Jennifer Burton has been teaching in the elementary school setting in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago for 15 years as a teacher, literacy coach and professional development facilitator. For the first thirteen of those years, she taught grades kindergarten through fourth. She received her BA from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and an MA from Concordia University in River Forest, IL. Currently, she is a literacy coach and professional development facilitator in Barrington, IL.
In addition, Jen has an ELL Endorsement and works with teachers to embed language objectives within content instruction using the SIOP model. She supports teachers to scaffold instruction for ELLs and is trained in the new ELL resource for The Comprehension Toolkit.
Jennifer is passionate about engaging students in authentic reading and writing experiences driven by student interest and curiosity. She works with teachers to implement an inquiry approach across the curriculum, and has modeled and collaborated with teachers in using The Comprehension Toolkit.
Jen has extensive experience in developing and implementing curriculum. Working with a district literacy steering team, she has helped to develop an aligned district vision for literacy instruction. She has organized various professional development opportunities to support teachers to implement a reading and writing workshop model that connects to the Common Core State Standards. Through this process she has done extensive research of best practices in word study in order to implement an instructional approach using inquiry in the area of word study as well as in other content areas. This has become an area of specialty for her.