Gravity Goldberg is coauthor of the Heinemann title Conferring with Readers (2007). She is a full-time staff developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, where she consults with principals, coaches, and teachers in New York City and throughout the country. Gravity was a special educator and third-grade teacher in Boston and is currently a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is also a part-time instructor in the preservice early childhood education department.
A literacy consultant, researcher, and author, Jennifer Serravallo is the best-selling author or coauthor of the Heinemann titles Teaching Reading in Small Groups and Conferring with Readers. Her latest book, The Literacy Teacher's Playbook, Grades K - 2 and Grades 3 - 6 helps teachers assess confidently and teach powerfully by sharing Jen's experience with assessment. Jen worked for eight years as a staff developer and national consultant at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. In this capacity, she helped urban, suburban, and rural schools implement exceptional literacy instruction through reading and writing workshops. While working toward her MA at… Teachers College, she taught grades 3 - 5 in two Title I schools with large class sizes, high numbers of ELLs, and an enormous range of learners. These experiences galvanized her to write her Heinemann professional books as well as other professional resources for teachers, including: Independent Reading Assessment for fiction and nonfiction (Scholastic, 2013). Learn more about Jen and her work at www.jenniferserravallo.com, or connect with her at @jserravallo. In this video at The Teacher Channel, you can see how Jen's deep experiences with teaching, learning, and staff development help her to provide expert teacher-to-teacher feedback---even outside her usual content area. In her second video in a series at The Teacher Channel, Jen provides feedback on a third-grade reading lesson that introduces students to the strategy of finding the main idea in a text. Check out Jen's guest blog about transitioning readers to chapter books at chartchums.