4. Describe your Coaching

When we first began the process of creating a FRAME, I had Ms. Daniel think about an assignment that was coming up.  Initially, the thought was to use a FRAME to go through the five stages of writing a short story, however Ms. Daniel decided to work on a FRAME that would be used to organize ideas for an upcoming five paragraph persuasive essay.  In the planning stage, Ms. Daniel chose the topic of phone usage in the high school. As a class, they will brainstorm two reasons why phones should be allowed as well as a counterclaim argument.  Ms. Daniel created the attached sample FRAME that she will use with her class.  I explained that the specifics that she included in the essential details may vary based on student feedback and input, but that is the beauty of co-creating the FRAME with the class.    The biggest challenge in this process was finding time to work together to go over the FRAME that Ms. Daniel created and the cue-do-review process prior to implementation.  My school division is already highly involved with SIM routines and strategies, so to find someone to work with who was not already trained in the FRAME routine was a challenge.  Ms. Daniel is a new teacher who just began this semester and when paired with exam time, it is challenging to learn something new while trying to keep up with grading.  We managed to work after school to go through the instruction and prepare for implementation.

Overall the instruction went well. At the beginning of the training, teachers were not excited about being there because they were required to attend. We decided to adjust the training to include more examples of how we use the FRAME in our own classroom. This sparked more interest and most teachers begin brainstorming ways to incorporate the routine in their classroom. Some participants had multiple examples and we allowed them to share with the other teachers. The principal attended the training and had very positive feedback. 

The teachers of the middle school were generally receptive to the FRAME. While some were apprehensive and refused to think that this could contribute any to their classroom instruction, others were creating multiple examples and planning ways to build it in to each unit before we concluded the training.  We were able to adapt our approach to include more content specific examples and provide data from the TTAC website.  This seemed to help the apprehensive teachers to open up and consider implementing something new in their classrooms.

Janice Creneti came to my school on September 26, 2017. She observed me presenting a Unit Organizer to my students. She gave me a score of 100% on my Cue-Do-Review Checklist.
Janice also came to my school on November 30,2017. That day she observed me teaching other Science teachers the Frame Routine.
Janice was very helpful on both occasions. I cannot overstate how knowledgeable and helpful she is. She explained what I needed to improve.in each instance. I have learned to always welcome her constructive criticism because it makes me more successful. CER's can be crafted to fit anyone's individual style. They will work as long as you follow the ground rules. 
Janice guided me to improve my presentation to the other teachers. She also jumped in to field questions from the teachers that I could not answer.
I am looking forward to being able to teach the Frame Routine to the rest of the Murdock Middle staff.

Fortunately, the teacher I coached for the Frame Routine has a common planning time so we were able to meet ahead of time to coordinate the lesson:  The lesson was conducted in an inclusion setting; beginning of class as a warm up.  Student engagement was high and they were very confident in their answers and were excited to participate in filling out the Frame during the warm up and then extend the Frame Routine to incorporate a rotation station lab on Mirrors and Lenses.  

Challenges during instruction of the Frame; Some of the students demonstrated difficulty keeping the pace of the filling in answers on the Frame.  One way we determined to problem-solve this issue, moving forward, was to provide specific students a frame that is partially filled in so they may have a completed Frame at the end of the warm up while contributing and participating with the classroom discussion.

Mrs. Hodges and I worked with our fellow eighth grade English teacher utilizing the FRAME Routine for writing instruction. The first and most important success is that the FRAME greatly assisted her students in learning a new way to organize their essays in a logical order. The students utilized this tool as a pre-planning strategy as they prepared for their Writing SOL. Obviously one challenge was finding a mutual planning time to go over the FRAME. Another challenge was ensuring all technology was working appropriately in her room for this lesson. We overcame these obstacles by planning a date two weeks in advance and double-checking her equipment beforehand.

1st Lesson: Introduction of why we use The Framing RoutineDiscussed it being a visual that the students can use as a study guide later.  They fill it in/ownership.  Explained the acronym for FRAME.  Gave several examples of when we used it in the classroom.  Introduced the book and discussed differentiation with it.  Introduced several topics that she could do.  Showed her several different frames that we have used.  Student brought up using it with a topic that we had just completed for next year.  Used her idea to do together to show her an example of it.  Reinforce that we should have it done before we use it with the students.  Worked on the "Monument" example together.  Discussed how we could extend this activity.  Review using the same type of frames with students for consistency.2nd lesson:  Helping student complete her frame.Reviewed that her frame should be completed before she instructs students.  We could have several frames for the different groups but each should have the important details.( We do small group instruction in our daily 5)  She choose the frame she wanted to use from a grouping.  Worked on key topic and what it is about.  Reminded her that we would need to show our co-teacher to make sure we are using the correct language that she uses, (Normally she would be co-planning with us).  Continued to break down main ideas and details.  Finished with her fine tuning her frame to show me later.