Coaching to Improve Reading

Course Description:

Intentional best practice in each reading component is emphasized as the basis for the coaching interaction. Through learning activities, observations of teaching and practice and application of skills, participants learn how to establish a positive, respectful, caring and confidential coaching relationship that allows each partner to grow and learn in a safe, collaborative and guiding atmosphere with the common goal of increasing student reading achievement.

Course Objectives:

• Understand the elements of a positive coaching relationship
• Establish operating principles and plan for an effective coaching experience
• Understand best practice in each of the seven components of successful reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing about the reading, and reading in content area skills
• Understand how enduring understanding, student engagement, student outcomes, and teacher behaviors that cause learning to happen are foundational to every subject and to the coaching interaction
• Design and use essential questions in reading instruction and in coaching
• Use the Foundational Four in lesson planning and design
• Understand four components of reading instruction to plan for in every class, especially content area instruction: reading with and to students, vocabulary/decoding, comprehension, and writing about the reading
• Differentiate instruction based upon enduring understanding, while varying difficulty and complexity of content that is read
• Choose effective methods for data collection and analysis
• Observe effective coaching methods and practices
• Identify effective communication structures and those that detract from a positive coaching experience
• Construct effective reading lessons based upon research-based practice in reading
• Observe one another and conduct coaching conferences and feedback analysis
• Distinguish between effective and ineffective lessons/instructional episode/practices
• Learn how to assess text fit and to differentiate instruction using appropriate resources and identified, common standards
• Differentiate comprehension questions, understanding that for some students literal questions are more difficult than inferential
• Understand the different reading demands of specific subject areas and design lessons to assist reading in content areas, with special emphasis upon reading rate
• Design a building-wide coaching and collaboration process for increasing student reading achievement
• Observe and conduct an effective data-driven coaching conference