Everything You Need for Mathematics Coaching
Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader, Grades K-12
- Maggie B. McGatha - University of Louisville, USA
- Jennifer M. Bay-Williams - University of Louisville, KY, Kansas State University, USA, University of Missouri, USA, Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Lima, Peru)
- Beth McCord Kobett - Stevenson University
- Jonathan A. Wray - Howard County Public Schools
Corwin Mathematics Series
Mathematics & Numeracy
Math coaches wear many hats. You think on your feet and have to invent, react, and respond—often without time to prepare—in a myriad of professional contexts. What’s your go-to resource for support?
Plan, focus, and lead: Your toolkit for inspiring math teachers
Meet Everything You Need For Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader. This one-stop, comprehensive toolkit for improving mathematics instruction and learning is designed for busy math coaches and teacher leaders who often have to rely on their own competencies. Using the Leading for Mathematical Proficiency Framework, the authors position student outcomes as the focus of all professional work and connect the Eight Mathematical Practices for students with NCTM’s Eight Effective Teaching Practices to help you guide teachers toward growing mathematics proficiency in their classrooms.
This hands-on resource details critical coaching and teaching actions, and offers nearly a hundred tools for:
- Shifting classroom practice in a way that leads to student math proficiency and understanding of mathematical concepts.
- Honing in on key areas, including content knowledge and worthwhile tasks, student engagement, questioning and discourse, analysis of student work, formative assessment, support for emergent language learners and students with special needs, and more.
- Navigating a coaching conversation.
- Planning and facilitating professional learning communities.
- Finding a focus
for professional development or a learning cycle. - Making connections between professional learning activities, teaching, and student learning.
- Using the coaching cycle—plan, gather data, reflect—to build trust and rapport with teachers.
With examples from the field, a comprehensive list of resources for effective coaching, and a plethora of tools you can download and share with teachers, this toolkit is your must-have guide to designing a professional learning plan and leading with clarity and purpose.
“Whether you are a new or an experienced math coach, this book really is everything you need for coaching math instruction. There are many moving parts that coaches must work with on a yearly basis and at times, it can be really hard to make sense of it all. Alongside their toolkit, the authors lay out a purposeful plan that would help make the most difficult of instructional goals attainable.”
"Everything You Need for Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader, Grades K–12 is couched within a solid framework for supporting coaches to engage teachers in shifting their teaching practices. This framework, Leading for Mathematical Proficiency, supports specific tangible resources coaches can use to support teachers across different contexts in which shifting in practices is understood to be a continuum. Coaches will find resources embedded in each chapter supportive of reflecting upon practices and shifts in practices.”
“Whether you are an experienced mathematics coach or new to the role, this book will become your most valuable resource. By offering a doable coaching cycle as well as the specific tools you need for your daily work, the authors equip you to effectively collaborate and support teachers in shifting their instructional practices in research-informed ways to advance student learning of mathematics.”
“Coaches will find this resource invaluable in two ways. First, as a source for their own professional growth; and second, as their ‘go-to book’ for information and tools that they will come back to again and again as they help teachers achieve their professional goals.”
“This is a great resource and reference for all coaches and instructional leaders who are often challenged with little time to prepare for the critical work of supporting teachers with developing mathematically proficient students. This book provides a collection of resources to assist coaches in their everyday work. Each chapter includes a topical digest connected to a high-leverage teaching practice, ideas for aiding the development of the practice, and lessons from the field—all contributing to deepening a coach’s planning and preparation.”
“The daily work of the math coach lies in working with teachers. Yet the goal for all math coaches is student learning. This book is designed around the Leading for Mathematical Proficiency framework, which begins and ends with the students. This thoughtful, supportive, and easy to navigate book will be your go-to resource!”
“This book is a comprehensive, cohesive, and contemporary resource for mathematics instructional coaches and teacher educators. Professional learning providers are presented an arsenal of tools to help them to prepare teachers to meet the needs of each and every student in classrooms in which students’ mathematical reasoning and sense making skills are fostered and valued.”
“Mathematics coaches/specialists face a seemingly dizzying array of coaching-related responsibilities and challenges. This appropriately titled resource will be on the desk and in the book bag of coaches/specialists as they consider coaching lessons from the field, coaching questions, resources for additional learning, and adapt and use the many tools provided.”
“This book is a must-have for any professional who provides support to mathematics teachers. In particular, the Coach’s Toolkit—a set of frameworks, templates and protocols—provides an invaluable resource for supporting lesson planning, observation, data collection, reflection and much more!”
Sample Materials & Chapters
Chapter 2 - Implementing Effective Teaching
Chapter 5 - Questioning and Discourse