How does supporting teachers to implement number talks inform my coaching practice?
The 4 lead teachers on the kindergarten team share the same smart goal. As I discussed in my last post this is around enhancing student’s ability to explaining their thinking clearly and articulately and increasing student to student discourse. I am thinking that it would be useful to focus the coaching cycle with the K team on number talks. Although I have done work around number talks in other coaching cycles I have not yet made it our sole focus. Can I do this? I like the specificity of it but am wondering if the teacher will not feel supported in their workshops. How can we translate our work in number talk to the math workshop without losing focus?
The other piece I am thinking about is working with this team as a whole. At the moment my meetings have been individually based or co-teacher based. Since they all have the same goal it seems purposeful to be planning and reflecting on number talks as a team. I think this would also create a great opportunity for teachers to observe each other’s number talks and learn from each other. When the team had worked with Iva during their literacy coaching cycle they had given feedback that they would have liked more team planning. They shared a literacy smart goal as well. Iva had done two meeting as a team, one at the beginning of the cycle and one at the end. I am wondering how often we should be looking at number talks as a team. Is it just a few times throughout the cycle or do we try to make this our regular practice?
M-your blog looks great. I'm learning so much about coaching just by reading it :) You ask such great, reflective questions.
ReplyDeleteWhat's a "smart" goal? Your school's terminology or your own?
How often does the K team do number strings? Could that determine how many times you look at it for as long as need be?
I wanted to share something I learned at a PD with you... so it's not really a response to this post but I didn't quite know where to put it.
ReplyDeleteYou might already know about it but I heard this and was like OMG BRILLIANT!
I think it's called parrot teaching(?)
You plan a lesson together as a group
One person teaches it while you all watch and film and or take notes.
You debrief.
A second person teaches the same lesson (with any small tweaks you decided on) while you film and take notes.
REPEAT.
You can pull small groups of kids up to do the lesson with, or bounce to different classes.
What do you think?
Hi Morgan. Katie, this sounds like a version of Lesson Study. Is that what it is? Never heard it called “parrot teaching” and I’m not sure I like the connotation…
ReplyDeleteBut I think this is a great suggestion for Morgan to consider as she attempts to create team planning and observations.
Morgan, I’m not sure what you’re asking…Are you asking if you should specifically connect number talks to the teachers’ SMART goal of explaining thinking? That seems pretty logical to me. What am I not understanding? Why wouldn’t they feel supported? You’re using the lens of number talks to discuss explaining thinking. Seems practical and applicable. Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re asking…
I like the idea of making the focus consistent throughout the cycle. You could do a series of observation and feedback cycles that you share during the meetings that use number talks as the vehicle for looking at student thinking.