National School Reform Faculty is an essential resource for those facilitating professional development. There are protocols on everything from looking at student work to professional dialogue on problematic classroom scenarios to discussing shared readings.

Program Recruitment Flyers: Some Models

Summary: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Likewise, if a great professional development program is offered and no one shows up, was it great? Here is a collection of flyers that NWP sites have used to...