Aplicación del currículo y los recursos

(En inglés)

Techniques for Improving Instructional Support Part II

Cori: The first thing I did was to review our program's curriculum to identify where we could strengthen STEAM and practices to support instructional supports. Then, I pulled together our teaching teams and I had them use the "Finding Opportunities for Concept Development Within Your Curriculum" handout to find connections to concept development and identify where their opportunities were within their classroom.

I wanted to be sure staff understood what we mean by STEAM and to think broadly about that. I found this very interactive PDF called, "Understanding STEAM and How Children Use It" that shared the basics about STEAM and offered me some great training activities I used in our education team meeting to help teachers think about STEAM. Here's the one we  used: "Creative Thinking." Staff had a lot of fun thinking about how to expand STEAM throughout the day. One group of teachers determined they could create an entire engineering project out of plastic cups and popsicle sticks where children were challenged to build bridges. Another group took the same materials and developed a boat-making activity.

Another resource I found on the ECLKC was the STEAM 15-minute In-service Suites. The In-service Suite provided information and activities that I can use in ongoing team meetings and in trainings. I use this with our coaches to identify teaching practices that the coaches can support. Our coaches and teachers use the tools for supervisors' Reflection & Feedback resource to reflect on their current STEAM practices and to make plans for what specific practices they wanted to improve.

Another resource in this suite that I used was the group-setting observation tool for supervisors. This was a useful tool because it helped me focus my observations in the classroom on things that build children's higher-level thinking and reasoning and analysis. I watched the teachers' interactions, looking for things like modeling curiosity and a sense of wonder. Did my teacher ask open-ended questions? Did he encourage children to ask questions and listen to learn what they were curious about? Did he build on that by making connections to experiences they had in the classroom together or events that took place in the child's family or community? These specific practices really helped me give feedback to the team, which helped the coach and the teachers remain focused on our team's goal for the year.

Focusing on implementing STEAM practice throughout the day with the goal of improving instructional support was not a short-term activity for us. It's been a steady, consistent, and day-to-day commitment to keep working on it, and these resources really helped us stay the course. Watch the next video to learn more about how we used the coaching companion.