Instructional coaching is about helping teachers become better versions of themselves, and for them being open to support, and wanting to grow and develop. It can include modelling of best practice in the classroom by the coach. An instructional coach can use ideas from Ross Morrison McGill’s book ‘100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding Lessons’ for injecting new ideas into classroom practice. This reflects the Learning Designer element of the ISTE Standards for Coaches and can be used alongside the TEACHER Coaching model.
The 100 ideas in the book are organised into sections with many of the best ideas in the ‘Homework’ section. My top ten are Ideas 16, 25, 44, 51, 53, 54, 58, 60, 61 and 83. Morrison McGill explains ideas such as the 7ePlan. This idea is for planning lessons and is based around: elicit; engage; explore; explain; elaborate; evaluate; and extend.
On homework, he describes student led homework, no marking homeworks, and homework choices. He also describes lesson activities including using a visualiser, making topics into newsroom activities, and telling a story to paint a picture and gain interest.
My favourites are his ideas on Bloom’s taxonomy. In Idea 60, he describes ‘Target Practice’ and differentiated questions with challenge ratings and using Bloom’s taxonomy to pitch the challenges. He continues with this theme and suggests using different coloured notes to attract responses at different levels of higher order thinking in Idea 25: Bloom’s Post it.
In addition to modelling parts of lessons, instructional coaching also involves self-appraisal by the teacher. It can include self-reflection after watching a video of their own teaching. Morrison McGill suggests reflection is his idea called ‘Show Off’ where a teacher can consider teaching standards and what an excellent lesson might look like.
The book has sold thousands of copies and is an oldie but a goodie and well worth a read,
TEACHER Coaching 