MAX Teaching with Reading and Writing is a team of professionals, led by Dr. Mark Forget, President, and Director of Staff Development. Each consultant working with MAX Teaching is prepared to develop teachers through hands-on workshops and modeling of research-proven classroom strategies in reading and writing for learning. Teachers will leave a workshop with many strategies that can be applied right away in their own classrooms. These strategies help students better learn course content while improving students' abilities in the communication skills.

The typical staff development day consists of approximately three hours before lunch and three hours after lunch. During this time we model an average of 10-12 MAX Teaching classroom activities to the teachers as if they were students in a classroom. Teachers experience reading through the same classroom activities they can subsequently use in their own classes with their own readings and curricula, even though the readings that we use are related to understanding student readers and appropriate pedagogy to engage all readers in acquisition of both content and literacy skills. We demonstrate how to use these MAX Teaching strategies in the Mathematics, Language Arts, Health, Social Studies, Foreign Language, Science and Career-Technical classes, to name a few.

It is best to schedule at least two days of staff development so that the teachers get to experience and practice 20-30 MAX Teaching strategies among themselves with Dr. Forget or another team member modeling and explaining the process. This staff development should be followed up with classroom modeling. The Follow-up includes one or more days when we come into the classrooms and model the MAX Teaching strategies in the classrooms with real students in the target school, using the school's own reading materials from the subject matter that originally was to be taught that day.

Modeling of the MAX Teaching strategies in the classroom, with real students, as teachers observe, is an excellent follow-up to the workshops. We ask that the reading/writing materials be provided to MAX Teaching the day before the classroom modeling workshop dates so that we can plan the lesson that is to be taught the day of the modeling. It is also important for the school to hire extra substitute teachers on the modeling days to allow for as many teachers as possible to attend the modeling sessions. Thus, teachers might visit during their planning bell or at another time because they were relieved by a substitute teacher.

In a school with a 40 to 60-minute bell schedule, we will model the strategies in four (4) different classrooms. It is important to allow debriefing time after each class for teachers to reflect/comment on what they have observed. It is best to schedule two (2) classes before lunch and two (2) classes after lunch.

Schools with Block Schedules permit Dr. Forget to model two to three (2-3) classes per day. One class before lunch and one class after lunch with time allotted for debriefing and comments after each class.

MAX Teaching Services

• Staff development in classroom strategies that are research-proven to help students develop skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking.
• Follow-up consultation and staff development, including classroom modeling of reading and writing strategies.
• Creation of materials to facilitate teacher use of reading and writing strategies in the classroom.