Alberta Assessment Consortium - Professional Development

This is a place for member jurisdictions to showcase / advertise current professional development opportunities. This information will be accessible for its applicable time period and is provided as an AAC service without prejudice. It also provides timely information on professional development provided by other organizations.

For information pertaining to professional development opportunities provided by the Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortium (ARPDC), click on the link, http://www.aac.ab.ca/calo.html

Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia (ARPDC) Learning Opportunities

AAC Winter Camp: Thursday at the Movies

Opening Activity and Intent: (20 minutes)

We intend to

deepen understanding of sound assessment practices.
create a vision. Of what effective coaching looks like

Questionnaire:

Rationale for the Activity:

Part of good coaching is making sure that students are all engaged in learning. Questioning techniques that allow students to reflect, share in small groups and then share back to the larger group increase active participation of students. Sharing back to a larger group from a small group discussion needs to be randomized so that all students are responsible for the learning. One way to do this is by using table numbers and a fun questionnaire. This activity allows you to model that strategy.

Instructions:

As we are waiting to start

read the six coaching talents descriptions
each person at the table needs their name to appear once beside a descriptor but only once
we will use this sheet later in the session

The Best and the Worst

Rationale for the Activity

Our experiences as participants in coached activities can provide insights into effective coaching of students. The fickle finger of fate allows the group to choose quickly which story they wish to share with the larger group.

Instructions

Think of your best and worst coaching experience. Share one of these experiences briefly with your group.

Use fickle finger of fate to choose a person from the group to share their positive story.

Capture descriptors or criteria of good coaching on chart paper or on a power-point as these positive stories are shared.

A Vision of coaching: Creating a rubric (40-60 minutes)

Criteria for Effective Coaching

Rationale for the Activity

Sharing the learning destination is an important quality of effective coaching. One way to do this is to involve students in creating a rubric to judge a performance task. The first step is to identify criteria that are important for the task.

Criteria can be created by

Brainstorming a list of qualities related to a question or task
Grouping the brainstormed ideas into categories
Creating a category name for that group of ideas
The group names are the criteria for the task

For our presentation we modified the process. The criteria list for What is effective coaching? was created by the facilitators from the descriptions of best coaching (not created by the participants from the brainstormed list).

After the criteria are determined samples of work are often used as a stimulus to help students describe the quality of performance related to each of the criteria (e.g.. Adequate, excellent).

Instructions

Look at the criteria list we just created for effective coaching from your best coaching stories.

Are there any other criteria we might want to add?

What are the four most important criteria for a coach?

List the four criteria on the rubric template.

Use video clips of teaching as exemplars to create a description of performance quality for a draft rubric

Three video clips that illustrate various levels of coaching quality are:

Ferris Buehlers Day Off
School of Rock
Mr. Hollands Opus

Assign each table group one of the four criteria.

As you watch the three video clips, jot down key descriptors for acceptable and excellent coaching performance next to your groups assigned criteria on the draft rubric.

Discuss as a group, refine descriptions of adequate and excellent performance

Share back your groups descriptors of performance levels.

Popsicle sticks and the caching questionnaire can be used to choose one person to share at each table.

Final Debrief

This activity can be wrapped up in several ways. Some examples are:

Talk about the process of creating a rubric
Discuss the analogy of teacher as a coach
Use the rubric in a follow-up activity to assess effective coaching (Does it work? E.G. Article by Carol Anne Tomlinson Learning to Love Assessment describes her growth over time in assessment practices. There are 10 identified understandings she reached over time. This can easily be split up into a jigsaw.)
Transition to research or activities on effective feedback.

Click on the following links for support materials for this activity:
- PowerPoint - Coaching
- Effective Coaching - blank
- I am a coach because...