It’s
football season again, and in pre-game interviews with coaches, there’s lots of
talk about the game plan for each particular match-up. Being flexible and responsive is an important
attribute for any coach, but it’s also helpful to go into a coaching situation
with a well-reasoned game plan. As an instructional coach, having a plan in
mind will strengthen your performance
in a coaching conversation. Important to the coaching plan is not only the content that you’ll be discussing but also the coaching
move you’ll predominantly use. I asked several coaches their reasons
for choosing the coaching move of making recommendations. Here’s what they said:
·
She
is starting a new unit. She needed to
understand the unit goal and steps to reach it.
·
As
students’ levels became apparent, we needed to talk about how to meet their
needs.
·
Most
of the time she is asking questions about how I decide to do this or that.
·
She
needed to understand the importance of using a “turn and talk” to help students
process what was just learned.
·
To
share what I’ve noticed about kids and think about how to plan and guide the
instruction they need in their current stage.
·
I
moved to recommending because she needs to be intentional about what she is
teaching and why she is teaching it, as well as how she will be structuring her
lesson.
·
When
we are planning lessons I do more recommending.
·
I
think it’s important to provide support to her as she plans lessons. For example, how I do it, where I look for
resources, what I consider, etc.
As
these coaches’ comments illustrate, recommendations can focus on teaching
strategies, the content or skills being taught, developmental processes, or
standards and curriculum. As you think
about your game plan for an upcoming coaching conversation, what will your move
be? If recommending is called for, the
above illustrations might be helpful as you visualize the conversation.
This week, you might want to
take a look at:
This
blog about the effective vertical team meetings:
An
article about how acting boosts learning:
Want
to encourage differentiation? Read this
blog myth-busting differentiated instruction:
A
video showing how to use student-generated questions in a literary discussion:
Two
banks of ratio & proportion problems:
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
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