One role of an instructional coach is to help teachers reflect on how they deliver instruction and how students receive it. Such reflection can be facilitated in several ways, the most telling of which is data–data about student behavior, questioning techniques, student engagement, teacher movement.
Consider inviting me to your classroom to gather data and reflect with you. Here are a few ideas:

• High-level Questioning: What questions are you asking your students? Where do they fall on Marzano’s taxonomy?
• Reinforcement ratios: How are you reinforcing student effort and performance? To what extent is your feedback positive or negative? Keep reading »

It’s that time of year: bake holiday cookies, shop for holiday gifts, wish for the arrival of holiday break, and frantically review for exams.
With only four days between holiday break and our first exam day, most teachers will soon be starting to review, if they haven’t started already. A lot of teachers make review a regular part of assessment. Ms. Byrne puts questions from past units on tests and quizzes. Mr. Hill has been giving mini-quizzes to help him determine what his students need to review and to hold his classes responsible for all information taught throughout the semester.
If you plan on putting together some kind of in-class review activity, let me know; I would be glad to help. I can help you create interactive lessons on the Smart Board, or get you started with CPS clickers. I can even help you figure out what to review to best prepare your students for their exams.
Please don’t hesitate to ask me to create something FOR you or teach something WITH you.