Saturday, February 2, 2013

Your Bag of Tricks


What’s your most natural coaching move?  Your go-to move that happens almost without thinking when you start talking with a teacher?  If you said, “Making recommendations,” you’re in good company.   You were probably hired as a coach for your school because of your expertise and experience, so you have a big bag of tricks to choose from when making recommendations.  The challenge is to consider that repertoire thoughtfully and provide the right recommendation at the right time, acknowledging both what the students need and what the teacher is able and willing to do.  When planning a coaching conversation, if you’ve determined that recommending is the right coaching move, you may want to consider these four categories of recommendations:

Making recommendations about instructional strategies.  As a coach, you may want to recommend a specific teaching strategy that addresses student needs.  For example, you might decide to suggest that students spend less time with word work and more time reading connected text.  This recommendation encourages the teacher to move from isolated skills instruction to contextualized practice.   An instructional strategy I find myself regularly recommending is “Turn & Talk.”  Because this strategy is helpful for learners of all ages, no matter what the content, it’s one of the more useful strategies in my bag of tricks.  Don’t forget the trick of gathering formative assessment data – another ubiquitously-appropriate instructional strategy that is often overlooked.   

Making recommendations about content or skills.  Making recommendation about skills or content for upcoming lessons supports teachers in the instructional design process.  For example, this recommendation reminds the teacher of a need that has been thus far neglected:

Your insights about Caleb’s comprehension will be helpful as you plan instruction.  We do see evidence that vocabulary instruction would be helpful to Caleb, so it is appropriate to include it.  Before too long, you’ll also want to address his word recognition needs, so let’s think together about that a bit. 

The coach first acknowledges relevant insights the teacher has shared, building the teacher’s confidence and strengthening feelings of trust in their relationship.  She then nudges the teacher to consider additional skills the student needs to develop. 

Making recommendations about the developmental processes of learning.  Learning is a complex process!  Understanding the ages and stages of learning can help teachers make wise instructional decisions.  It’s also helpful to see how developmental processes from different academic areas interact; for example, a student’s growth as a reader supports his growth as a writer, and vise versa.  Students who can reason abstractly when doing algebra are ready to think more abstractly about literary themes.  As students’ skills develop, they do not focus on one discrete skill at a time - learning is a complex conceptual mix!  Having an understanding of learning development is essential for planning effective instruction.  This understanding becomes especially critical when designing intervention that accelerates a student’s growth along the learning continuum. 

Because of the complexity of the learning process, teachers may benefit when coaches make specific recommendations about how instruction should change over time to support students’ movement through the developmental process.  In addition to making recommendations about instructional design that align with students’ development, you may want to recommend professional reading to increase the teacher’s understanding of these processes.

Making recommendations about the standards, curriculum, or resources being used.  During this time of change, teachers are looking to their coaches about how to implement the Common Core State Standards.  Take this as an opportunity to emphasize the importance of having clear learning objectives when designing instruction.  Learning objectives may be crafted using knowledge of developmental learning processes, or they may be lifted from the standards.  In either case, coaches might make recommendations about specific objectives that would enhance student learning. 

The coach might also make recommendations about resources that align with the abilities and interests of the learners. Because the coach may have greater familiarity with resources that are available, such a recommendation could be helpful. You can combine your recommendation of a resource to use with suggestions about how to use it.

By making recommendations about instructional strategies, content or skills being taught, the developmental processes of learning, or the standards or resources being used, coaches can encourage teachers to attend to important instructional goals.  Making recommendations can be a very helpful coaching move, especially when you are thoughtful about what the teacher knows and is able to do.  Rather than making recommendations spontaneously, you might think about these four categories as you plan a coaching conversation.   You’ll likely end up making just the right choice from your large bag of tricks!
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

(Or Listen to)  A podcast from Diane Sweeney about coaching using student work:


Are students into Tweeting?  Look here for suggestions about having students summarize important content in 15 words or less!
 
http://dogtrax.edublogs.org/2012/10/21/student-research-projects-in-a-tweet/

Or chart out another blog for some great ideas about student self-assessment:


And speaking of self-assessment, it never hurts to take a good look at ourselves and find room for improvement.   Look here for some food for thought:

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