KIMBERLY WAKEFIELD
Leverate Literacy Educational Consulting – Educational collaborator supporting teachers to create a purposeful and intentional instructional environment through goals and student outcomes.
I have been a teacher since 2001. I started my teaching career in Florida in a 4th grade classroom in Seminole County. After meeting Ryan, I moved to Montana and began my teaching career in Kalispell Public Schools. I taught 5th grade for many years and moved into the Instructional Coaching role for the 2011-2012 school year, first as a literacy coach through the Montana Striving Readers Project and later as the K-5 Instructional Coach for one of the six elementary school of Kalispell Public Schools. Currently, my role takes on many shapes as I support educators through Instructional Consulting in Montana and Idaho. I am proud to partner with teachers, administrators and support personnel to provide purposeful quality instruction for students.
I strongly believe all students, regardless of ability, have the opportunity to instruction that will guide them to reach their full potential. Partnership and opportunity in learning is the key to all of our success. It is through partnerships with teachers, families and students that allow optimal learning experiences in all of our schools. It takes all hands and all hearts working together for the success of students, schools and futures.
As I continue to transition from classroom teacher to classroom supporter, I learn daily how critical relationships are to student achievement. Just as no significant learning can occur in a classroom without positive student teacher relationships, I believe significant coaching experiences hinge on relationships as well.
I’ve learned a few things the last several years in my coaching role, much of what I’ve learned is by trial and error and making mistakes. I believe that making mistakes is the precipice for how we learn and that through struggle and perseverance we can accomplish anything. This is the mindset that is critical to growth. I’ve also learned that beyond all else, teachers enjoy partnering with another set of eyes and hands in a classroom to find the instructional path that will be a crucial fit for their learners. “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” John Dewey
If you are interested in becoming a part of this learning community and information on how I spend my days as an instructional coach, please email me at Kim@LeverageLiteracy.com.
A few personal tidbits when I’m not working:
…enjoy spending quality time with my husband Ryan and our wonderful sons: Braden, Bryson and Bosley
…love the outdoors: hiking, running and relaxing on the lake
…catch up on my PLN #educoach and twitter feed
…baking
…college football: proud supporter of Florida State Seminoles: Nole Nation
…exercising: there’s nothing like a rush of endorphins, it doesn’t matter how, just move your body!
RECENT
POSTS
Word Building Strings | Better Alternatives to Weekly Spelling Tests
Hi, I’m Kim Wakefield with Side-by-Side Educational Consulting where we work side by side with educators to improve outcomes for all kids.
We have another engaging strategy for you to make your spelling time more worth it in the classroom. It’s called “word building through word strings”. Now let me tell you, kids absolutely love to do this activity in the classroom. So let’s just get right down to it. In front of the students, they have sound spelling’s represented on little cards in front of them. The teacher is going […]
Dictation | Better Alternatives to Weekly Spelling Tests
**Teacher Note**
Blind Dictation is referenced in the video as one of the routines you can use for word sorting. Dictation as itself an instructional tool is modeled in the classroom video. Both are substantial opportunities for students to develop encoding ability.
Hi I’m Kim Wakefield with Side-by-Side Educational Consulting, where we work side by side with educators to improve outcomes for all kids. Our next spelling strategy that you can add to your instructional toolkit is dictation. Dictation is definitely worth your time! Dictation is a very teacher directed activity that allows for […]
Word Sorts | Better Alternatives to Weekly Spelling Tests
Hi I’m Kim Wakefield with Side-by-Side Educational Consulting where we work side by side with educators to improve outcomes for all kids. Okay friends, welcome back to our series of: Our Spelling Tests Really Worth Your Time. I think we all know they’re not. So let’s look at the next instructional strategy that you can add to your toolkit to make your instructional time more effective. We call this one word sorts. Word sorts are one of my favorite activities to do with kids in the classroom, word sorts really get students […]
Stop wasting time with weekly spelling tests
Hi I’m Kim Wakefield with Side by Side Educational Consulting, where we work side by side with educators to improve outcomes for all kids.
We all know this hot topic, should I or shouldn’t I give weekly spelling tests, I get asked this question over and over and over again. I took them as a student, I gave them as a teacher, and I’m here to tell you today that you need to stop wasting your time with weekly spelling tests. In many programs, they ask you to give a pretest on Monday and then a post-test on Friday. […]
The Key to Teaching Kids to Speak and Write in Complete Sentences
I wanted to share the last tip I have for how to turn around those pitfalls of “think, pair, share.” It is about really making sure that you scaffold for your kids through sentence stems, or sentence starters. In order to do this, it takes a little bit of planning, but a good thing for you in our resources we have some great tools that you can use in your classroom for increasing that level of language.
Remember, if we can increase the quantity of time kids have to be able to talk to each other, we can increase […]
Intentional planning to maximize classroom partnerships
We have talked already about making sure that you have purposeful partners established, right? You’ve ranked your kids, you’ve established them as Partner A / Partner B, you’ve taught them those good listening habits so they’re not only listening to what their partner says but they’re really learning what their partner has to share. The next step in your lesson plans, you want to make sure that you have strategically planned how kids are going to think how much time are you going to give them when establishing a question. Then are you going to give them time […]
4 habits to create Purposeful Partners in the classroom
Hey everybody, welcome back.
Thanks for coming to hear the next step about how we build those purposeful partners, it’s called establishing purposeful partner habits. I don’t know about you but I’ve been engaged in lots of conversations where I don’t feel like my partner’s really listening to me or engaged in what I have to say and then in the back of their mind they’re thinking, well, how am I going to respond to you. So in order for us to make these purposeful partnerships to work in our classrooms, we have to teach our kids how to […]
How to create Purposeful Partners in the classroom
Here we are, again talking about establishing those purposeful partners that really allow for cooperative learning to happen in your classroom. The first really important piece that you need to do in order to get purposeful partners happening in your classroom is to make strategic parings.
You can have strategic pairings for math, for reading, for writing, for all of those other content areas, but it’s important that as a teacher, you’ve planned ahead for who is going to partner together in your classroom. One way to do that is to take all of your students and rank […]