Synapse Early Learning Systems

A Coach’s Guide for Developing High Level Instructional Supports

This book provides coaches and instructional leaders with all the most up to date, research-based information on effective coaching practices to help teachers increase the effectiveness of their instructional supports practices.

This easy to follow, practitioner- friendly guidebook provides clear and concise definions, specific practices, and real classroom examples. A wide range of instructonal supports practices are described, including those suggested by frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, and those that are measured by observational instruments such as the Pre-K CLASS and The ECERS-3. 

The author describes what these different tools’ indicators and  markers look like at low, mid, and high levels, and explains how to help teachers increase their scores. Appreciating that there are different stages of teacher development and several different levels of knowledge and understanding, the author provides suggestions for how to explain the concepts and practices in ways that beginning, experienced, and expert level teachers will understand and be able to act upon. 

The following topics are covered:

A Word About Continuous Quality Improvements

The Important Role of Leadership

Stages of Teacher Development 

Why Coaching?

Features of Good Coaching

What Good Coaching is NOT

Who Gets Coached?

Concepts VS Practices

Goals of Coaching

Sharing Data With Teachers Cycles of Improvement

Teachers’ Improvement Goals

Connections with Curriculum

The “Why” of Higher-Order Thinking

Barriers and Obstacles to Coaching Teachers

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Webb’s Hierarchy of Knowledge

The Classroom Assessment Tool Scoring CLASS Instructional Supports Dimensions

Concept Development

Quality of Feedback

Language Modeling

The Difference Between Low, Mid, and High CLASS Scores

What the Scores Mean

Low, Mid and High Examples

Sample Teacher Feedback for Various Levels

The ECERS-3 – Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale

Coaching Groups

PLC’s: Professional Learning Communities

Activities to Expand Teacher Understanding (for trainings, Place or Coaching)

Role Plays

Reflective Questioning

Use of Journaling

Use of Video Taping

Templates for Facilitation of PLCs

Beach’s Teacher Practice Protocol for Expanding Instructional Supports

The book will first be available for $24.95 in E-book format, and will be emailed to pre-orderers on or before May 1, 2020. Later, published copies will be available in the the fall of 2020 at a cost of $34.95. 

Pre-paid orders can be made through the Synapse website via PayPal. See below.

Pre-order Before May 1st, 2020 and Receive 10% OFF!