Staff Development with The Comprehension Toolkits: Implementing and Sustaining Comprehension Instruction Across the Curriculum

"This staff development resource helps coaches and administrators maximize teacher effectiveness through collaborative and collegial staff development."

Teachers matter. Effective comprehension instruction is more than a handful of reading strategies. As critical as these strategies are, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis have long held that it is the teacher who makes the difference. Staff Development with The Comprehension Toolkits builds on this understanding in a unique collaboration with Angela Butler Schroden, the district reading specialist who helped implement The Comprehension Toolkit series across Hillsborough County, Florida, one of the largest school districts in the United States. Designed for literacy coaches, reading specialists, and administrators, this multimedia resource offers an insider's view of how Angela and others in her district supported teachers as they launched comprehension instruction and sustained active literacy practices.

Framed around five coaching structures-workshops, study groups, demonstration teaching, co-teaching, and one-to-one coaching-each of the seven core chapters describes how to plan staff development around the foundational ideas and practices that shape Toolkit instruction. The accompanying CD-ROM provides all the tools you'll need to implement effective coaching sessions, including three customizable PowerPoint presentations. While providing a collaborative forum to explore the "whats and whys" of The Comprehension Toolkit, the professional development practices in this resource serve as analytical tools and frameworks for enhancing teaching craft.

Learn more about the Comprehension Toolkit series at ComprehensionToolkit.com

The Comprehension Toolkit series helps you teach nonfiction reading strategies in a variety of instructional settings.

Whole-Group Instruction
Grades K-2: The Primary Comprehension Toolkit
Grades K-2: The Primary Comprehension Toolkit Bundle (includes Trade Book Pack)
Grades 3-6: The Comprehension Toolkit
Grades 3-6: The Comprehension Toolkit Bundle (includes Trade Book Pack)

Small-Group Instruction
Grades K-2: Small-Group Lessons for The Primary Comprehension Toolkit
Grades 3-6: Small-Group Lessons for The Comprehension Toolkit

Short Nonfiction for Guided Reading and Independent Practice
Grades PreK-1: Toolkit Texts
Grades 2-3: Toolkit Texts
Grades 4-5: Toolkit Texts
Grades 6-7: Toolkit Texts

ELL Support
Grades K-2: Scaffolding The Primary Comprehension Toolkit for English Language Learners
Grades 3-5: Scaffolding The Comprehension Toolkit for English Language Learners

Staff Development
Staff Development with The Comprehension Toolkits

Resources for PLCs
Inquiry Circles in Elementary Classrooms DVD
Inquiry Circles in Middle and High School Classrooms DVD

Save with Teacher Packs
The Primary Comprehension Toolkit Teacher Pack
The Comprehension Toolkit Teacher Pack

Stephanie Harvey has spent her career teaching and learning about reading and writing. After fifteen years of public school teaching, both in regular education and special education classrooms, Stephanie worked for twelve years as a staff developer for the Denver based Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC), a partnership of leaders from education and business, who support innovation in public schools. Insatiably curious about student thinking, she is a teacher first and foremost and currently serves as a private literacy consultant to schools and school districts. In that role, she conducts keynote speeches, presentations, workshops, demonstration lessons, coaching sessions and ongoing consultation to teachers, reading specialists, literacy coaches, principals and district administrators. With a focus on K-12 literacy, her specialties include comprehension instruction, inquiry-based learning, content area reading and writing, nonfiction literacy, and the role of passion, wonder and engagement in teaching and learning. Stephanie has written many articles, books and resources; her Heinemann publications include the title Comprehension and Collaboration which she co-authored with Smokey Daniels, and The Comprehension Toolkit series which is an in-depth Curricular Resource for comprehension instruction co-authored with Anne Goudvis. Click here to read recent Heinemann Blogs from Steph. Connect with Steph at @StephHarvey49 » Listen to an interview with Stephanie Harvey on Education Talk Radio - 2/29/2012 (30:35)

Anne Goudvis has taught students in grades K-6 over the years, beginning her teaching career in urban schools on the south side of Chicago. She spent many years as a staff developer in the Denver area, working in culturally and linguistically diverse schools. Currently, Anne works with schools and districts around the country to implement progressive literacy practices and comprehension across the curriculum. She is the coauthor with Stephanie Harvey of Strategies That Work and The Comprehension Toolkit series, along with resources including Scaffolding the Comprehension Toolkits for English Language Learners. A history buff, she and Stephanie also coauthored the Short Nonfiction for Teaching American History series, which includes strategies for teaching historical literacy and student articles about often overlooked voices and people in history. With Inquiry Illuminated, Anne, Steph, and Brad Burhow show how curiosity and student agency thrive as kids engage in Researcher's Workshop across the curriculum.

Angela Schroden has worked for Hillsborough County Public Schools for fifteen years where she began her career as a classroom teacher in both 2nd and 5th grades. Angela also served as a literacy coach for four years where she provided daily support (coaching, modeling, planning, demonstration lessons, etc.) to K - 5 teachers in all areas of literacy, content, and pedagogy and as assistant principal for a Title I elementary school. Angela then moved to the district level where she joined the Elementary Language Arts team. As a District Resource Teacher for elementary reading she supported 144 elementary schools (Title I and non-Title I) in implementing balanced literacy, reader's and writer's workshop, small-group instruction, the gradual release of responsibility, the Comprehension Toolkit, and intervention. Angela's school support included teaching, coaching, observation, and training. During her time at the district level Angela created and delivered dozens of staff development modules, district-wide planning tools and curricula - such as, assessment planning tools, data conferencing guides - as well as hundreds of literacy lessons. Based on her work implementing The Comprehension Toolkit in Hillsborough County, Angela coauthored a book with Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis titled Staff Development with The Comprehension Toolkits: Implementing and Sustaining Comprehension Instruction Across the Curriculum (Heinemann 2012). Most recently, Angela earned her Ed.D. from USF in Educational Leadership. Her research focused on leadership content knowledge, where she examined the relationship between principals' perceived reading knowledge and the leadership decisions they make to support reading instruction.