I recently had the opportunity to support a new Infant/Toddler Lead Teacher in goal-setting for her staff. I took on the challenge, but have never coached an infant/toddler teacher and wasn’t even sure exactly what I was looking for.
After just a few minutes in her classroom, completing an informal observation, I realized that I wasn’t “looking” for anything, but that I should be “listening” to everything.
The classroom was quiet. The children weren’t talking much. The adults weren’t talking much, either.
I know that a Preschool and Elementary Classroom is just thriving with chit-chat, but what should we expect in an Infant/Toddler Room?
For more than an hour of my time spent there, the room fell silent. When teachers were talking, they were providing demands/statements to move the children from one part of the day to the next…and at times, they used encouraging words when the little ones made progress. But, that was all.
I began to jot down each & every word I heard the three teachers say and quickly realized that the most effective way to improve the children’s development in this classroom was to provide the teachers with training on “Teacher Talk.” Of course, the infants and toddlers wouldn’t be chit-chatting all day, but if the teachers want to support the little ones cognitive, language and emotional growth, they must be intentional about what they say and how they say it.
In Early Childhood Classrooms, what we say and how we say it truly matters! We know that some words encourage language development and cognitive development, while others don’t provide the same potential growth in children. So how do we increase the quality of our language interactions with children?
As an instructional coach, I struggled to find the “just right” resource to ensure that I was coaching my teachers to improve not only the quantity, but also the quality of their language interactions with children. While they are many bits & pieces out there, I couldn’t find just a compiled easy-to-use system for training and observing. So, naturally, I created my own! I hope you will find my “Teacher Talk: Training & Observation Tool” resource as useful to your instructional coaching “toolbox” as I have.
Teacher Talk: Training & Observation Tool provides instructional leaders with the “just right” tools to improve the language and cognitive development of all children, through a natural coaching cycle. The resource includes everything you need to train your teachers, complete classroom observations, collect data and encourage teachers to set individual goals.
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