This course helps instructional leaders—administrators, mentors, or teacher leaders—support teachers’ professional growth and practice using the Framework for Intentional and Targeted (FIT) Teaching® based on the works of Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Instructional leaders will learn how to use the FIT Teaching Growth and Leadership Tool’s five key components to support high-quality teaching:

• Planning with Purpose
• Cultivating a Learning Climate
• Instructing with Intention
• Assessing with a System
• Impacting Student Learning

After taking this course, educators will understand why and how purposeful planning and cultivating a positive learning climate provides clarity, guidance, and structures that increase learning opportunities for their students. Instructional leaders will learn how to guide and encourage their teachers’ practice and professional growth through collegial dialogue and observations. This course requires that you partner with a colleague to review his or her classroom practice and discuss how to implement elements of the FIT Teaching model. The application activities will outline the suggested scope of discussions and classroom observations.

Course Objectives

• Recognize and understand the impact of instructional leadership on teacher and student learning.
• Identify opportunities to support the professional growth of teachers through the Framework for Intentional and Targeted® Teaching, or FIT® Teaching.
• Compare and contrast your school’s current appraisal form to FIT Teaching.
• Use the FIT Planning with Purpose component to guide and contribute to teacher growth through collegial dialogue.
• Conduct a pre-observation discussion that addresses lesson-specific learning intentions, content and language purpose statements, meaningful learning, and evidence of learning.
• Understand how instructional leaders can help teachers use the three factors of Cultivating a Learning Climate in their classrooms.
• Conduct a pre-observation discussion with a teacher to choose areas for potential professional growth from the three factors of Cultivating a Learning Climate.
• Observe a lesson to analyze how the teacher employs factors within FIT Teaching’s Instructing with Intention component.
• Collaborate with a teacher to provide lesson feedback that addresses Instructing with Intention factors including focused instruction, guided instruction, and collaborative learning.
• Understand how to use the three factors of Assessing with a System to support teacher growth.
• Guide a teacher in evaluating the results of needs-based feedback during the lesson.
• Understand the importance of measuring a teacher’s impact on student learning by examining evidence.
• Analyze and evaluate the current collection of evidence for short-term and long-term learning to achieve transfer goals.

Syllabus

(ASCD PD Online course, 2017) Self-paced asynchronous online course. Upon completion, learners will be awarded an ASCD Certificate worth up to 20 Clock Hours.