Coaching for Design

Coaching for Design Design Process

How We’ll Do Our Work • Turn off cell phones. • Begin and end on time. • Ensure that every participant has ample opportunity to contribute his or her ideas. • Present, when giving reports, the ideas from group work, not individual views. • Use the rule of “No Repeats.” • Ask questions when you have them. • Work hard and have a good time.

Coaching for Design Background and Purpose • History • School and Classroom Standards • Design Tool Need • Uses • With Schools • With Districts • With Design Teams • At Conferences • Connections • Schlechty Center on Change • Seismic Shifts

Coaching for Design • Facilitating • Asking Questions • Knowing Our Customers’ Needs and Interests • Reflection • Directing • Giving Answers • Self Improvement • Action or Activities is… is not…

The C4D Coach • Listens more than talks by • Being attentive as work design teams describe their thinking • Affirming when appropriate • Guiding the thinking of the team with thoughtful questions • Asking other teams in the coaching circle to participate as colleagues by contributing to the thinking of the team being coached

The C4D Coach • Does not criticize teams or individual team members • Does not tell teams/members what to think • Does not tell teams/members what to do • Does not correct teams/members but through thoughtful questions will help the teams to think clearly and purposefully about their design

C4D Tool Options • C4D Tool with Examples • C4D Tool without Examples, on CD • C4D Condensed Version for Experienced Designers • C4D for Designing Engaging Experiences for Adult Learners

Coaching for Design • Helpful Hints • General Guidelines for Coaching Circles

A work design team should contain two or more members. • All work design team members agree to give their attention and commitment to the design of a high-impact, engaging unit of work for students or adult learners. • The work design team should designate a volunteer teacher to teach the unit or decide to design work that will be implemented by all members of the work design team. • Forming a Work Design Team

Work design team members may or may not be from the same grade level. • Work design team members may or may not be from the same content area. • Work design team members may or may not be from the same school. • Form teams and sit together. • Forming a Work Design Team

Coaching for Design Process (Stop after each section for a coaching session.) 1 Prewriting 2 Content and Substance & Measures 3 Product Focus Organization of Knowledge Clear and Compelling Standards Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure 4 Affiliation Affirmation Choice Novelty and Variety Authenticity

Step One: Prewriting • Describing the Students/Learners • Selecting Design Qualities to Emphasize

Prewriting Parts 1 and 2 • Think of the students for whom this work is intended. Identify their grade level(s) and unique abilities and challenges. • Reflect on the types of school tasks that may speak to the motives they bring to school. • What are their learning styles and specific interests? • According to this description, what Design Qualities should be emphasized? Describing the students for whom the work is intended

Example: Prewriting • Description of students: sixth graders, heterogeneous group, one-third poverty, auditory learners, work best in groups, low tolerance for busywork, like some control over learning experiences • Design Qualities to emphasize: Organization of Knowledge, Affiliation, Authenticity, Choice • Soon you will be asked to complete your two boxes for prewriting by describing the students for whom the work is intended and to identify the Design Qualities to be emphasized.

Step One: Prewriting Exit prewriting by visiting the three essential questions. • In planning this work have I consciously built in the qualities and attributes that these students are likely to find most engaging? • What data will I seek to help determine the extent to which these students are engaged, and what methods will I use to acquire this data? • If at any time during this unit students do not meet my expectations in the way they respond to the work, how will I determine what might be lacking in the work and what strategies will I employ to correct the situation?

Audience • Design Qualities Step One: Prewriting

General Guidelines for Coaching Circles: • One conversation at a time. • Consider listening time to be learning time as opposed to “waiting time”. • Take notes if you hear ideas you would like to remember. • Offer feedback to help the other teams know what they have right and what they need to think deeply about. • Do not critique or tell teams what to do. • No side bar conversations.

Content and SubstanceDesigning an Original Learning Experience Handout • Do not recycle a lesson. • Column One: Think of hard-to-teach, difficult-to-learn concepts. • Column Two: Identify important content in which you want your students to work and achieve at higher levels than they are currently working and achieving. • Column Three: Capture a sentence that expresses what students will know or be able to do as a result of this learning experience. Use at least one high-level verb. • Column Four: Determine how and when achievement will be measured and analyzed.

Content and Substance • What do we want students to know and be able to do? • What is the specific material we want students to deal with in order to learn these things? • How can we state, in one concise sentence containing a high-level verb, how proficiency for this content will look?

Content and Substance Questions to Cause Reflection • As a result of successfully performing this work, what will students know and be able to do that they do not know and cannot do at the present time? • What subject(s), content, or skills will students need to master—and at what level—in order to do this work? • How will we know that students have learned what we intended, and how will we know that what we know is so? • How do students feel about these subjects and skills? Do they find them intrinsically valuable or are they disinterested or maybe even hostile toward the topics to be considered?

Content and Substance Sample and Content Sentence • This unit addresses state standards for reading, language arts, and U.S. history for sixth grade. Concepts taught include structural features of literature, evaluation and revision, and U.S. history. • Content Sentence: Students will be able to create accurate news articles depicting the year 1903. • Soon you will be asked to complete your two boxes by listing your Content and Substance and forming your content sentence.

Measurement • How and when will I seek feedback concerning how students responded to this work? • What do I need to know and do in order to get accurate feedback from my students? • What do my students need in order to give accurate feedback about this work? • What will I do with the engagement data I gather concerning this unit and future units?

Measurements • Measuring Engagement • Revisit your “who.” • Determine when and how you will measure engagement through attention, persistence, and commitment.

Measurements • Measuring Achievement • How will you determine whether your students have met the goals that you have set for their learning? • Will you produce a test? Will you use a product(s) to measure achievement? Will you use a combination of the two?

Sample: Measures of Engagement • Every two days group checks will be done by having students write “engaged” or “not engaged” on a post-it and sticking the post-it on the door casing when leaving the room. • A question concerning how the student is responding to the work will be included in the self-evaluation rubric and shared with the teacher during the student-teacher conference.

Sample: Measures of Engagement • At the conclusion of this unit, each student will compose a letter to the teacher. In the letter, students will be invited to answer the following questions: • Which profile element best describes how you responded to this unit? • What about this work caused you to respond this way? • What did you find most engaging? • What was not engaging? • What suggestions do you have for improving the work for next year?

Sample: Measures of Achievement • Group-produced newspaper articles will be evaluated by self, peers, and teacher. • Student-produced summaries from a given newspaper article will be evaluated according to the rubric. • A test will be given over the state standards emphasized in this unit. • Soon you will be asked to complete your measures of engagement and achievement.

Product Focus • Is the work linked to a product, performance, or exhibition that students care about? • Does the product or performance require that students use the knowledge and skills that they are to develop in ways that demonstrate mastery?

Product Focus Questions to Cause Reflection • Is the nature of the product, performance, or exhibition that is to result from this work clear? If not, at what point will it become clear? • Does working on this product call on students to work with information, skills, and processes in which they have a real interest? If not, what is the rationale for choosing this product? • If the product is something the student needs to learn to produce even though the act of doing so is initially threatening and off-putting, are there ways to reduce the threat value? • Is the work linked to a product, performance, or exhibition of value to the student? • Are products personalized so that the different types of student interests are responded to even when students are working on the same product or activity. • Will this work cause students to place a great deal of personal value on and take pride in the products and performances they are asked to produce?

Product Focus Sample Students choose to design a product of significance to them.

Organization of Knowledge • What learning styles will be addressed, and what instructional strategies will be used (for example, problem solving, demonstration or guided practice)? • What technologies will be employed, and how will this be done?

Organization of Knowledge Questions to Cause Reflection • Given the content that is to be mastered and the skills to be developed, what are the resources that are available that bear on the subjects involved? For example, what does a Google search reveal about possible sources of instruction? Are there prepared programs that reveal sensitivity to the need to create materials and approaches that place emphasis on efforts to appeal to intrinsic motives—e.g., motives like Affirmation, Affiliation, and so on? • Based on experience, what are the types of instructional approaches that are most valued by the students and how might these approaches be honored in the work to be designed? • Given the nature of the products(s) to be created, what contextual features need to be specified? For example, is group learning to be valued or should much of the work be done by students operating relatively independently?

Organization of Knowledge Questions to Cause Reflection • Should all the work tasks be done by all these students, or should the tasks be differentiated and assigned to different students depending on such things as their interests in such tasks, their level of understanding of the content, and perhaps their need to develop requisite skills? • Is a range of media and presentation formats employed to appeal to students with different learning styles and ways of thinking? • Are students called on to conduct experiments, read primary source materials, and read books and articles that convey powerful ideas in powerful ways? • Have serious efforts been made to cause students to use what they are learning to analyze problems, issues, and matters of concern to them? • Are students encouraged to develop an interdisciplinary perspective to see how what they are learning in a history class, for example, might have relevance for what they are learning in mathematics, language arts, and other subjects?

Organization of Knowledge Sample • Students will be given information about the process of creating individual newspaper articles and assembling newspapers as a whole. • Students will have hard copies of reference materials as well as Wikipedia and other Internet resources. • Students will be given graphic organizers containing a step-by-step overview for the identification of different types of news, parts of the newspaper, the production of a newspaper article, and a newspaper front page. • Mini-lessons will be used for summarizing a newspaper article, writing a newspaper article and producing a front page of a newspaper. • Use of an interdisciplinary perspective between language arts and U.S. history. • Soon you will be asked to complete your box for Organization of Knowledge.

Clear and Compelling Standards • Do students have rubrics, models and check lists to help them know what quality looks like?

Clear and Compelling Standards Questions to Cause Reflection • Are the standards by which performances and products will be judged sufficiently clear that students can use them in evaluating their own performance as well as in evaluating progress toward producing the intended product? • Will students find the standards compelling—that is, do the standards represent a level of achievement or accomplishment that the students truly aspire to and believe it is possible to attain? • Do the standards, as they are stated and understood, serve to inspire mastery—getting better and better at something the student believes to be important—or do they inspire passive acceptance rather than commitment?

Clear and Compelling Standards Questions to Cause Reflection • Are students regularly encouraged to assess their own work in terms of the standards set? • Are assessment conferences with individual students or small groups of students held where the qualities of student products are assessed? • Is assessment used primarily as a tool to promote student success and only secondarily as a means to justify the distribution of rewards and grades? • Is emphasis placed on the quality of student work products rather than on time schedules? • Are peer evaluation and public discussions of performances, exhibitions, and products used?

Clear and Compelling Standards Sample • Rubrics for each activity will be given to students and explained prior to students’ working on each activity. • Teacher will model the summarizing and writing of a newspaper article. • Teacher will design half of the final product (front page) rubric while students will design the other half of the rubric. • Students will participate in a self-evaluation using the final product rubric prior to doing their final product. • Soon you will be asked to complete your box for Clear and Compelling Standards.

Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure • Are students provided a supportive environment to practice and to learn–an environment where initial failure is viewed as just another try?

Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure Questions to Cause Reflection • Will students who fail be publicly humiliated by failure to perform up to standard or will failure be construed as just another try? • Is the work designed to provide little successes along the way and to limit the prospect of big, high-stakes failures? • When students fail, are they encouraged to seek support from peers as well as from their teachers, parents, and others? • Are the standards sufficiently demanding to present a challenge to the highest performing students but at the same time sufficiently achievable by students who are less quick or sophisticated? • When a student fails to meet the standards, but is making sincere efforts, are there ways to support the student and encourage him or her to see such failures as a normal part of the learning process?

Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure Questions to Cause Reflection • If all students are expected to meet standards at some point, when they fail to do so, are there opportunities to work directly with the student to diagnose the cause of the failure and correct the situation? • Are students provided with feedback on their performance on a regular basis, not just at the time that grades are distributed? • Do teachers and students have access to the resources needed (time, people, space, information, and technology) to provide optimum opportunities for success? • If a student, after numerous tries, fails to meet the standard, will advice be sought from colleagues, parents, and the student regarding things that would make success more likely?

Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure Sample • Students will be given a schedule and plan of all activities connected to the unit. • Teacher will conduct regular checkpoints as scheduled in the plan students will be provided prior to the start of this unit. • Teacher will check for student understanding of the purpose of the newspaper, types of news, information available in the newspaper, and procedures news reporters use for writing newspaper articles before students will create their own articles and newspaper front pages. • Students will be provided a wide variety of resources to use in the production of their newspaper articles and newspaper front pages. • A student-teacher conference will be held after the student self-evaluation and prior to the production of the final product. Students will be provided feedback and support as needed. • The resource teacher will be teaming with the general education teacher for this unit design. Either teacher will be available to encourage and support students in small groups or individually. • Soon you will be asked to complete your box for Protection from Adverse Consequences for Failure.

Affiliation • Do students work with peers, outside experts, parents or other adults to complete tasks? • Does the group work assigned encourage interdependence and teamwork, or is it work that, given time, one person could do alone?

Affiliation Questions to Cause Reflection • Do the students have the team skills and group skills that might be required if Affiliation became a key source of intrinsic motivation? • Is it possible to design the work in such a way that if group activity is involved, each member of the group will see what he or she is doing as valuable to himself/herself and to other members of the group? • What has been the prior experience of students with work that required collaboration, and how do they feel about this experience? • For students who have had negative experiences with group work, what in their view made these experiences bad?

Affiliation Questions to Cause Reflection • Does in-class and out-of-class work involve two or more students working together on a common product? • Are students given work to do that requires the active involvement of parents and other adult members of the community, including senior citizens? • Are tasks designed for students that require the use of the Internet and other forms of electronic communication to build cooperative networks among students, as well as between students and adult groups?

Affiliation Sample • Students will form their own groups remembering that they will be evaluating their own performance as well as the performance of their peers within the group and that these evaluations will contribute to their grade for this activity. • Students will work in groups as they explore newspapers, their parts and different types of news. • Each group will be matched with another group. They will share their learning from comparing and contrasting articles from today’s newspaper with what was happening in 1903. Groups will use a simple protocol for sharing. • Student self-formed groups will produce a newspaper front page from a newspaper in early December, 1903. • Soon you will be asked to complete your box for Affiliation.

Affirmation • Do students know that the work they are doing is valued by others? • Are audiences provided to see or hear the work–for example, is student work displayed on a school website, or are student performances videotaped for parents?

Coaching for Design