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Shari Frost
Shari Frost has enjoyed a rich and varied professional life as an educator. She has served as a classroom teacher, a reading specialist, a staff developer, and an instructor at the university level. Shari taught grades kindergarten through fifth in the Chicago Public Schools for more than 25 years. Her classroom has been featured in instructional videos by the National Council of Teachers of English, Celebration Press, Scott Foresman, the State of Illinois, the CTELL Project and the Annenberg Teaching Reading K-2 video series. Currently, Shari is the director of the Literacy Partners Project, a collaboration between National-Louis University and the Chicago Public Schools. In this role, she works directly with teachers and children in classrooms to support the improvement of literacy instruction. She also supports and provides professional development for the literacy coaches in this project. Shari is an active member in professional organizations including National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association, and the state level affiliates. She is a frequent presenter at conferences sponsored by these organizations. Her writing for Choice Literacy will focus on the literacy instruction for primary students, challenging assumptions, and teacher change.
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Creating a Culture of Literacy
Shari Frost
How do sports fans develop that undying devotion and fanaticism? Can it be replicated? Is it possible for students to have the same level of enthusiasm for reading and writing? What can we do to make students want to name their dogs after authors or book characters? . . .
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Giving Up the Whole-Class Novel
Shari Frost
Edie stomped into the coach's office lugging a 15-gallon Rubbermaid storage tub. She dumped the contents out onto a table. Out rolled penguin beanie babies, penguin posters, a DVD of The March of the Penguins, some informational books on penguins, penguin stickers, penguin magnets, penguin notepads, and more! She teared up . . .
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Ready-to-Go Readers' Theater Books
Shari Frost
Fluency is not all about rate. There are three other components. The component that isn't getting nearly enough attention is prosody - using appropriate tone, pitch, and phrasing to communicate meaning. The preceding definition can be summarized by the old informal phrase, "reading with expression." Prosody is an excellent window into a student's comprehension of text. . . .
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Out of the Closet and into the Classroom:
Bookroom Management Tips for Literacy Coaches
Shari Frost
Literacy coaches seldom have neutral feelings about their school's literacy closet or bookroom. They either love it or hate it. They love it at the beginning of the school year when everything is neat, well-organized, and dust-free. They love it when things aren't going so well out there. At such times, the literacy closet becomes a place of refuge; there's always something to do there. They hate it when they are trying to find a particular set of books to use in a classroom; even though the books haven't been checked out, they aren't on the shelf either. . . .
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I Do So Like Green Eggs and Ham
Shari Frost
I decided that I didn't like the Kindle (a digital reader) before I had even tried it. Then one day, a Kindle arrived in the mail. It came with a note that said, "Keep an open mind." . . .
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Making the Case for Literacy Coaches
Shari Frost
It's that time of year. School districts are examining their budgets for the upcoming school year. Due to the troubled economy, many of them are finding that they are not going to have the money that they need to move forward with all of the currently existing programs. Some school districts may also need to fund newly mandated programs such as tier two and tier three support for Response to Intervention. This, of course, forces them to make cuts, and everyone who is not directly connected to a classroom full of children is fair game. Literacy coaches are usually expensive. Most coaches have years of experience and hold advanced degrees - putting them at the top of the salary range. . . .
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Making Time for Play
Shari Frost
Five-year-old Kennedy started kindergarten this fall. She has regaled me with stories of the other kindergartners' antics, her favorite offerings from the school cafeteria, her teacher's read aloud book choices, and her upcoming plans for show-and-tell. When I asked about playtime in kindergarten, she looked at me incredulously and announced, "We don't play in kindergarten." My heart sank, although I really wasn't surprised. Kindergarten teachers are under more and more pressure to ensure that all of their students enter first grade as readers. The current demands of the kindergarten curriculum and increased testing requirements have squeezed playtime out of the schedule. So instead of housekeeping corners, blocks corners, puppet theaters, paint easels, and dress-up centers, many kindergarten classrooms now have textbooks, desks, and chairs. . . .
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Eight Tips for Building Relationships:
A Tale of Two Literacy Coaches
Shari Frost
I stopped by Monroe School to see the literacy coach, Kate, before the school day began. I was in her office for about five minutes when second grade teacher, Leah, burst into the office sobbing. Apparently, a co-worker had insulted her in the committee meeting. Kate listened sympathetically, offering tissues and chocolate. She didn't agree, disagree, or even attempt to give any advice. She asked questions like, "What are you going to do to let Yolanda know how you feel? Do you have any ideas about how you are going to resolve this and get on with your good working relationship with Yolanda?" Leah eventually pulled herself together, thanked Kate for listening, and returned to the meeting. . . .
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Building a Professional Library from Scratch
Shari Frost
Almost everything about Emily's new coaching position was perfect. The school was one of those charming, old, traditional brick buildings with lots of character: high ceilings, hardwood floors, wide corridors, built-in bookshelves, and lots of closets. The teachers were friendly and eager for Emily's support. The principal was smart and collaborative. Best of all, Emily got a full classroom for her office. The only problem - the professional library was a rag-tag collection of teacher's editions from current and discarded reading and language art series, current and old district curriculum guides, outdated undergraduate teacher education textbooks, and a handful of current professional books. Poor Emily was crestfallen! . . .
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Ready for Guided Reading?
Shari Frost
The kindergartners at Kate's school are caught in a familiar dilemma. Teachers are feeling pressure to start reading with children sooner than ever. When I was a novice teacher in the late 70's, first graders traditionally spent the first six weeks of the school year on "reading readiness." Now everyone seems to believe that all children should leave kindergarten reading. Most of the published reading programs culminate with actual, direct reading instruction rather than pre-reading at the kindergarten level. The instructional materials for kindergarten include leveled books. . . .
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Books for Phonics Instruction -
Accomplishing More Than Just Sounding Out Words
Shari Frost
I do become concerned when phonics is given so much emphasis that Lemekia gets the impression that reading is only about sounding out the words and getting them right. There is a world of reading beyond decodable books. I'd like Lemekia to learn to utilize all of the cueing systems appropriately, efficiently, and effectively, enabling her to read books that require their use and to have the strategies necessary to deal with words that are not phonetically regular . . .
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Back to the Classroom
Shari Frost
The evening before the last literacy coaching network meeting of the year, I opened my email and found a message from Lydia. She said that she was thinking about skipping tomorrow's meeting because she had decided to accept a classroom position. She was not going to be a literacy coach in the upcoming school year. I wrote back and encouraged her to attend. I told her that most coaches had moments (sometimes entire weeks) when they considered going back to classroom teaching. I said that I would like her to talk to everyone about her decision and the process that she went through in making it. I also thought that it was important for everyone to get a chance to say good-bye and wish her well in her new position. . . .
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Troubleshooting Coaching Cycles
Shari Frost
While everyone agreed that coaching cycles made their work more efficient and productive, some of the coaches experienced some difficulty along the way. We didn't expect to flawlessly execute a coaching cycle on the first attempt, but the bumps in the road were disappointing. We talked through the pitfalls and came up with some ideas to make our next attempts at coaching cycles run more smoothly . . .
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Multicultural Books for Beginning Readers
Shari Frost
"Why isn't there an African American Henry and Mudge?" asked a teacher in the audience of a session on multicultural children's literature. I reminded her of a previous slide stating that only .03% of all of children's books published during the previous year featured African Americans. She retorted, "Well, at least 50 of them should have been the 'Henry-and-Mudge-Frog-and-Toad' kind of books. Children who are just starting to read need to have books about their own kind of experiences. . . .
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Rethinking Writing Centers - Winter Follow-Up
Shari Frost
During the 2006-2007 school year, I began a conversation with the literacy coaches in our network about classroom writing centers. I had noticed that most students were distracted by all of the "cool tools" in the writing centers and were doing very little, if any, actual writing. After a couple of brainstorming sessions with the coaches, we settled upon a two-pronged approach. . . .
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