Collaboration Tips to Help Instructional Coaches Maximize Their Impact

Of all the many years I’ve been an instructional coach, the past year has been the most impactful in terms of student growth. I credit this learning acceleration to consulting with other coaches and learning key collaboration and coaching moves that I share here.

Build trust and set goals

Any coaching cycle should begin by building trust and clarity around the purpose of the cycle and the collaboration in service to student learning. Through my partnership with the teacher, I pinpoint high-quality instructional practices that a particular group of students needs. A key to maximizing impact is to ground the cycle in a standards-based student goal.

Instead of selecting a goal around a practice the teacher wants to learn or improve on, we center students’ needs. We begin by looking at student data and selecting a grade-level standard of focus for the cycle. This goal becomes the cornerstone of our weekly meetings and in-class collaboration. The cycle typically lasts a quarter or the length of an instructional unit (about six weeks) and includes my joining the class to actualize teaching moves (three or more times a week), and throughout the cycle we focus on practices to maximize student growth.

Once we are clear on the goal, we determine the steps that students may need to achieve the goal. For example, for the third-grade ELA standard “Compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided,” a progression might include the following: summarize key points in an account, use text evidence to support the summary, tell the focus of the account, compare the account with another account.

Throughout the unit, there are a variety of opportunities for us to gather student data. (The progression also helps the teacher and students know the steps toward the final goal, which supports learning and self- and collective efficacy.)

Determine teaching practices to support student learning goals

Throughout the cycle, the teacher and I have discussions about which practices might maximize student learning. We co-plan to define what the practice looks and sounds like in action (similar to determining success criteria for learning targets). Sometimes this includes rehearsing concise language or choreographing a move.

A few examples of practices include: talk routines for student partnerships, modeling a strategy such as annotating a text, asking a variety of open-ended and depth-of-knowledge questions. When we choreograph, we think of the ways we use gestures, volume, and expression to engage students in meaningful ways.

in the classroom

Coaching truly comes to life when the teacher and I take what we’re learning and try it with students. We can do this through micro modeling, co-teaching, student observation, and thinking aloud, all detailed in Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves, by Diane R. Sweeney and Leanna S. Harris, and described below. Many of the strategies overlap and support each other throughout a coaching cycle.

When micro modeling, I teach part of a lesson to the class while another teacher—the classroom teacher or another resource such as a bilingual teacher—watches to provide feedback and ideas they might use. Then they try this the next day, ideally when I can be in the classroom to observe and celebrate the impact on student learning. Either before or after the modeling, I describe my teaching moves and the purpose behind them. I might say something like “I plan to use Total Physical Response (TPR), to give the students a hand motion to go with each of these three vocabulary words. I will also show a picture for each word. I am using TPR in order to increase engagement and movement, and to provide students with a way to remember the words long term.” 

When co-teaching, the other teacher and I first plan a lesson and determine who is going to lead which parts. The magic happens when we offer tips and share noticings with each other during the lesson, to respond and pivot if needed. If we notice that a number of students need more modeling, we pull them into a group. If we see one or more students using a strategy effectively, the teacher and I discuss it and decide how and when to highlight the strategy with a group of students or the whole class.

Student observation can happen in a number of ways. The teacher and I can focus on the whole class or a group of students. Data sharing can take place in the moment, when the teacher provides feedback to a student based on the observation or I offer the feedback; the classroom teacher and I offer each other noticings about the feedback and how it was presented and received.

Data collection can also be discussed at the next coaching meeting. One teacher asked me to gather feedback on the types of responses students gave during the whole class discussion. Then we analyzed the replies to see which students responded and what was their depth of understanding.

Another teacher asked for feedback on student partnerships and whether students were using evidence of the main idea in their classrooms. The teacher and I used a clipboard and checked in with students, then conversed with each other to decide on the best next teaching move for individual students.

When using the thinking aloud strategy in the book, I model a strategy and think aloud at decision points so the teacher can see my thought process. An example of this is when I noticed a pattern of decoding errors with a small group of students, so I worked with the students on the pattern and then shared the move with the teacher, which helped make my thinking transparent and showed the students how teachers learn from each other.

Weekly meetings

When the teachers and I meet, we celebrate learning, analyze student data based on our rubric or success criteria, establish where students are in respect to the goal, and determine the next steps in our collaboration and in-class work.

I meet with other coaches throughout the year to grow my repertoire of coaching strategies and to learn what is working well for others that I might try with teachers. It’s important that the teacher I’m coaching and I reflect on the teaching moves that impact student learning, both weekly and in our final celebration meeting. I keep a list of what the teacher utilizes in the coaching log, as evidence of all of their amazing strategies and hard work. It is a privilege to be in partnership with other teachers and to see the joy of learning in classrooms each and every day.