Instructional Coaching Newsletter

The 2018-2019 school year is off to a great start. No doubt this is due to the incredibly talented and caring staff that we are fortunate to have in our district. The instructional coaches are so excited to collaborate with you as we focus on student success. We hope that you will find the newsletter an enrichment to our work as we share ideas on instructional strategies, technology tools, PLC processes, and some of the great things happening in our buildings. Please don't hesitate to reach out to an instructional coach if there is anything that we can do to support your work.

Having a rapport with students helps us create a strong foundation in our learning environments. Therefore, this school year the importance of building relationships quickly has been a shared goal. Here are five strategies to assist in building strong relationships with your students, and learning more about them as individuals.

1. Stand outside your classroom door and greet students. This is not just as a supervisory role, but as a means to get to know students. Chat with students about upcoming events at school, or compliment new haircuts, positive behaviors that you’ve noticed, or how their smile brightens your day. Making students feel safe and welcome, starts with us!

2. Open up your classroom to students. Find out if there is a common interest that students have that you can support and facilitate. For example, if there is a crew of students interested in playing chess, open up your room for a half hour after school and pull out some chess sets.

3. Be a spectator at events. Students love seeing their teachers at their sporting events, concerts, and performances. Make it a goal to attend an event each month or each season. If possible, try attending events outside of the school as well. The county fair or community performances are other great arenas to support your students. They will notice you’re there!

4. Communicate positives with parents. When you have a positive interaction with a student, slip a quick note in the mail to parents to let them know how much you enjoyed/appreciated the interaction.

Sincerity is the key. Elementary and secondary students don’t respond well to sarcasm. They don’t want to read between the lines or feel unsure about how you feel about them. Take a sincere approach when interacting with students to alleviate the confusion, and build a strong foundation.

Check out 60 Common Formative Assessments for some great ideas on checking for understanding, formative assessments and strategies for helping students with processing their learning.

As we look to improve our common assessments one thing to consider is how we are teaching our students to prepare for these assessments. It is easy to take for granted that students will simply know how to study, but like most skills it is something that needs to be explicitly taught. Winston Sieck outlines in his article “Teaching Study Skills to Empower Your Students” several ways for students to take advantage of their own learning with guidance from the teacher. His strategies are simple and easy to incorporate into your class as you engage students in your curriculum. Our district’s mission and vision is to ensure all students and staff are learning at high levels and to develop a culture of collaboration and communication that supports continuous improvement for all. Building the capacity of our students in the use of study skills can make great strides in this endeavor.

If you enter the Cardinal building at 3:00 any day of the week, you better have a book with you! This year we are implementing a school-wide “Drop-Everything-And-Read” time from 3:00-3:10 daily. Everyone in the building is encouraged to drop what they are doing and read, or listen to reading for the entire 10 minutes. The staff at Cardinal are excited to share their love of reading with the students and students enjoy the idea of reading, “just for fun!” Our mission is to ignite a passion for reading and learning that goes beyond the classroom.