School-Irymple+Primary+School

[|Irymple Primary School web site] ==Irymple Primary School is located on the corner of 15th Street and Sandilong Avenue on the fringe of the Irymple township and Mildura Rural City. It is 7 kilometres south of Mildura on the Calder Highway. Irymple Secondary College is located nearby with Irymple South, Nichols Point and Cardross being neighbourhood schools. We have an enrollment of 300 students, with 12 classes, and 18 teaching staff. ==

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​ My role within the school is Literacy coordinator and prep teacher, along with other roles such as Prep Transition, Early years, Graduate mentor etc). We have a three tier level of Leadership at IPS and I am in the second tier. My two colleagues on this level and myself make up the leadership team with the Principal and AP. I guess we take up the role of Leading teacher, as our school does not have a leading teacher at this time (not since 2008). ​======

Day one
I am going to form a circle of three for coaching within our school. I am teaching in the Prep to two department and the two colleagues joining me are in the three/four and five/six departments respectively. I am looking forward to working with them and achieving great things in our school. How will we do this? Don't know yet- stay tuned!

From Maureen: Great start Sherrin - sounds like you have the beginnings of a whole school approach. The next two days are all about getting oriented and developing a plan to get started, so let us know what you decide after this week. What have you learned so far about the questions on the minds of your other two colleagues about establishing literacy coaching? M

Day Two
After Day two I am feeling like I need to:
 * Clarify my role with my principal
 * Clarify my principal's expectations of me and my role
 * Find out how to impelement the 'circle of three' coaching I have in mind.
 * Plan together as to what we want to achieve.

The readings and discussions were excellent today and I am starting to feel as though I am gaining a better understanding of what might be expected of me. I'm starting to think that maybe I can do this, having felt that I just didn't want to come back after day one (especially as I missed half of day one due to the plane breaking down!). Nothing is especially resonating with me, and I don't have a clear place to start yet, but the murk is a little bet less murky, if you know what I mean. I also have some ideas of how to use this wiki space, having seen Chris' and Katrina's sites.

Also, I am starting to reject my original plan of working with two experienced colleagues at my school, and thinking that maybe I'll work with the two graduates in my department instead. I am still very confused and not sure of the who, what, how and why.

Day Three
Today the lights went on! The session with Julie was fantastic, as was the reading she assigned us at the end of day two. I really understood the idea of 'light' coaching and 'heavy' coaching and could apply this to my own school. After a practise conversation with Chris John (in Julie's class), and a challenging question from Chris about what the circle of three participants would get out of it, I began to question my (vague) plan of working with the graduates.

When we were sent off in our triads to practise coaching conversations (after (Heather and Julie's session) my thouhts finally started to clear- thanks to Chris and Katrina for excellent questioning and observation here! The time to write down where I will start was great too, because finally I think I can start, and in fact, I am quite excited to do so. I finally get that the fact that I am not an expert teacher doesn't mean that I don't have something to offer.

So, I will start by 1. Speak with Grant (my principal) about his expectations of me. I will need to have a basic plan formulated, with reasons as to my decision so far. 2. Speak with the ultimate colleagues 3. Then we need to sit down and come up with a plan of what we hope to achieve through Literacy coaching.

So that's the plan so far.

I spoke to my principal on Monday and we have sorted out what I am going to do and when I am going to do it. Grant has asked me to coach the two graduate teacher's in my unit- Rob is a 2nd year graduate and Caitlin is a 1st year graduate. Both teach grade one. I will work with them week about as I only have two hours each week in which to coach. On Friday afternoons I will meet with the teacher to be coached the next week and we will do the pre-session chat - setting the focus, what data I am to collect, what our purpose it etc. On Monday morning at 9 am I will attend that classroom and collect the data the teacher has requested. At 10 am the classroom teacher will go and spend 15-20 minutes reflecting (written reflections) while I teach the next part of the lesson. Then at 10:20 I will go and write my reflections and the classroom teacher will continue the lesson. We will then meet over recess or lunch to share our reflections and decide where to next, what focus the teacher will work on over the next two weeks etc. Although the timing is difficult, I need to work within the two hours I have allotted to me for literacy coordinator/coaching and significant changes have been made to the whole school timetable to allow this to happen. Coaching will begin in week 5 to allow those changes to take place. Had my first coaching session yesterday. Rob (grade one teacher, 2nd year graduate) and I met on Friday after school to plan the focus for the session. We are working on achieving better literacy outcomes and Rob decided to work on his reading hour. He wanted me to check that the children were on task during the independent activity and independent reading time. After some discussion he nominated three children, one upper, one middle, one lower in achievement. I was to observe these children and note down my observations for him. On Monday morning at 9 I attended Rob's room and sat at the back out of the way while he introduced his lesson with a shared session on reading strategies. I then moved to where I could see the three children in action, and hear what they were saying. (Rob had seated them at the same table group as previously discussed). I wrote down what I saw and what I heard only. At the end of the hour Rob went off to write his own reflections for 20 minutes while I took over the teaching of his class for the shared writing session. After he returned I went and typed up my observations for Rob. Due to yard duties and after school meetings we were not able to meet for the post session debrief until lunchtime today. I first went over with Rob the focus we had set for the lesson and asked if he had any questions. Then I asked Rob to share any parts of his reflection that he felt comfortable in sharing. I then read through my obversations of each child. At this point it was really hard to keep myself from jumping in and just telling him what I thought he ought to do! But I kept reminding myself that I'm not the expert, and I don't have all the answers. I let him absorb my observations for a minute and reminded him that had he been in my class for the same lesson (with me teaching) he would have probably noticed similar things. I then asked a couple of questions about what he had 'learned' from my observations. I then asked him to think about what he would change, if anything, if he had the chance to teach the lesson again. He came up with a couple of things which I noted down. I then asked him to tell me what he felt he could work on for the next two weeks until we meet again that would be managable and improve outcomes. He came up with: modelling what practising strategies with a partner looks like (using fish bowl) and thinking more carefully about where he sits during these independent sessions. After it's all over- I feel as though I didn't question enough, or that maybe the questions weren't deep enough? However, I feel that Rob felt that he had come up with something that was useful and workable and would improve his outcomes. I can see that I have a lot of work to do as a coach to improve myself.
 * April 21st**
 * May 11th**

//Sherrin, The only way we can improve this, in my opinion, is through practise and modelling. This is where we need to support each other. I have put a suggestion on the ning which you might care to respond to.// //Chris//

Thanks Chris. After days 4 and 5 I am feeling as though I need to rethink what I am doing. Coaching is so hard!!! I'm really thinking about how I will show that I have made a difference. As literacy coordinator I can see that I have made a difference, but as coach I can't. What Cathy Toll had to say really resonated with me and I had several AHA! moments. However, I really wonder how I am going to get this done. //Sherrin,// //I know what you mean. You will be a great coach though because you are a deep thinker with great knowledge. You always have been and this will only strengthen as you tease (or squeeze) others to develop their skills. It's the same principle as peer tutoring or cross-age work. We strengthen our skills when we help others develop theirs.// //What Cathy said rang bells for me too but I have seen other appraoches have huge impacts on teaching and learning and need to remember that what she described was just one model of coaching.//

=﻿Day 6= It was good to talk to Maureen today, and then to follow up with a reading, about how teachers are all at different places and therefore need different things. I have really struggled to have coaching conversations with my two graduates, and have ended up 'telling' them, or advising them. Now it seems as though it was the only thing I could have done given that they are definitely in survival mode. I worry that I won't be able to show improvement as a coach because of this. As Literacy Coordinator I can show improvement across the school because of the whole school assessment schedule I have put in place with my team. I can also show improvement throught the literacy modules that our region is rolling out. But as a coach my time is so limited, and the constraints are on due the staff I work with, that I'm not sure really how to show improvement. The document about the tasks to be completed by day 8 has made this a little clearer, but I will need to look at this further.

The coaching conversations in triads were great today. As always it was a pleasure to work with Chris and Katrina. It has been nice to follow through from the beginning with them and see the progress they are making and the new things they are trying. We all come from such different school settings, and yet we are able to help each other.

Day 8 presentation I'm wondering if I can use a presentation on Independent Reading that I presented to the whole staff for this presentation, followed up by showing how we, as a school, have put this into action. Because my coaching role has been so small, and been more of a mentoring role, I am struggling to meet this criteria. Can anyone tell me if this would be okay? Thanks

Hi Sherrin - this presentation might be what you share as your contribution to digital learning resources for our learning community - we'll be sharing and discussing these after lunch. The morning triads are the Considering Evidence Protocol - so look at that again. It prompts you to reflect on the questions you brought into the program, the actions you've taken this year, and evidence of impact. Think about the impacts as emanating out from your personal learning, to the learning of your colleagues, to impacts on student to impacts on your whole school community. How far has new learning and changed actions rippled as a result of your personal learning and actions? If you want to focus on implementation of Independent Reading as a school community, what evidence do you have that this has progressed student learning? Or what changes have occurred to teachers' practices and how are they determining the impact of these changed practices on student learning? What do teachers have to say about your mentoring role and to what extent has this affected them - e.g. in terms of their practice, in terms of their understanding about the teaching of reading, in terms of their beliefs about the way learners become powerfully literate or effective independent readers, in terms of what it means to be an independent reader? The form of evidence you could bring in relation to teacher learning might be some of their reflections (written), responses to a survey, some flip camera reflections that show their depth of learning and thinking. Some student reflections on how they have experienced the new independent reading practices would also work as a form of evidence. Don't worry about getting tied up about mentoring/coaching - it's the impact of your actions on the professional learning of your colleagues in relation to their understanding and practices in literacy that you are firstly trying to determine - facilitating their analysis of the impact of these practices on student learning is also important - so what have you learned in relation to this? Cheers, Maureen

Thanks Maureen, I have done the digital learning resource as independent reading. Thanks for the ideas as to the considering evidence protocol. I have done this, but can see some things I can add. Thanks again Sherrin









October 28th I've been reflecting on some of the things I heard on day 8. A coach is really an agent for change. And as an agent for change we don't have to be, and probably won't be, popular or even liked at times. And that's okay in the scheme of things. I heard on ABC radio last night that 'what is imposed will be opposed'. Coaching can be like this at times for some people.