Between May 2006 and March 2007, McKinsey & Company studied the world’s top-performing school systems and most successful educational reforms. They researched what made these systems and initiatives work so spectacularly well, while many others failed.

Their findings showed that the most successful systems and programs were all based in the belief that “the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.” They also all shared three key strategies for improving instruction—strategies which closely parallel Children’s Literacy Initiative’s work as an organization:

1. Individual teachers need to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practice.
When a CLI Professional Developer begins coaching a teacher, he or she observes the teacher’s practice and documents strengths and weaknesses in approximately 160 specific areas (such as frequent read-alouds and the students’ production of original work instead of copied worksheets). The results are shared with the teacher and highlight what skills CLI coaching sessions should focus on improving.

2. Individual teachers need to gain understanding of specific best practices. In general, this can only be achieved through the demonstration of such practices in an authentic setting.
CLI meets this need in the following ways:

• Seminars that introduce teachers to the best practices in literacy instruction. Each seminar covers a specific lesson topic, such as Writers Workshop or Message Time Plus, and increases a teacher’s knowledge of high-impact instruction.
• One-on-one coaching to follow up on the seminar material and ensure that the teacher is successfully implementing new strategies. Coaching sessions occur in the authentic setting of the teacher’s own classroom during a typical school day. The CLI Professional Developer models lessons and provides support and feedback on the teacher’s progress.

3. Individual teachers need to be motivated to make the necessary improvements….Such changes come about when teachers have high expectations, a shared sense of purpose, and above all, a collective belief in their common ability to make a difference to the education of the children they serve.
CLI grows cultures of literacy within schools, mainly in the following ways:

• CLI develops and sustains Model Classrooms. We have trained over 50 teachers to be exemplary literacy instructors (Model Classroom Teachers) and helped them transform their classroom literacy environments. These teachers demonstrate that the reading/writing achievement of students in impoverished schools can be improved. Non-model teachers visit Model Classrooms during actual lessons to study effective instructional strategies in action. They see how their own classrooms can be transformed, and they leave with raised expectations for their students.
• CLI facilitates grade-level-meetings. At grade-level meetings, teachers engage in joint lesson planning, share strategies that worked in their own classrooms, analyze assessment data and student work, and discuss the latest research. Grade-level meetings provide an opportunity for a Model or Lead Teacher to develop as a leader and guide colleagues toward positive change. The meetings become a self-sustaining framework for teachers to support each other in continual improvement.

Click here to read the full McKinsey report.

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On the first warm, sunny day in spring, MariaRosa DaCosta brought her class of Newark (New Jersey) second graders out to the playground, but not for recess. That morning, they were all poets seeking inspiration.

MariaRosa began taking part in Children’s Literacy Initiative’s training and coaching in 2005. (With the support of the Newark Public Schools, Victoria Foundation, Prudential Foundation and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, CLI has been providing similar professional development for kindergarten through third grade teachers in Newark for more than ten years.) Using the workshop model, this veteran teacher had begun teaching students not just the mechanics (spelling, punctuation) but the craft of writing.

Eventually, she was able to take classic Writer’s Workshop lesson plans and use them as a springboard for improvising her own lessons, geared specifically to her students’ needs and honoring the life of the classroom.

MariaRosa tells the story of one such lesson, a transformative springtime workshop: “This lesson was spur of the moment, as good lessons sometimes are. For a few weeks, the children had been introduced to alliteration, free verse, use of white space, rhyme, and repetition in poetry. They had just finished learning about personification.

“The weather had been dreadful for many days. It had rained or was overcast for over a week. On the morning the sun came out, when I picked the children up in the playground, they were very excited. They couldn’t stop talking and smiling. After breakfast, they were still a bit overexcited, so I told them that we would go outside on the playground and privately talk to Mr. Sun. They could thank him for coming out.

“We went outside and they quietly spoke to the sun individually. Each child stood and whispered his/her message to the sun. As they were standing there, the birds in the neighborhood were having a field day. All types of birdsong could be heard. The breeze was rustling the new spring leaves and the children stood listening intently.

“At that time I turned and noticed my shadow. I automatically began playing with it, since I couldn’t resist. The children were in awe. They started playing with their own shadows, and then with each others’. They were delightful to watch. Many of them had never played with their own shadows before. We did this quietly for about fifteen minutes. They were laughing and smiling the whole time.

MariaRosa’s spontaneous Writer’s Workshop lesson highlights her students’ engagement with literacy, and her delight in their achievements speaks for itself. These poems by the Newark second graders show how they confidently play with techniques like alliteration, free verse, simile, metaphor, and repetition.

“Then we walked upstairs. Not a sound could be heard all the way to the room, which is quite unusual. When we entered the room, I said, ‘Poets, get out your small poetry notebooks and meet me on the rug.’ There I explained that many poets write about their experiences and how it makes them feel.

“‘Since you had such a good time outside with the sun, why don’t you write about it? We can have a poetry tribute to the sun and read our poems to him.’

“I sent them off to write. Not a sound was heard in my room for over forty minutes. My student teacher and I wrote poems too. Then we took our little notebooks and went outside to read the poems to the sun. We sat in a circle on the ground, and my principal and vice-principal came too.

“Each child stood in the center of the circle and read his/her poem to the sun. Imagine my shock when they began reading! I hadn’t conferenced with them at all. The principal and vice-principal quickly asked children for paper and wrote poems also.

“This was a lengthy share time, but well worth it. The other children listened intently and commented on the literary devices used by their companions. This blew the administration away.

“Then we quietly said good-bye to the sun and returned to our room.”

Dave Younkin, CLI’s Professional Development Manager, notes that CLI professional development for teachers can seem “relentless” because of the hard work required to enact positive change in the classroom, but will always be reliable in offering teachers the resources and consistent support they need. For MariaRosa, who is now a Teacher Leader working to help her colleagues implement the Writer’s Workshop model in their own classrooms, the work of professional development was well worth the results.

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