Like
the flexible acrobat who can reshape her body, coaches can reshape their
viewpoint to consider instruction from multiple perspectives. Flexibility in
perspective contributes to the effectiveness of your work as a coach.
Teaching
is a complex, multi-dimensional activity, and effective coaches recognize and
capitalize on this understanding. This
complexity means that any classroom observation can be viewed from multiple
perspectives. As coaches, you may ask yourself: Should I focus on classroom
management or discussion techniques? Grouping strategies or learning tasks?
Because of your expertise and experience, you can flexibly re-view and think about a
lesson you watched in a variety of ways. Determining which lens you should use
to provide focus to a follow-up conversation is an important coaching decision.
This
week I watched a novice teacher in action. Although her fourth-grade students
were interested in the read aloud and in the writing activity that followed, a
variety of issues impeded their learning. Students floundered with pre-writing
because no structure was provided for this task – yet they were over-scaffolded
on other parts of the assignment. Discussion was mostly surface-level and
rapid-fire. Pacing was inconsistent. The teacher had to stop multiple times to
clarify instructions, and the most frequent sound from her mouth was, “Shhhhhhhh!”
I
had to decide what to focus on to make our coaching conversation most
impactful. Fortunately, a question I asked before observing made that job
easier: “Is there anything you’d like me to specifically observe during the
lesson?”
The
teacher’s response provided my re-viewing lens: “I’d like to know how well my
classroom management is (or isn’t) working. I’d also like to know if I gave
clear directions to the students. That is
something I am working on!” Using the lens of clear directions and classroom
management, we were able to consider why the pre-writing task didn’t go well,
when the lesson’s flow was uneven, and what expectations were unclear to
students.
Coaches
restructure their knowledge in response to “radically changing situational
demands”* This ability has been described as cognitive
flexibility. Coaches use a web of conceptual understanding as they consider
how various aspects of the lesson impact one another. They flexibly apply their knowledge, skllls,
and understandings based on the coaching focus that has been selected. Choosing
the right lens to use can make a big difference in how the coaching is taken
up, so flexibility is an important coaching attribute!
Spiro,
R.J. & Jehng, J. (1990). Cognitive flexibility and hypertext: Theory and
technology for the non-linear
and multidimensional traversal of complex subject matter. In D.
Nix & R. Spiro (eds.), Cognition,
Education, and Multimedia.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, p. 165.
This week, you might want to
take a look at:
Last-minute
gifts for those who love learning:
Students
are guided through creating a digital picture book – and they can even purchase
a hardcopy at the end using this online tool:
A blog post about acting out meaning. The
idea of embodied cognition may sound complex, but the concept is
powerful, and this explanation is practical:
An
NPR podcast about books in infancy:
A
blog about using annotation in the history classroom:
And
finally…..Dickens Christmas Carol in
6 minutes as seen through these British third-graders’ diorama play. Adorable!
That’s it for this week. Happy
coaching!
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