Symbaloo

I am one month in as an instructional coach now, and although I enjoy my new position, one drawback is that I miss working with kids. One of the reasons for this is because I am discovering numerous teaching resources and am unable to try them out with the students. Since I cannot utilize my new learnings directly with the kids, the next best thing for me is to disseminate the information to other teachers for student use. Therefore, the other WDMCSD secondary instructional coaches and I created a Symbaloo site to house these teacher resources.

Symbaloo is visual bookmarking tool that organizes what you find on the internet. Our Symbaloo site houses different tools and resources beneficial to teachers in the district. We have bookmarks for the Teaching Channel, Kahoot, the Iowa Core, and much more. This is a work in progress, so please be patient as we add more links to our board.

To see our site, go to http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/toolsandresources2.

The World of Twitter

Twitter is becoming a popular network for educators. It can be a valuable tool to learn about the latest trends in education, gather ideas for the classroom, find educational blogs, and much more.

For those new to Twitter, here are some sites to help you become acquainted with the social network:

• What is the Purpose of Twitter and What Does It Do?http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_purpose_of_Twitter_and_what_does_it_do
• The Beginner's Guide to Twitter                                                http://mashable.com/2012/06/05/twitter-for-beginners/
• 5 Ways to Make the Most of Twitter http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2011-07-29-kim-komando-twitter_n.htm

Here are some suggestions of who to follow in the educational world on Twitter:

• @TeachingChannel - TeachingChannel (It is an online community where teachers watch, share, and learn techniques for the classroom.)
• @edutopia - Edutopia (It shares research-based strategies in the field of K-12 education.)
• @robertjmarzano - Robert Marzano
• @BIEpbl - Buck Institute for Education (BIE is a leader in Project Based Learning)
• @WDMCS - The West Des Moines Community School District 
• @StilwellJH - Stilwell Junior High School
• @vhstigers - Valley Tigers (It gives updates on Valley High School activities)

The Importance of Learning Targets

For roughly three years now, we have been using learning targets in the West Des Moines Community School District. We know that it is a one-word sentence describing what the student will learn, and we do a great job of posting them somewhere in the classroom for the students to see. Most of us even understand that learning targets tie in with our district goal, the Essentials of Effective Instruction (more specifically- how will my students know what they will be learning today).

But just because we know what a learning target is, does that mean we can create an effective, appropriate one for our students? Do we know if the learning target posted for students is what they are supposed to be learning? As teachers, can we write a target that is meaningful to children, and they can describe in their own words? And how do we know if they hit the target by the end of the lesson?

To address these issues, we need to do the following:

• Collaborate with our Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to determine what the students should be learning. By looking at the Common Core (or Iowa Core, or the WDMCS standards and benchmarks), we need to agree on the most important concepts, called power standards, to cover in the course of a year. This will ensure that we create targets based on what the students should be learning.
• Determine how we will know when the students hit the target. As PLCs, we need to decide what it will look like when a student has demonstrated mastery of the content.
• Go above and beyond posting the learning targets in  our classroom. We should ask students to define the learning target in their own words and use formative assessments to gauge their level of mastery.

Constructing meaningful learning targets is no easy accomplishment. It can take years of collaborating, writing, and revising to produce targets that are relevant to students, teachers, administrators, and parents. But it is necessary if we want to create classrooms of intentional, motivated learners.

References:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar11/vol68/num06/Knowing-Your-Learning-Target.aspx

Moss, C. M., & Brookhart, S. M. (2012). Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

New Learnings

I have now successfully completed my first full week of instructional coaching, and it is amazing to see already how much I have grown as an educator in such a short span of time. This growth can be attributed to the fact that I now have more time to collaborate and learn from others in the West Des Moines Community School District.

I am going to let the readers in on the dirty, little secret of being an instructional coach: we are not know-it-alls with infinite amounts of knowledge and creativity. Most (okay, maybe all) of our ideas are actually stolen from others. And many of these ideas come directly from our colleagues.

Here is a very small snippet of my new learnings and where I obtained them:

1) Although there are no national standards for social studies, there is a national framework for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history based on the ELA Common Core (http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/c3/C3-Framework-for-Social-Studies.pdf). I learned about this from our curriculum director.

2) In the Common Core, there are standards for mathematical practice that all math teachers should seek to develop in their students, such as, "make sense of problems and persevere in solving them" (http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/). I gained this bit of knowledge from a math teacher here at Stilwell.

3) A teacher can calculate his/her semester grades by total points from both quarters, in addition to averaging 1st and 2nd (or 3rd and 4th) quarter grades. Another teacher in the building taught me this one.

4) There is a program already installed on our desktops that allows us to draw on images from the document cameras, as well as record videos without using an SD card. One of the district's professional development curriculum facilitators showed me this program, which is called Ladibug.

Collaborating with my colleagues has allowed me the opportunity to learn these new skills, which I can pass on to others. I appreciate the interactions I have had with my co-workers this past week and am looking forward to future, collaborative learning experiences.

One more week to go...

This is my last full week of maternity leave before returning to work and beginning my new position as an instructional coach. Although I am quite nervous to embark on this new journey, I am also excited for the adventures that it will bring. I am looking forward to collaborating with other teachers, supporting them in the classrooms, and in general making their jobs more manageable and enjoyable.

With that in mind, I feel like I will be extremely busy these last few days leading up to October 3rd. Therefore, I made a list of what I need to accomplish prior to returning to work.

1. Prepare my brain to use higher-order thinking skills.
These past seven weeks have been spent feeding Lucy, changing diapers, catching up on sleep, and watching television. I now plan to carve out time to catch up on emails, read some educational articles, and collaborate with other teachers in preparation for when I return to work.

2. Complete any final to-do items here at home.
Basically, I want to finish writing my thank-you cards and do a deep cleaning of the house.

3. Hope, pray, and wish for Lucy to decrease her nighttime feedings from two down to one.
It's no big deal now if she decides to wake up several times to eat, but there will be issues if she continues this once I return to the world of the working. I'm planning on having a stern talk with her about this, which I really think should solve the problem.

4. Enjoy my final moments at home with Lucy.
I can't believe she's already been here for a month. I know the time will fly, and before I know it she will be graduating from high school.

So, there's my list. I think it's doable. With that, I must get to work at accomplishing this list. I look forward to seeing my colleagues on Friday, October 3rd and diving in to my new position.

Instructional Coach Videos

If you're bored and have a few minutes to kill, here are some short video clips about instructional coaching:

1) https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/instructional-coaching
This video is from TeachingChannel.org and gives a general overview of how coaching improves instruction. It is 2 minutes and 35 seconds in length.

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut2_VFVU4W4
This video is an actual meeting between a teacher and a coach, and it will give you an idea of how meeting with a coach is informal and non-evaluative. Don't be fooled by what YouTube tells you is the length of the video. Only the first 3 minutes and 49 seconds contains the meeting between the teacher and coach.

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DIM2ypSIXI
This video accurately describes what instructional coaches do. The length of this video is 5 minutes and 28 seconds.

The Power of Video

I'm now 1 1/2 weeks into my maternity leave. Although I've spent the bulk of my time doing non-productive things like watching TV and checking Facebook (in addition to spending time with Lucy), I've also spent a small amount of time reading educational articles. One of the items I stumbled upon recently seemed to resonate with me, which is the power of video.

Jim Knight (the Instructional Coach guru out of the University of Kansas) did a webinar back in May on how videotaping yourself teaching can be a powerful tool. He said that we should periodically videotape ourselves because we do not have a clear picture of our practice and it is an easy tool to utilize.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I HATE watching myself on video. Many times it seems to be counterproductive for me, as I spend the length of the video noticing physical flaws and cringing at the sound of my voice. But...I do see the value of the experience.

I remember back when I was student teaching I had to video tape myself, and my student teaching co-hort would analyze my teaching. I really thought I did a great job with the lesson; the students seemed to understand the material, my timing was good, and I was able to answer the students' questions. It wasn't until I watched the video with my classmates that I noticed some key areas for improvement. Mainly, I saw that as I talked, I like to stand behind the podium and rock back and forth. I was highly embarrassed, and I wondered if the students also noticed this during the lesson. I learned a valuable lesson from the experience, though, and to this day I always make a concentrated effort to walk around the room when talking to students for an extended period of time.
Jim Knight says when you videotape yourself, you should watch the video twice. Identify an area of focus during the first viewing, and analyze the area of focus during the second viewing. From there, you can identify a goal and method of practice to make improvements in your teaching.

When I return from maternity leave, I plan to videotape myself  (with teacher permission, of course) in order to grow as an instructional coach. I'll even try to focus on my content and delivery, rather than the bags under my eyes from lack of sleep or those last ten pounds I still need to lose from having a baby.

If you are also interested in videotaping yourself teaching, Katie and I would be more than happy to assist with this process. We can videotape the lesson for you, sit down to analyze it with you afterwards, and set goals for future practice.