Saturday, October 8, 2016

Changing Support

As professionals, teachers are lifelong learners seeking continuous improvement, and coaches can play a supportive role. Successful coaching is a developmental process that is responsive to teachers’ changing needs. Effective coaches provide more assistance in the beginning, when something new is being learned, and gradually reduce that support as teachers develop additional expertise for the new approach. The GIR model is an adaptation of Pearson and Gallagher’s Gradual Release of Responsibility model, which many teachers have read about and used to guide their instruction. Like the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model, the GIR coaching model shows how support changes over time. In the GIR process, coaches model, make recommendations, ask inquiring and probing questions, affirm teachers’ appropriate decisions, and praise in order to provide decreasing scaffolding that moves teachers toward skillful use of effective instructional practices.

Coaching moves serve as scaffolds for instructional improvement. A scaffold is a supporting framework. In a physical sense, a scaffold is “a temporary platform used to elevate and support workers,” and according to Merriam-Webster, “scaffolding may be raised and lowered.” Coaches are constantly deciding how high the scaffolding needs to be to provide for effective instruction.

When a lot of support is called for, modeling provides an illustration of strategies a teacher can later try herself. Making recommendations, the second phase of the GIR model, provides less support than modeling, but is strong scaffolding to assure students receive cogent instruction. As teachers increase in experience with a teaching strategy, effective coaches pull back and provide support that is more ancillary. They make fewer recommendations; instead, they ask questions that encourage the teacher to reflect on her own instruction and the needs of students. This third phase, asking questions, encourages metacognition and contemplation about teaching and learning, building the teacher’s capacity as a reflective practitioner. The fourth phase of the model is affirming. As a coaching cycle progresses, a teacher will need less and less support; however, she may still look to you for affirmation that the decisions she is making are appropriate. Praise, the final phase of the coaching model, is a form of feedback that might be provided to any colleague. Although at this stage the teacher will be more confident and not necessarily feel a need for the coach’s approval, she’ll still appreciate being recognized for the hard work she is doing.

How an instructional coach moves through the five phases of the GIR model will, of course, be idiosyncratic. Some teachers will benefit from lots of modeling and recommending when trying something new. For others, questions to support reflection about potential changes will provide sufficient support. One teacher might request recommendations for improving her math instruction but benefit from simply hearing affirmations about her already-solid instruction during guided reading. Coaches choose what scaffold to use based on teacher and student needs, and they move from one stage to the next when they have evidence the teachers they are working with need less support. In the upcoming weeks, blog posts will consider each of the coaching moves of the GIR model. Understanding a variety of scaffolds helps us match support to teachers’ changing needs.


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This week, you might want to take a look at:

A video about identifying, sharing, and using success criteria:



In this video, Ruth Ayres speaks to students about revising memoir:


Ice breakers and attention getters:



Tips for tech-phobic teachers:



What is “the writing process” really?



That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!



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