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:
Some fine literacy apps for little ones are highlighted on this Pinterest board:
That's it for this week.
Happy coaching!
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