7. Describe your Coaching

Private link to Google folder containing link to Instruct/Coach a Teacher evidence was shared with Mary Stowe on 5/20/22.

During our in-person professional development in March of 2020, we had instructors of a variety of levels attend the training. With it being so late in the year, we only had a couple interested in working with us to implement the strategy in their classroom.I began working with a 5th-grade general education teacher at an elementary school in Fayette County. She seemed very excited to get the instruction started. We had many difficulties getting days and times worked out to observe in her classroom or during a zoom session. She did begin instruction using a variety of tools since she was still teaching virtually. I was able to work with her a few times. She did receive copies of the needed presentations, tips for instruction, sample memory tables, and a variety of other tools to use in the classroom setting or virtual setting. She did note an interest in changing the lessons to include vocabulary words from other classes for generalization. We discussed a couple of different ways to do this. A template worksheet was made for her to use. As lessons were completed in whole/large groups, she was interested in having students self-check their work. We suggested having the students use markers of a different color when self-checking.

Word Mapping was a difficult strategy to teach to my SLD reading students as written. I taught the strategy as written, however my students at time zoned out because of the lack of connection to the words. I attempted to connect the morphemes to words that would be used in daily conversations or in text they would encounter. This helped the students greatly. I found that teaching the lessons in a fast paced, we do setting was more beneficial than having students work independently. This allowed students to feel success and build momentum throughout the lesson. I also found my students enjoyed making the visual word map of words for specific morphemes. This connection seemed to last beyond the lesson to later lessons. Overall, my students were able to make growth in knowing morphemes and word attack strategies that can be used in middle school.