What fun it was to go over my presentation for Coaching the Heavy Hitters of Instructional Strategy. I managed to hit voice record on my phone to see how it would work. The outline is right on target. I had to laugh because the slide deck from the NotebookLM is amazingly better than my Canva-based creation.

View slide deck via NotebookLM

Outline of My Talk

I. Introduction & Warm-Up (approx. 10 mins)

• Participant Introductions: Attendees share their backgrounds (mix of coaches, administrators, and teachers) and discuss their “go-to” instructional strategies in small groups.

    ◦ Discussion Highlight: One group discussed the resurgence of handwriting/notebooks versus technology for retention.

• Logistics & Resources:

    ◦ Introduction to the “Resource Locker” website and the custom AI “Session Assistant” (Google Gem).

    ◦ Free resource gift: An AI’s Guide to Instructional Coaching ebook,.

II. The Evidence Base: Why “Heavy Hitters”?

• The Hinge Point: Explanation of John Hattie’s research. The goal is to move beyond the “hinge point” of 0.40 (one year of growth) to strategies with effect sizes of 0.74 or higher,.

• The “Stop Doing” List: Reference to Mike Bell’s The Fundamentals of Teaching. The easiest way to improve learning is to stop doing things shown not to work,.

• SOLO Taxonomy: Using the taxonomy to map strategies to learning phases:

    1. Surface Learning: Introducing ideas (Uni-structural/Multi-structural).

    2. Deep Learning: Connecting ideas (Relational).

    3. Transfer Learning: Applying ideas to new contexts (Extended Abstract),.

    ◦ Key Insight: Coaches must help teachers “match the horse to the rider”—using the right strategy for the right phase,.

Learn more about the Certification below at

https://tcea.org/courses/instructional-coach-certification/

III. Strategy Deep Dive 1: The Jigsaw Method (ES 0.92)

• The Concept: Moving from Home Groups → Expert Groups → Home Groups. It spans Surface and Deep learning,.

• Implementation: The importance of the “Expert Group” phase where students debate and master the content before teaching it to peers,.

• Coaching Activity (Troubleshooting):

    ◦ Scenario: A teacher tries Jigsaw, but students return to home groups and just read their notes aloud robotically,.

    ◦ Audience Solutions: Participants suggested coaching the teacher to model the conversation, provide sentence stems, or forbid “reading” to force internalization,.

IV. Strategy Deep Dive 2: Reciprocal Teaching (ES 0.74)

• The Concept: A deep learning “powerhouse” involving four specific roles (The “Fab Four”),:

    1. Predicting: Using clues/titles to hypothesize what comes next (The “Crystal Ball”),.

    2. Questioning: Generating deep questions about the text.

    3. Clarifying: Identifying confusing vocabulary or concepts.

    4. Summarizing: Condensing essential information.

• Coaching Activity (The Hand-Off):

    ◦ Scenario: The teacher is doing all the work (summarizing/questioning) while students remain passive,.

    ◦ Task: Participants use the Notice-Wonder-Next framework to craft a coaching question that helps the teacher realize they need to release control,.

V. Rapid-Fire Strategies (Overview)

• Outlining & Organizing (ES 0.86):

    ◦ The Problem: Students creating “laundry lists” or passively copying the teacher’s outline (the “Copy-Paste” problem),.

    ◦ The Fix: Students must do the cognitive work of establishing the hierarchy. AI can be used to generate a scrambled list of facts that students must organize,.

• Transfer Strategies (ES 0.75):

    ◦ The Goal: Applying learning to novel or “ill-structured” problems,.

    ◦ Technique: Using AI as a “Consultant” to present scenarios where students must apply prior knowledge,.

• Self-Reported Grades (ES 0.96):

    ◦ The Concept: Students utilizing clear success criteria to accurately evaluate their own work (not just guessing or giving an ‘A’ for effort),.

VI. Conclusion

• The Challenge: The facilitator challenges participants to pick one Heavy Hitter to implement next week rather than coaching on general management or low-impact strategies,.

• Closing Logistics: CPE credit information and final Q&A.