Welcome to Coaching Leaders with Instructional Plays

Our blog is dedicated to providing educators with practical and effective strategies to enhance their teaching methods. Explore our resources and elevate your instructional practices today.

Content Planning

We offer a range of Content Planning services tailored to meet your individual needs. Our approach is focused on understanding and responding to what you require, providing effective and practical solutions.

UBD-Backwarads Planning Design

This strategy ensures purposeful lesson design based upon the learning outcomes we want for our students. Wiggins & McTighe (2005) states “backward design calls for us to make our goals or standards specific and concrete, in terms of assessment evidence, as we begin to plan a unit or course” (p. 19). Backwards planning ensure that greater quality and alignment to the rigor of the standards and the assessment/progress monitoring methodology.

Tic-Tac-Toe Learning Activities

This activity for creating a Tic-Tac-Toe Learning Activities to include 3 columns and 3 rows of tasks and activities that appeal to students’ varying learning styles. It aligns to the use of multiple intelligences, varying learning modalities, and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Steps/Process for UBD

  1. Identify desired results-here the teacher must identify what students should know and be able to do. The enduring understanding is paramount to identify at this step.
  2. Determine acceptable evidence-in design orientation we decide how will students show proficiency or higher on an assessment within the unit.
  3. Plan learning experiences and instruction-after you identify desired results then we plan the sequence of lessons, teaching methods, and resource materials we will use to ensure proficiency on the assessments.

Steps/Process for Tic-Tac-Toe 

  1. Select at least 9 learning activities that align to a unit of student and state standards.
  2. Ensure that each activity include all of the various multiple intelligences.
  3. Type of the activities on a 3X3 Tic-Tac-Toe Chart.
  4. Ensure that the students have the resources to conduct all of the activities included on the Tic-Tac-Toe Chart.

Assessment for Student Learning

We offer a range of Assessment of Student Learning services tailored to meet your individual needs. Our approach is focused on understanding and responding to what you require, providing effective and practical solutions.

Checks for Understanding

Impact

Teachers use a check for understanding to monitor and analyze student responses to questions/tasks from the data lens to act upon. Lemov (2010) writes “the technique could more accurately be described as Check for Understanding and Doing Something About it Right Away” (p. 98).

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Steps for Implementation

  1. Ask students a question or provide all students with a task.
  2. Observe how the student (or group of students) respond to the question/task.
  3. Have students respond the question in writing.
  4. Validate your perceptions of their learning with evidence.  
  5. Analyze question as a data set used for further instructional next steps.
  6. Respond to the data you collected. Fix up misconceptions or correct errors in thinking or that involve learning.

Student Self-Assessment of Learning

Impact

Self-assessment empowers students by providing them an opportunity for them to think about whether they are learning what the teacher intends for them to learn while teaching and learning is happening.

Steps for Implementation

  1. Identify one strategy that can be used based upon your grade level, content area, and appropriate for your age group of students.
  2. Make the learning scale visible for your and students within the classroom.
  3. Make a daily goal to use at once or twice in each lesson or class period.
  4. Be sure to use at least daily with all students.
  5. Collect the in-class data to create next instructional steps or provide learning support for students.  

Learner Engagement Services

We offer a range of specialized learner engagement services tailored to meet your individual needs. Our approach is focused on understanding and responding to what you require, providing effective and practical solutions.

Name the Steps

Impact

Sometimes to engage students in the learning process, great teachers “name the steps.” This not only supports students until they are following what you want them to learn automatically but also provide specificity and clarity to exactly what they need to do. Lemove (2010) writes “champion teachers name the steps by habit (knowing how to do this is perhaps their superstar intuition)” (p.78).

Steps for Implementation

  1. Identify the steps. Teaching the process makes complex skills transparent to students.
  2. Make them sticky. Once you identify the steps, name them.
  3. Build the steps to become memorable.
  4. Use two stairways. Both the student and teacher talking paths.

Circulate

Impact

Circulating throughout the classroom environment ensure that students stay on task but also provides an opportunity for the teacher to provide feedback. Subtle feedback while circulating can build student engagement and reduce student misbehavior.

Steps for Implementation

  1. Break the plane. Plane is the imaginary line that run through your classroom.
  2. Full access required. Make sure you can move freely throughout your entire classroom.
  3. Engage when you circulate.
  4. Move systematically. Look for circulating opportunities to provide feedback to groups or individual students.
  5. Position for power. Face as much of the class as possible.

Culture for Learning Services

We offer a range of Culture for Learning services tailored to meet your individual needs. Our approach is focused on understanding and responding to what you require, providing effective and practical solutions.

Know your students' personalities, interests, and beliefs

Impact

Building strong relationships with students is key to establishing a learning community that fosters motivation and engagement.  Chapman and Vagle (2011) states “knowing students and building quality relationships is an on-going process” (p.24).

Steps/Processes

  1. Provide students with a list of questions and ask them to respond.
  2. Plan to conduct one-on-one or group interview with students. This allows you to get to know them as individuals.
  3. Take advantage of informal conversations by talking to students before, during, and after class.

4.    Ask parents or guardians to share reflections of their child    with you or other appropriate personnel.

Set Clear Rules and Expectations

Impact

Clear rules and expectations is paramount to every teacher’s success. Without it, learning experiences will not garnish the impact on student success. Chapman and Vagle (2011) writes “clear rules and expectations create an environment in which students know what will happen, what they are supposed to do, and how they are expected to act” (p.48). Knowing what students may do to break a rule will make your classroom environment and response more responsive to student needs.

Steps/Processes

  1. Describe the action or behavior you are observing.
  2. Describe the behavior you want to see.
  3. Stay neutral in tone and the words you choose.
  4. Predict student questions, frustrations, or confusion.

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Coaching With Instructional Plays Costs

Behind every service we provide is a dedicated team of professionals, each bringing their unique expertise and enthusiasm to our business.

Individualized Coaching Price
Full Impact Cycle ( 4 to 8 weeks) 10 (1 hrs) sessions-$50 a session
Half-Impact Cycle (3 to 4 weeks) 5 (1 hrs) sessions-$50 a session
Quarter-Impact Cycle ( 1 to 3 weeks) 3 (1 hrs) sessions-$50 a session
Group Coaching (no more than 6 participants) Price
Full Impact Cycle (4 to 8 weeks) 10 (1hrs) sessions in PLC's-$125 a session
Half-Impact Cycle (3 to 4 weeks) 5 (1 hrs) sessions in PLC's-$125 a session
Quarter Impact cycle ( 1 to 3 weeks) 3 (1 hrs) sessions-$75 a session
Professional Development for Full and Half Impact Cycle Included as apart of cycle price
Professioanl Development for Quarter Impact Cycle Included as apart of cycle price
Whole School Consultation Price
Begining of the Year $1000 for no more than 5 pd sessions or 50 consultantion hours
Middle of the Year $850 for no more than 3 pd sessions or 30 consultation hours
End of the Year $850 for no more than 3 pd sessions or 30 consultantion hours
Summer Institutes $1000 for no more than 5 pd sessions or 50 consultantion hours

Meet our team

Behind every service we provide is a dedicated team of professionals, each bringing their unique expertise and enthusiasm to our business.

Dr. W.B. Hughes

Founder

Rolara Barnes

Co-founder

Kim Ignight

Design Director

Eileen Aguirre

Customer Service Manager

About us

The Instructional Playbook is committed to supporting educators in their professional growth journey. With a focus on high impact strategies, we aim to equip teachers with the tools and resources necessary to excel in the classroom.