Anissa Surratt

SESSION

"Let’s Unpack“: Letting Your State Standards Lead You to Success!

As a new coach, I needed a high-leverage technique to increase teacher confidence and student achievement. Through my experience, new instructional coaches may enter their roles where cycles of learning and training are already in place. You may not know where to start if your district’s onboarding system does not include training in previous coaching areas. Effective coaches know to start with the foundation, unpacking the state standards. Teachers are held accountable for teaching the state’s adopted standards regardless of the district's or school’s adopted curriculum. As we struggle as a nation with our students’ ability to comprehend text, teachers are inundated with research, strategies, and resources, such as complex texts. Novice and experienced teachers may become laser-focused on teaching the scripted curricula lessons or texts. Teachers must understand that curriculum tools are used as the vehicle to achieve mastery of the state standards. Coaches must ensure teachers stay grounded in the standard expectations during lesson planning and delivery. This work is critical to student achievement. Instructional coaches must master leading teachers to unpack standards collaboratively and independently. This work builds the teacher’s capacity to develop and deliver lessons aligned to the rigor of the standard. I am excited to share a three-step model that will create a system to strengthen coaches and teachers in effectively unpacking their literacy standards. The first step is for coaches to deconstruct the standards into their essential skills. The second step is to develop “I Can” statements. Finally, coaches will use the I Can statements to create effective questions. Participants will leave with a clear framework for unpacking standards into I Can statements and student actions that can be immediately used with teams of teachers.