The links below include both professional learning opportunities and other helpful resources for educators to support enrichment and/or continuity of learning during the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Achievement Network (ANet). 2020. "Distance Learning Reflection and Planning Toolkit." 

ASCD. 2020. An Educational Leadership Special Report. "A New Reality: Getting Remote Learning Right."

The Leading Equity Center. 2020. "Teaching Online: A Step-By-Step Course to Launch and Lead an Equitable Online Classroom."

Steiner & Weisberg. 2020. "When Students Go Back to School, Too Many Will Start the Year Behind. Here’s How to Catch Them Up — in Real Time."

UnboundEd. 2020. "Three Tips for Remote ELA Instruction."

Organizations are working diligently to create resources to assist educators and leaders nationally with navigating these unprecedented times.

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) released a Learning Acceleration Guide on April 30, 2020, which is free online for informational or educational use. 

The guide addresses a few key questions:

1. How do we create a plan to accelerate student learning?
2. How do we accelerate student learning in the next two years?
3. What other challenges should we be anticipating as we plan to accelerate student learning?

As new resources become available, we will continue to share these for use as a reference when planning at the local level.

When literacy is embedded in every aspect of education, it creates the environment students need to reach their full potential in the classroom and throughout their lives.

For a limited time (April 1–May 31), ILA is offering this six-session replay free to members and nonmembers (registration required).

These sessions demonstrate the importance of working collaboratively to build and sustain a culture that extends beyond the school setting.

• General Session: Creating a Culture of Literacy | Renée Watson and Pedro Noguera
• Research Panel: What Research Really Says About Teaching Reading—and Why That Still Matters | P. David Pearson, Sonia Cabell, Gwendolyn McMillon, and Nell K. Duke
• Featured Speaker: We Need More Than Diverse Books | Tricia Ebarvia
• Featured Speaker: Teaching Vulnerable Youth How to Read and Write: Lessons About Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Meaning | David Kirkland
• Featured Speaker: Choice, Access, Empowerment: Changing the Game for Young Readers | Donalyn Miller
• Featured Speaker: Motivating Readers From the Inside Out: The Five Key Beliefs That Matter Most for Student Literacy | Dave Stuart Jr.

Cost: FREE for members and nonmembers

Artistic literacy is a central tenet supporting our state and national arts standards. According to the National Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual Framework for Arts Learning, artistic literacy "is the knowledge and understanding required to participate authentically in the arts...In today’s multimedia society, the arts are the media, and therefore provide powerful and essential means of communication. The arts provide unique symbol systems and metaphors that convey and inform life experience (i.e., the arts are ways of knowing). Artistically literate citizens use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to independently create and perform work that expresses and communicates their own ideas, and are able to respond by analyzing and interpreting the artistic communications of others." 

The following resource provides an excellent introduction to artistic literacy: https://artistic-literacy.institute/what-is-artistic-literacy.  

Dr. Lindsay Grow, Associate Professor and Education Department Chair, is enthusiastically incorporating new learning from her membership on the Statewide Literacy Leadership Team into her work with preservice students at Grand View University (GV).

In the fall of 2019, Lindsay began preparing for the professional learning opportunity with The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to take place the next semester. Dr. Grow included a TNTP publication in the syllabus and asked if students could attend the session.

Click here for more details relating to Lindsay's work, including student reactions to the presentation led by Mya Baker and Jessica Dirks with TNTP. The reflections by preservice students are a reminder of the importance of creating equitable learning opportunities, including access to grade-level texts, standards, and challenges in the classroom nationally.

Dr. Grow also serves on the Executive Board for the Iowa Association for the Colleges of Teacher Education (IACTE). The IACTE Executive Board helps to steer the direction of the IACTE, an organization with membership from 32 institutions in Iowa with Teacher Preparation Programs. Lindsay consistently demonstrates her commitment to improving instructional practices as a change agent in the field.

A collection of more than 200 publications and resources with practical strategies to improve school experiences are accessible at https://tntp.org/. Please email questions to Jessica Dirks, Midwest Director at TNTP: jessica.dirks@tntp.org.

What are you doing to align instructional practice and implement the Iowa Academic Standards?

Are you utilizing tools to design instruction, assess learning, or create professional development that supports all students meeting Iowa Core expectations in literacy?

Share your work and celebrations via the Spotlight Literacy Google Form. 

Also, feel free to nominate another educator to spotlight his or her work. A literacy spotlight will be chosen each month! 

Let's build bridges together and improve instructional practice.

Leigh Bellville
Literacy Consultant
Bureau of Leading, Teaching, Learning Services
Iowa Department of Education
Grimes State Office Building
400 E 14th St
Des Moines, IA 50319
515-689-3717
leigh.bellville@iowa.gov