Implementation

Participation in the Literacy Collaborative represents a long term commitment to reshaping literacy education in a school or district. Implementation takes place in four phases. For each phase, local planning and decision-making is required.

Student collaboration
Students working together

The following list is accomplished with literacy coach support, school based literacy team input, and staff participation.

Phase 1

Awareness and planning

  • Investigate frameworks for teaching and professional development
  • Achieve broad ownership
  • Develop a local plan
  • Submit an application

Phase 2

Literacy coach training and start‑up

  • Train an in-school leader called a literacy coach for primary / intermediate / middle school grades, with each continuing to teach children at the appropriate level
  • Create a school based literacy team made up of educators such as a Reading Recovery teacher, Title 1 teacher, reading specialist, special education teacher, and principal who collaborate to provide leadership for the program
  • Provide awareness sessions to capture teachers' interest
  • Begin to build a school book collection
  • Introduce personnel to the framework
  • Collect baseline data

Phase 3

School-level implementation

  • Provide a year long professional development course
  • Provide demonstrations, coaching, and analysis of teaching
  • Purchase more books for reading aloud, guided reading, and professional development
  • Begin a home outreach program with the use of Keep Books
  • Collect and analyze data

Phase 4

Refinement

  • Continue professional development
  • Provide ongoing support to staff members
  • Add to the book collections
  • Continue the home outreach program with the use of Keep Books
  • Collect and analyze data

Fidelity of implementation

As a literacy team, reflecting annually on your successes and current challenges around implementation of Literacy Collaborative will allow you to acknowledge accomplishments and prioritize goals for the upcoming year.

  • Providing a research-based instructional model that is language-based, student-centered, process-oriented, and outcome-based;
  • Creating in-school and in-district leadership through the training and support of school-based literacy leadership teams, administrators, and literacy coaches;
  • Establishing long-term site-based development for every member of the school’s literacy faculty; and
  • Helping schools monitor the progress of every student through systematized assessment, data collection, and analysis.

When reflecting on your implementation, there are several elements that will be helpful to consider. These sections are included as a part of our Fidelity of Implementation document:

  • Fidelity of Implementation Tool
  • Fidelity of implementation: achievement data
  • Teacher surveys

The Fidelity of Implementation document with Data Analysis and Teacher Surveys can be used across the school year. We suggest you start to discuss the factors of implementation with your team mid-year.

By year’s end it will be helpful to fill out the Fidelity of Implementation document and analyze your data so that you can identify the year’s successes and challenges to prioritize future action plans for the literacy team.

These can be reviewed in the fall as you develop an agenda for your literacy team. Then you can reference this tool throughout the year to assess implementation, as well as develop and act upon your goals.