Instructional Coach Weekly Update
Week of January 9-13
IC Survey
All of the Instructional Coaches gave their first IC Survey right before break. We have spent time with our building principal and our IC Lead (Jennifer in my case) going over the trends we saw in the data.
Like Jon had mentioned in his email right before break, in order to improve my visibility in the building I will focus my efforts on trying to get into classrooms more often. These are by no means evaluative in nature and I will not offer any feedback or suggestions. The purpose of me getting into classrooms will be so I can see what is going on in classrooms and look for entry points (opportunities I could work with a specific teacher in the future).
My goal is to get into every classroom at least once in the month of January.
Why all the trainings?
- New Teacher Center Instructional Coach Training - 4 days (4 more days left of training this year)
- Blended - 1 day (2 more days left of training this year)
- Jim Knight Instructional Coach Training - 2 days
- Leadership for Continuous Improvement - 3 days (3 more days left of training this year)
- Differentiated Accountability - 2 days (I am unsure if we have more of these trainings this year)
- I have also subbed at least 5 full school days so far this school year, and covered multiple half days and end of the day for teachers that need to leave early or to cover so they can attend other meetings. Although subbing is not ideal for the ICs, I've only been used as a last resort.
My time spent outside of the district and in district/building meetings is around both TLC goals 1) Improve knowledge and understanding of ELA Standards and SBL process in order to improve student learning in literacy 2) Improve our collaborative structures for teachers. It looks as though our trainings become less frequent the second half of the year.
What can the IC do for me?
I would LOVE to get back into the classrooms to:
Co-plan lessons with you
Model teach
Look at data with you … mid-year FAST data, writing data, data collected for data teams, etc.
Help plan differentiation supports with you
Help team teach with you
- Cover your classrooms so you can observe other teachers
I put a Coaching Menu in each of your mailboxes at the end of last week as a reminder of some of the things I can offer to teachers as your building Instructional Coach.
Success Criteria and Proficiency Scales
- Free response
- IRA written response (or student packet work)
- Summary writing
- A focus area in whatever genre of writing you are working on (i.e. including details throughout writing, writing a good introduction or conclusion, using transition words, including strong feeling words, etc.)
- Student participation during intervention
- Anytime of day you do group work - you could write a proficiency scale on what the student is supposed to accomplish during their "seatwork" or "partner work" time
- Partner or Group work in general or on a specific lesson for math, science, or social studies
- Student participation during small group reading - the whole thing or part of it
- The written work part of small group reading
- A component of an Engage NY lesson
Again, please let me know if I can help you in anyway on this!
This week
Monday:
- Preparing the visible learner lessons for three teachers this week
- 9:00 - Subbing in 5th grade
- 10:15 - 5th grade team planning meeting
- 12:10 - Begin co-teaching/co-planning a narrative unit in writing with a teacher
- 1:00 - Helping in the preschool room
- 1:30 - LCI meeting at the primary with Jon, Ann, Barbara, Jess Q, and Jennifer B
- 3:30 - Meeting with a teacher to discuss questions they have about SGR time and brainstorming partner work for Engage NY
- 7:00 - meeting with Jon
- 9:35 - meet with a teacher about possibly changing their intervention to something new
- 10:10 - visible learner lesson in 4th grade
- 12:10 - writing unit in 3rd grade
- classroom observations
- 3:30 - 3rd Grade Team planning
Wednesday:
- LCI Ventura full day training at GWAEA
Thursday:
- 7:45 - Staff meeting before school
- classroom observations
- 11:30 - visible learner lesson in 5th grade
- 12:10 - writing unit in 3rd grade
- classroom observations
- 3:30 - 4th grade team planning
Friday:
- 7:30 Special education meeting
- Learning meetings with 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teams
- IC meeting 12-4