P–3 Professional Learning and Coaching
Text on screen: P–3 Professional Learning and Coaching.
Logo: Count, play, explore—for early education.
On screen: Sara Green, Program Director, speaks from her office. Throughout the video, photos from preschool through 3rd grade classrooms and from professional learning sessions are displayed.
Sara Green, Program Director: P–3 Alignment in Mathematics and Science is really imperative for ensuring equitable outcomes for our students. If we want our students to be successful doers of mathematics and science and to have the foundational skills necessary to be successful throughout their educational journey, and we also want them to have positive mindsets around math and science, then we need to ensure we're providing instruction that is culturally and linguistically responsive and developmentally appropriate, ensuring that the transitions between the grade levels are as seamless as possible.
On screen: A diagram displays the continuum of early childhood and elementary education from ages 0-3 through 3rd grade. Six sequential grade levels connect along a horizontal timeline:
- 0-3;
- PreK for 3- and 4-year-olds;
- Transitional Kindergarten, or TK, open to all 4-year-olds;
- Kindergarten; and
- 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade.
If teachers have a clear understanding of the learning progressions and the developmental stages that students are ideally going through, then they'll be better positioned to be able to analyze their own students' understanding and to identify any gaps that they may have. And then maybe more importantly, they'll know how to better address those gaps if they really understand the content that they're teaching and the progressions that the students are going through.
Text on screen: Professional Learning
Sara: For all of our professional learning sessions, we pull teachers from preschool through grade three together into the same space, and it has been magical. We're not doing just the one-off PD. Instead, we're engaging them in a series of professional learning, in which they're learning about play-based instructional practices. They're learning about how to observe their students while they're playing and how to interpret what they're observing and then making decisions on how they can support their kiddos.
First, we engage them in adult learning experiences, where they're getting hands-on opportunities to play and to see firsthand the developmental stages that students progress through for things like counting or geometry and spatial thinking or measurement. We also take some time to review the learning foundations and the standards.
Images on screen: Screenshot images from the P-3 Learning Progressions documents are briefly displayed.
Sara: Now that we have the P–3 Learning Progressions in Mathematics and Science, we're using that as a tool with teachers to help them really see the flow of learning throughout those grade levels.
So one thing that we've done, for example, is given them an opportunity to first learn about the developmental stages. For example, of counting and cardinality. Then they'll watch some student videos and then looking at the learning progressions, figure out exactly where the students are within those learning progressions, and start to think about what next steps they would do to support those students. I would say we also spend ample time on supporting their own ability to formatively assess their own students, using professional noticing, where they are learning how to elicit their students’ knowledge and student thinking, how to attend to what their students are saying, and then how to interpret and decide what next steps to take.
Text on screen: Coaching
Sara: We also provide coaching support. We have individual coaching and group coaching. For the individual coaching piece, our teachers participate in two observation and feedback cycles. And our coaches do some co-teaching with them, or co-planning. And then the group coaching sessions have been really powerful because again, we can bring teachers together across grade levels on topics that they're all focusing on in their work.
What excites me so much about P–3 Alignment is I have this vision of teachers from preschool through third grade all having a shared understanding of the learning progressions, the developmental stages that kids go through, of developmentally appropriate practices that they can use at each of those levels that build on the level before. That they are all experiencing a sense of collective efficacy, working towards the same goal to give kids the skills, the strategies that they need to be successful in math and science and computer science. And also that they're building positive mindsets for students and that they, in turn, are developing positive mindsets as teachers.
Text on screen: A special thanks to Sara Green from the Alameda County Office of Education; the children, families, and staff of the Alameda County Office of Education, Kern County Office of Education, Los Angeles Unified School District, Santa Clara County Office of Education, and San Luis Obispo County Office of Education; and the agency facilitators who have participated in CPE institutes, without whose help these videos would not have been possible.
Logo: Count, play, explore—for early education.