Técnicas para mejorar el apoyo pedagógico

(En inglés)

Techniques for Improving Instructional Support

Cori: Hi. My name's Cori, and I'm an education manager at DTL Head Start. We have 18 preschool classrooms, and I'm lucky to have a coach who works closely together with me. At the end of every year, I like to reflect to help plan for the upcoming year.

I've realized I spend a lot of time helping teachers use ongoing child assessment practices, implement curriculum with fidelity, and monitor children's progress toward their school-readiness goals, and these are just a few of the things we all do as Ed managers, right? It's a busy job, and in addition to all of that, this year, my team really wanted to focus on improving the instructional supports we provide to preschoolers to improve their learning outcomes. We've been tracking our class preschool scores for over a year for our internal professional development purposes and also reviewing our scores from outside observers during our monitoring visits.

Both sets of observational data showed a general trend towards stronger interactions across our emotional supports and classroom organization. But we just didn't see much improvement in our instructional support scores. As the person in our program who leads instruction, I wanted to work with the team of teachers, assistant teachers, and coaches to make this a focus and see if we could improve our instructional support scores.

Our team started by looking at the class data in different ways. We looked at which times of day our instructional support cores were strongest, and then we looked at which parts of the day we were scoring below our goal range of 3.5 to 4.5. We found that the times of day where teachers engaged in higher levels of instructional support were small-group science and math experiences.

As is true with all Head Start programs with low instructional support scores, we found our lowest scores in concept development. But we also noticed another area where we were struggling—instructional learning formats. Although it isn't in instructional supports, it includes teaching practices like using advanced organizers or letting children know what to expect and summary statements to keep children focused.

So, now I realized I needed some strategies to support teachers in these areas. I remembered attending a webinar where I learned that teachers who were engaged in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math—or STEAM—were more likely to score better in instructional support dimensions, specifically concept development. This makes sense. We know that teaching STEAM includes problem solving, brainstorming, and analysis and reasoning. We also know that if we could improve our teaching practices in these areas, we could improve child outcomes.

So, I thought, "Let's start there." I went to the ECLKC, and I searched "STEAM" and found tons of things to help me plan my supports for teachers. I know you're busy, so I won't show you everything I found, but I can show you a few helpful resources that supported me and my staff in reaching our goals.

So, when you can, check out the next video to learn about these ECLKC resources.

(En inglés)

Techniques for Improving Instructional Support Part II

Cori: The first thing I did was to review our program's curriculum to identify where we could strengthen STEAM and practices to support instructional supports. Then, I pulled together our teaching teams and I had them use the "Finding Opportunities for Concept Development Within Your Curriculum" handout to find connections to concept development and identify where their opportunities were within their classroom.

I wanted to be sure staff understood what we mean by STEAM and to think broadly about that. I found this very interactive PDF called, "Understanding STEAM and How Children Use It" that shared the basics about STEAM and offered me some great training activities I used in our education team meeting to help teachers think about STEAM. Here's the one we  used: "Creative Thinking." Staff had a lot of fun thinking about how to expand STEAM throughout the day. One group of teachers determined they could create an entire engineering project out of plastic cups and popsicle sticks where children were challenged to build bridges. Another group took the same materials and developed a boat-making activity.

Another resource I found on the ECLKC was the STEAM 15-minute In-service Suites. The In-service Suite provided information and activities that I can use in ongoing team meetings and in trainings. I use this with our coaches to identify teaching practices that the coaches can support. Our coaches and teachers use the tools for supervisors' Reflection & Feedback resource to reflect on their current STEAM practices and to make plans for what specific practices they wanted to improve.

Another resource in this suite that I used was the group-setting observation tool for supervisors. This was a useful tool because it helped me focus my observations in the classroom on things that build children's higher-level thinking and reasoning and analysis. I watched the teachers' interactions, looking for things like modeling curiosity and a sense of wonder. Did my teacher ask open-ended questions? Did he encourage children to ask questions and listen to learn what they were curious about? Did he build on that by making connections to experiences they had in the classroom together or events that took place in the child's family or community? These specific practices really helped me give feedback to the team, which helped the coach and the teachers remain focused on our team's goal for the year.

Focusing on implementing STEAM practice throughout the day with the goal of improving instructional support was not a short-term activity for us. It's been a steady, consistent, and day-to-day commitment to keep working on it, and these resources really helped us stay the course. Watch the next video to learn more about how we used the coaching companion.

(En inglés)

Techniques for Improving Instructional Support Part III

Cori: Have you heard of the Coaching Companion?

No?

Well, let me tell you, it has changed my life. The Coaching Companion is this cool online platform that lets the teachers record and upload videos of themselves implementing the practices that they're working on.

One teacher filmed a small-group activity where she focused on asking open-ended questions and helping children brainstorm creative ideas and solutions to problems. Another teacher recorded his interactions at a learning center where he used advanced organizers to help children know what to focus on. This helped the teacher engage in back-and-forth conversations that deepened children's understanding and extended their thinking. Our coaches used it in between face-to-face observations and as part of a group coaching meeting where teachers viewed and provided feedback on each other's practices.

The thing I love most about the Coaching Companion is that they include a media and resource library I can use in my trainings, coaching, and other PD events. It's also organized by the class domains so I can quickly access video and resources on instructional support. All these tools really helped me and my team focus on our goal of improving our class instructional support scores. And I'm here to tell you it made a huge difference for us. Using these tools tied things together and allowed us to avoid using them in isolation so it wasn't just one more thing to do.

Now, a lot of this was due to our year-long focus, and I had to keep our team motivated and on track by making sure they felt supported and excited to be improving their teaching practices. That was on me and our coaches to remind the team of their strengths, to support them when they were trying new practices, and to reflect on their progress.

These resources helped me lead this group and develop a focused learning community where, together, we improved the instructional interactions and supports we were using in our classrooms. And most importantly, we helped children ask questions, wonder about the world, think deeply, and get excited about what we were learning in our classrooms. Class wasn't our goal but rather the tool we used to get to our goal of high-quality environments and interactions.

If you asked my team, they would tell you having focused observation and the opportunity to receive feedback helped them build their knowledge and implement effective teaching practices.

So, go for it. Talk with your team, look at your data, find out where your challenges are, and then use the free resources Head Start has developed on the ECLKC. They'll make your job easier and help you get where you want to go.