My coaching situation takes place at an elementary school, specifically the 4 th grade

team. The fourth grade team has the lowest scores in reading and I am assigned to
help them raise those scores.

The first step to helping this team is to gather relevant documents. What all of
these documents should yield is insight into systems, structures, and decision
making ( Aguilar 2013, p. 101.) For this team, I need to collect data that will help
me understand the team, school and their system. To do this, I will first collect the
groups calendars and schedules. With this information, I can determine a good time
to meet with them in order to best meet their schedules. Once I understand their
schedule, I can collect their pacing guides and standards to know what they are
expected to teach and on what timeline. I will finally collect the assessment tools
and report cards for the school.

After data has been collected, I will focus on gathering and analyzing formal data.
Coaches should not necessarily be drive by data but coaches need to be aware of
data (Aguilar 2013, p. 102.) The data that I collect will be for the purpose of
understanding the students and what the teachers are working with daily. I begin by
collecting data on demographics, attendance, ELLs and free and reduced lunch as
well as socioeconomic data from the neighborhood. From there I will gather
information from the teachers about their grading systems and behavior reports.
The final piece of data will be formal and informal test scores. Once this data is
collected I will take time to look at the data and see if there are any trends or
anything that stands out. I will also discuss this data with the fourth grade team and
see what their opinions on the data are.

Finally, I will initiate informal conversations to better know the school, staff, families
and students. Ask general, open-ended questions such as: How are things going for
you this year? Hows that new reading program working for your students? How
have you dealt with the recent budget cuts? Hows your child doing in third grade?
(Aguilar, 2013 p. 102.) In order to best know the staff, students and families the
questions that I will ask need to be open ended. Because my focus is on the 4 th
grade team and their reading scores, I will ask questions such as: How do you like
the reading program? What effects on your classroom have the budget cuts had?
Do you enjoy reading? How do you like the school?

After I complete these three steps I will have a better understanding of the school.
With this information I can better devise a plan to help this team.