This article shares examples and exploration of how coaches can help their educators to engage in the growth that coaching can facilitate through coaching heavy and how to move from light (surface) coaching to more in-depth work to build capacity for best practices.

Many students are squeamish about spiders. But when you spray spider webs with a water mister, they are easy to see and gorgeous, and just about anyone can get caught up in exploring them! After this activity, students will probably notice and appreciate spider webs everywhere, including when they return home. They will also probably be more careful to avoid knocking webs down while walking around. In this activity, students notice spider webs as they walk. When students arrive at an exploration site, pairs search for different kinds of webs in the area, mist them with water, then regroup to discuss their observations and think about how different types of webs help spiders catch different kinds of prey. Students learn about different web types, then return to the field to use a key to identify different kinds of webs. They also make explanations about how the structures of the webs they find function to catch prey.

Observing an organism for an extended period of time can be a rewarding learning experience that helps students develop a meaningful relationship with the natural world. Students often engage more deeply in observing an organism if they’re given some sort of task to focus their observations. In this activity, pairs of students find an organism, then observe and record its structures and behaviors. Students apply the lens of adaptations as they come up with explanations for how their organisms’ structures and behaviors might help it survive in its habitat. In a group discussion, students consider the relationship between organisms’ structures and possible functions, which is a useful science thinking tool that can help them to better understand the natural world. This activity helps students develop a definition of adaptation that includes both behavioral and structural adaptations (adaptations are inheritable structures or behaviors that help a population of organisms survive in their habitat), and gives students the experience applying that definition to an organism in the local ecosystem.

This is the full list of resources from the book, "The Art of Coaching" that include inventories, self-assessments, coaching tools, and other resources.

This website includes the application documents, competencies, and approved university courses that are aligned to these competencies.

The Professional Learning Standards for Utah are required to be woven into all Utah State Board of Education (USBE) Credit Professional Learning. This page outlines these standards with explanation and guidance that support their impelmentation and implications for professional learning designs.

Learning Goals/Outcomes/Objectives:
Observable features of the student performance by the end of the grade: 1). Obtaining information: Students use books and other reliable media to gather information about: i. Climates in different regions of the world (e.g., equatorial, polar, coastal, mid-continental). ii. Variations in climates within different regions of the world (e.g., variations could include an area’s average temperatures and precipitation during various months over several years or an area’s average rainfall and temperatures during the rainy season over several years). 2 Evaluating information a Student's combine obtained information to provide evidence about the climate pattern in a region that can be used to make predictions about typical weather conditions in that region. 3 Communicating information a Students use the information they obtained and combined to describe*: i. Climates in different regions of the world. ii. Examples of how patterns in climate could be used to predict typical weather conditions. iii. That climate can vary over years in different regions of the world.

In this Adaptation Name Game, students sitting or standing in a circle play a version of tag, with one person in the center. When a person in the circle says another person’s name, the person in the center of the circle tries to touch the person whose name was said, before they can say someone else’s name. Later, students pause to brainstorm strategies to improve their performance, then play some more. Students learn that this was a representation of how certain structures and behaviors help organisms survive in their habitat, and that these are adaptations that species inherit over time. This game helps students learn each other’s names, while “lightly” introducing them to what adaptations are. Note: This activity is only an introduction; to gain any meaningful understanding of the topic, students will need more adaptation-focused activities, such as Adaptations Intro-Live!, Structures & Behaviors, and Related & Different, which engage students more deeply in understanding the concept through interactions with real organisms.

“What lives here?” is a question that students tend to wonder about, and this activity taps into that natural curiosity. Students figure out what lives in an ecosystem by looking for evidence and by using a simple field guide. They deepen their understanding of evidence, both the evidence organisms leave behind and evidence in general. Often, students might see a hair, track, or other piece of evidence and jump to conclusions about what left it behind. They may also treat all evidence as equal, whether it’s actually flimsy or strong. This activity helps them slow down, make observations, and evaluate their evidence as strong, less strong, or weak. Later in the activity, students make ecosystem models from their notes and, through discussion, use them as evidence to try to better understand the ecosystem.