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CLI's first-grade model classroom in Philadelphia's Meade Elementary School.
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About CLI Model Classrooms

Model classrooms are eye-openers: by showing what is possible, they dramatically raise teacher expectations, producing better performance from teacher and student alike.

CLI establishes model classrooms for our training program. Teachers receiving CLI coaching have the opportunity to observe successful classrooms and exemplary teaching practices in action, and can use this experience to hone their own practice. Teachers report that these visits help them to grow both in skill level and motivation as they see for themselves what is possible in classrooms like their own.

CLI model classrooms are located in schools in low-income neighborhoods with student populations typical to the area. These classrooms are evidence of the remarkable success of rich literacy environments, exemplary teaching, and high expectations for students. CLI provides the teacher with training that is both intensive and sustained over time, and furnishes the classroom with large numbers of quality children's books and literacy materials. The result is nothing short of transformational: a classroom where students thrive in an environment of support and challenge.

CLI currently maintains 48 model classrooms in 5 states. Click here for a full list.

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Books, books, books!
The library corner in the kindergarten CLI model classroom in Newark's Oliver St. School.
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Urban Teacher Preparation Project

CLI's Urban Teacher Preparation Project, supported by funds from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, uses the CLI model classrooms in Newark, NJ, to introduce pre-service teachers from three local colleges - Kean, Montclair, and Rutgers -- to highly successful urban classrooms.

The CLI model classrooms serve as a resource to the pre-service teachers in effective literacy instructional practices and the resulting high student achievement. The goal is to provide the pre-service teachers with the opportunity to observe and participate in highly effective urban classrooms with the hope that this experience will impart the competence and confidence needed to choose a teaching job in an urban district.

Teachers should increase their instructional knowledge by visiting successful teachers in action, getting exemplary instruction from which to model their own practices.*

 

 

 

The project gives pre-service teachers the opportunity to visit a model classroom with a CLI trainer. This is an experience that opens students' eyes to the high intellectual potential of urban elementary students in classrooms with teachers who provide effective instruction through engaging and purposeful lessons. Pre-service teachers also attend presentations by CLI model classroom teachers and participate in CLI workshops on campus. Additionally, each of the 14 model classrooms will have a student teacher or junior practicum placement during the 2003-04 school year.

The expectation is that this will spark increased interest among college students in placement in a CLI model classroom, and that such placements will lead students to decide to pursue a teaching career in Newark.

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Teacher qualification accounts for over 90% of the variation of achievement
in schools with students from similar backgrounds
.*

* National Commission on Teaching and America's Future
What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future
September 1996
   

 

  Photo Gallery
Click on the photos to view an enlarged image.

   
In this first-grade CLI model classroom in Newark's Ann St. School, books are displayed in the book racks, and grouped by reading level in the bins on the windowsill and by subject in the bins on the floor.
Third graders in CLI's model classroom in Philadelphia's Pratt Elementary School read about different countries, study maps, and write about what they learn.
   
CLI's first-grade model classroom in Newark's McKinley School.
A Message Time Plus® lesson at a CLI kindergarten model classroom in Philadelphia.
   
 

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List of CLI Model Classrooms
51 in 6 states
October 2007
     
   

ILLINOIS

Chicago

Pre-Kindergarten (coaching lab sites)
Goudy Elementary, Erin Stanfill
Dolittle Elementary, Angela Wooten
Goldblatt Elementary, Beverly Funchess

MASSACHUSETTS

Boston

Pre-Kindergarten
Mason School, Maria Mendes
Ruth Darling Center, Mary Geoghegan
    (observation site)


NEW JERSEY

Newark


Kindergarten
Abington Ave School, Lenore Furman
Ann Street School, Lidia DaGraca
Chancellor Annex, Ke'Lee Brown
Mount Vernon School, Regina Wingo


First Grade
Mount Vernon School, Graciela Gomes
Oliver Street School, Mariarosa DaCosta
Newton Street School, Danielle Mastrogiovanni

Second Grade
Abington Avenue School, Marissa Belasco

Orange
Kindergarten
Forest Street School, Adriana Brochero-
    Hernandez

First Grade
Forest Street School, Natasha Pared

Plainfield
Second Grade
Barlow Elementary, Louisa Ruela

NEW YORK

White Plains

First Grade
Mamaroneck Avenue School, Paula
   Knuckles

PENNSYLVANIA

Bristol
Pre-Kindergarten
Bristol Board of Education Building,
    Mary Lou Tantum

Levittown
First/Second Grade Mix
Penn Valley Elementary, Heather Lieb

Norristown
First Grade
Gotwals Elementary, Chris Porco
Gotwals Elementary, Erica Prettyman

Second Grade
Gotwals Elementary, Patti Spellman-Gandolfo

Philadelphia
Pre-Kindergarten
Community Education Alliance of West  

   Philadelphia at the Family Charter

   School, Jennifer MacNamara

Head Start Learning Tree; North Presbyterian

   Center, Mary Shah

Kindergarten
Allen M. Stearne School, Carolyn Kivenias
Bayard Taylor School, Gladys Navarro-
    Berriós (Bilingual)

Belmont Academy, Sonja Neilson
Clara Barton Elementary, Amanda Gindin
Clara Barton Elementary, Jackie Anderson
General George C. Meade School, Brenda
    Tucker Patterson

George Sharswood School, Michele Hurst
George Washington School, Jennifer Pakola
Isaac Sheppard School, Christina Genetti-
    Grosh

John B. Kelly School, Stacy Dougherty
John Welsh School, Kathy Konicki

Joseph Catharine School, Nicole Traore
Kearny Elementary, Ellen Ginsberg
Solis-Cohen School, Mary Bell Cote
Thomas Mifflin School, Noelle Messina
Thurgood Marshall School, Donna Thomas

Duckrey Elementary, Cynthia Moultrie

First Grade
Clara Barton Elementary, Elaine Cubbage

Clara Barton Elementary, Alison Walters

St. Francis de Sales School, Denise Metz

Paul Lawrence Dunbar School, Toya Andrews


Second Grade
Isaac Sheppard School, Colleen Lutz
Anna B. Pratt Elementary, Diane Bloom

Gotwals Elementary, Patti Gandolfo

Ferguson Elementaryl, Robin Finklestein

Third Grade
Anna B. Pratt Elementary, Kathy Conklin

Penn Alexander Elementary, Kate Sharp

General George C. Meade School, Donielle Rigler

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Pre-Kindergarten
LaSalle Elementary School, Jennifer Allen
ECDC#2, Janice Ford
Carver Terrace, Phyllis Nichols

 
Most recently, some of our model classrooms have become coaching lab sites where professional developers can practice, observe, and reflect together on their coaching and that of their colleagues.
 
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