A Season of Practice
Time For Practice
The weeks and days leading up to assessments should include authentic and purposeful practice. Think of it as a time for coaching to refine and develop fluency of critical skills and processes!
You may have been privileged to work with coaches as they modeled certain strokes and then carefully monitored your moves, providing immediate correction of any errors you made while they moved or positioned your body to set you up for the correct stance or stroke. You were thrilled when you reached the point of independent practice and hopeful that you might achieve fluency in executing all of the discrete skills as a complete package. Practice to proficiency for your students is similar. This rings so true for our instruction in the spring semester.
Coaching to Proficiency
Think of yourself as a coach who models and explains, guides students as they work to replicate your model, monitors and provides feedback immediately, then provides practice for the student to increase their proficiency. The practice will gradually increase fluency as the level of complexity increases as well.
For more information and resources on maximizing your instruction in the days leading up to assessments, join us in February for our Countdown to ELAR STAAR workshop happening in San Antonio and Arlington, TX! Click here for more information!