Affordances of the TRI professional development include participation in a
professional learning community, coaching, and technology. The professional learning
community is begun through involvement in an intense summer institute and fostered
through weekly meetings and quarterly workshops. Coaching in the context of the TRI is
focused on early reading instruction. Almost all of the professional development aspects of
the TRI are delivered technologically from university-associated personnel at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the distant experimental sites.
TRI affordance #1: Participation in a professional learning community. Summer institute. The TRI summer institute is an intense three-day workshop. Teachers and on-site consultant attend this workshop in person. The on-site consultant is
typically a reading specialist or administrator of the school. The on-site consultant acts as a
liaison between the university-based personnel and the teachers. The on-site consultant also
observes implementation of the TRI and helps teachers troubleshoot when they are
considering strategies that best address the “most pressing needs” of their students. One on-
site consultant is chosen for each experimental school.
During this institute, teachers are introduced to the TRI Reading Model. The TRI
Reading Model is one that is guided by the belief that reading is a complex process best
facilitated by incorporating reading instruction for word identification, fluency, vocabulary
opportunities to practice those strategies. These strategies are supportive of the three main
parts of a TRI lesson: Re-reading for Fluency, Word Work and Guided Oral Reading. The
strategies themselves are further discussed in the subsection labeled TRI Reading Strategies
Framework. These strategies are explored in light of the TRI Reading Model and/or the TRI
Model of Decoding and Sight Word Development (see Appendix B). Teachers are then
guided to consider the strategies, the models, and the possible responses of their students to
plan for and provide “diagnostically-driven individual instruction for one struggling reader at
a time” (Ginsberg et al., n.d.). This diagnostic approach allows for an “instructional match.”
Instructional match is “congruence between the student’s skill or functioning level and the
nature of the assigned tasks” (Ysseldyke, Christenson, & Thurlow, 1987, p. 8). At the TRI
institute, teachers also have the opportunity to meet the university-based literacy coach
(referred to as “coach” for the remainder of the paper) in person who will serve as ongoing
support via web-conferencing to the teachers as they implement the TRI strategies with their
students.
TRI weekly meeting. The participant teachers and on-site consultant at each school gather weekly and call the coach via web-conferencing. The coach leads the meeting, asking
teachers to discuss the progress of the particular student currently being served. Teachers
typically concentrate on one TRI student at a time and work intensively four times per week
for about 15–20 minutes per session. Teachers are encouraged to consider the TRI Reading
Model introduced at the summer institute along with evidence in the form of student
responses to discuss a diagnostically-driven plan for future instruction for the given student.
Teachers may sometimes ask questions of one another, gain ideas for instruction or help one
Quarterly professional development workshops. Workshops are delivered via web- conferencing to groups of participant teachers, on-site consultants and sometimes principals.
Typically the professional development workshops are for teachers in the same district,
though multi-site workshops are also held. The workshop content is based on the “most
pressing need” of the teachers and students in a given district. For example, if TRI coaches
notice many students need support with fluency, the workshop may be aimed at discussing
strategies to build fluency. In addition to a few planned workshops extending TRI content,
workshops are designed to meet their needs. Workshops last approximately two-three hours.
TRI Affordance #2: Coaching. The job of a TRI coach is, first, to support the intervention director in introducing the principles and strategies of the TRI reading
intervention to the participant teachers at the summer institute. Second, the coach meets
biweekly with each teacher and one of the teacher’s participating students via web-
conferencing. The coach uses a Discussion Checklist while observing the TRI reading
session (see Appendix C). This checklist helps the coach to look for specific actions of the
teacher. The coach may model a strategy during this session, interact with the student and/or
teacher or simply observe the session. After the session is over and the student returns to the
larger class setting, the coach may talk to the teacher about the session. This conversation
may last just a few minutes or may not happen at all depending on the time the teacher has at
the moment. Either way, the coach provides written feedback about the session to the teacher
in an e-mail. This e-mail may discuss aspects of the diagnostic checklist that were addressed
or not, the diagnostic decisions of the teacher and the discussion of the student’s most
for the next lesson. The Diagnostic Map is one tool that teachers use to plan and assess for
each session (see Appendix D). In sum, the coach in the TRI acts as a guide to the classroom
teacher who in turn guides the student. The responses of the student inform the support given
by the coach to the teacher and the teacher to the student. This process is demonstrated in
Figure 2 (TRI Clinical Coaching and Teaching Model; Ginsberg et al., 2010).
Figure 2. TRI Clinical Coaching and Teaching Model.
TRI affordance #3: Technology. Teachers begin learning the technology necessary for program participation during the summer institute. Macintosh laptop computers are
provided for teachers to work in groups and explore applications such as instant messaging,
iChat, and e-mail. Instant messaging is a part of the iChat application from Apple Inc.
allowing text entered into a blank field to be received instantly to another user. Instant
messaging through iChat is simply referred to as “instant messaging” in this study. Video
ability to see and hear one another. While iChat is an application with several features, the
term “iChat” refers to only the video-interaction aspect for the purposes of this study.
Technology facilitates weekly meetings, quarterly workshops and coaching.