Coaching with a Focus:  Where Do We Start?

 Hooray!  You have a teacher who is willing to work with you!  Now, where might you begin?

Starting with a close look at student work can be a non-threatening way to engage with a teacher.  If you just have data, you can work with the teacher to interpret assessment results.  Better yet, gather formative assessment data.  Any student work will do.  With the teacher, sort the work into three piles:  those that don’t get it at all, those that kind of get it, and those that show mastery.  You and the teacher may decide that you need more piles to really show the range of mastery.  So, at the end of this sorting process, you end up with separated piles of student work. 

Now look at the biggest pile.  What is it these students need?  You might take this opportunity to model the expert thinking and problem-solving that effective teachers do when planning instruction. (Remember the GIR Coaching Model from my first post?  Modeling is the most highly supportive scaffold that a coach can provide.) 

Once you have determined an instructional focus, you'll have a meaningful direction for your coaching work with this teacher.  Together you can begin planning effective instruction, perhaps making recommendations about research-based practices that might be used.  (Making recommendations is another highly-supportive coaching move, frequently used near the beginning of a coaching cycle.)  Now the teacher is ready to put these practices into play, and you’ll be there to support application in a way that meets the unique needs of the learners.  By working with teachers where and when they are teaching, you can address problems of practice with an immediacy not possible in most professional development settings.  Coaching provides contextualized professional development.  Improvements can occur as coaches and teachers work together to plan, teach, and evaluate the effects on students’ learning. 

Resources to Explore:

The coaching questions at the end of this article (link below) could be adapted for use as you encourage teachers to think about any area of practice:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/457.cfm  

Be careful not to get sucked in by the Common Core hype.  Close reading still means reading closely to get meaning from a text!  Check out the discussion at this blog for more food for thought:

http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/a-close-look-at-close-reading/

 

Some fine literacy apps for little ones are highlighted on this Pinterest board:

 

http://pinterest.com/pin/262194009526942597/

 

That's it for this week. 

 

Happy coaching!

The Power of Coaching

Teachers, just like their students, benefit from scaffolding while they are learning something new.  Whether that something new is the Common Core, student-centered teaching, or Cognitively Guided Instruction in math, it’s beneficial to have someone helping while teachers give new practices a try.   As a coach, you fill that role, helping teachers plan for, deliver, and reflect on new instructional practices.  Teachers benefit when they are supported in the process of changing their practices.  And students also benefit from a coach’s participation because instruction becomes more effective and targeted on meeting students’ needs.  An ESL coach, for example, makes instruction more accessible to second-language learners by encouraging the use of appropriate learning strategies and culturally-responsive practices. 

As a coach, you provide targeted guidance within the real work of teaching.  Together, you and the teacher or small group you are working with reflect on and dialogue about instruction that you, as a coach, have participated in or observed.  Through these coaching conversations, you can encourage teachers to analyze their instructional decisions, the thinking behind those decisions, and the mindset behind their thinking.  Coaching encourages teachers to think about their own practice.  Can you think of a coaching conversation that you’ve guided recently that resulted in a teacher either becoming clearer about what she planned to do or making a change to a lesson plan?  That is the power of coaching at work!

Resources to Share:

 
Textual Evidence:

Sharing videos is a great way to provide a model for instructional strategies.  For teachers in any content area who want their students to use textual evidence, you might consider sharing this short video:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/analyzing-text-writing

The video also would be great to demonstrate how instructional support can be differentiated.

CGI & the Common Core:

Check out this blog post: Top 8 Reasons To Use Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) to Address the Common Core.

http://michellef.essdack.org/?q=node/139

Finally, you’ll find loads of great ideas to pass along to teachers on Choice Literacy’s Pinterest boards:

http://pinterest.com/choiceliteracy/

That’s it for this week!  Please comment to add your own thoughts to the conversation!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Coaches’ Couch!  This blog is a space to share information that might be of interest to instructional coaches who are working with teachers during these changing times in education.  I’ll share some of my own ideas about coaching and link you to others’ ideas that you might find useful or thought-provoking. 

            First, an introduction to my coaching model.  This model, the Gradual Increase of Responsibility (GIR) Coaching Model, is an adaptation of Pearson and Gallagher’s Gradual Release of Responsibility model, which you’ve probably read about and used.  Like the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model, the GIR model for coaching shows how support changes over time.  Just like in teaching, one size does not fit all when it comes to instructional coaching.  And coaching should change as teachers increase in confidence and competence.  These changes are reflected in the GIR model:

 

 

In GIR, coaches model, make recommendations, ask probing questions, affirm teachers’ appropriate decisions, and praise in order to provide decreasing scaffolding which moves teachers toward independent use of effective instructional practices.  I’ll share more about each of these coaching moves in the weeks to come.

 

Some resources to explore:

Listening is the heart of coaching.  Here’s a tip about what to set aside so that you can listen more fully:

http://www.cognitivecoaching.com/journey.htm

Here’s food for thought about conditions in your school that make coaching more successful:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/four-conditions-instructional-coaching-elena-aguilar

You can add to this Wiki for coaches; check out their suggested apps for coaches, and feel free to add your own recommendations:

http://instructionalcoachchat.wikispaces.com/App+Recommendations+for+Coaches

That’s it for this week!

References

Collet, V. (2008).  Coaching today’s teachers: Mentoring using new literacies.  Paper presented at the 2008 National Reading Conference, Dec., 2008.

Collet, V. (2011).  The Gradual Increase of Responsibility: Scaffolds for Change.  Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. UMI Number: 3475305.

Collet, V. (2012).  The Gradual Increase of Responsibility Model: Coaching for Teacher Change, Literacy Research and Instruction, 51(1), 27-47.Pearson, P.D., & Gallagher, M.C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension.  Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317-344.