CLASS scores don’t just assess teaching- they shape student outcomes. Learn how structured, video-based coaching with TORSH helps early childhood programs boost CLASS scores and educator effectiveness.

CLASS scores matter—big time. In early education, they’re more than just numbers on a rubric. They’re tied to student outcomes, program quality, and educator effectiveness. But improving those scores? That’s the hard part.

Why CLASS Scores Matter

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is used across 42 states to evaluate teacher-child interactions in early education. It focuses on three essential domains:

And the impact is real. Research shows that:

• Classrooms with higher CLASS scores see 20% higher student engagement
• A 0.5-point increase in Instructional Support can lead to measurable literacy and math gains
• Structured feedback tied to CLASS dimensions improves teacher performance by 10–15%

Coaching Challenges Holding Programs Back

So why isn’t every program seeing these results? Because CLASS-aligned coaching is hard to implement without the right systems in place. Many educators and coaches struggle with:

• Inconsistent feedback due to lack of structure
• Limited time and resources for regular observations
• Variability in scoring, especially with multiple raters
• Difficulty tracking growth across CLASS domains

These gaps can make it challenging for even the most committed educators to grow.

How TORSH Makes CLASS Coaching Work

That’s where TORSH comes in.

Our platform is designed to make CLASS-aligned coaching efficient, reliable, and scalable. Here’s how we do it:

• Video-Based Coaching
  Teachers upload classroom videos that coaches can review asynchronously. This not only saves time but also allows for timestamped, CLASS-aligned feedback. Teachers can reflect on real interactions and get targeted support where it counts.
• Structured Feedback & Double Coding
  With TORSH, multiple reviewers can independently code the same video. Side-by-side comparisons help ensure inter-rater reliability, reduce bias, and provide more meaningful feedback.
• Data-Driven Growth Tracking
  TORSH’s analytics tools visualize performance trends across CLASS dimensions. You can track growth over time, spot areas for improvement, and ensure your coaching efforts are actually moving the needle.

Best Practices for CLASS Coaching with TORSH

To get the most out of your CLASS coaching efforts, we recommend:

✅ Regular video observations for more consistent feedback

✅ Teacher self-reflection before receiving coach input

✅ Using double coding to improve scoring accuracy

✅ Leveraging data and analytics to drive coaching focus

Got questions? Contact us anytime to schedule a personalized demo to see TORSH in action. 

The post From CLASSroom to Top CLASS: How Structured Coaching Drives Higher Scores appeared first on Torsh.

If you step into any early learning space, you will witness educators engage with their little learners individually and uniquely. One teacher may show a toddler how to carefully pick up and stack blocks to help them build fine motor skills. Another might clap with a preschool-aged student as they practice sounding out a word on a whiteboard. At their core, these examples are developmentally appropriate practices (DAP), where teachers are adapting their instructional practices to match each child’s developmental level. 

To the untrained eye, this concept in action may seem intuitive and straightforward. While DAP is widely understood as a highly effective practice for supporting healthy development during a child’s early years, these teaching methods do not mature on their own. Quality professional development (PD) drives quality classroom practice, with DAP as well as other evidence-based models for student learning. 

Let’s explore why DAP and practice-based coaching work well together, and how modern technology can enhance both to support children’s optimal development.

Why Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) Matter in Early Education

Adapted from the original definition created by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), The University of Maine defines DAP as follows:

 “[Developmentally appropriate practices are] an approach to education that guides early childhood professionals in everyday practice. It comes from more than 75 years of research on child development and early learning…and gives early childhood professionals information from which to make decisions.”

~The University of Maine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies

Three areas  in particular help educators determine the appropriateness of an everyday practice or interaction with a young child:

• Age appropriateness, or practices that support a child of a particular age and stage of growth;

• Individual appropriateness, or approaches that nurture a specific child’s development; and

• Cultural and social appropriateness, or practices that align with and respect each child and family’s identity as well as their community.

PennState Extension summarizes the intent of using DAP across these areas as meeting individual children where they are developmentally. In other words: “Teachers… get to know [children] well—and [enable] them to reach [individual] goals that are both challenging and achievable.”

Clearly, the right materials, learning space, observation cycles, and resources that reinforce staff knowledge support instructional practices tailored to a child’s developmental stage.

Challenges with Implementing Developmentally Appropriate Practices

As straightforward as developmentally appropriate best practices sound, this approach to teaching is not necessarily intuitive. Common challenges that programs face with implementing DAP include:

• A mismatch between an individual teacher’s personal beliefs about DAP and their self-reported or actual practices (Şahin-Sak, Tantekin-Erden & Pollard-Durodola, 2016)
• Partial or inconsistent use of DAP within a classroom
• Lack of ongoing support for educators with applying appropriate instructional practices in education settings

Every early childhood program and educator benefits from intentional practice, refinement, and ongoing continuous improvement around DAP in order to drive effective growth for young children. This is where quality professional development, paired with the right technology, comes into play.

High-Quality PD Yields High-Quality Practices

Many in the early childhood field already recognize that adult learning is an ongoing process; not a one-and-done effort. To improve teaching practices and drive positive outcomes for young children and their families, an early childhood educator needs continuous support to build individual skills and weave them into instructional practices. 

Quality PD is essential for early childhood education professionals to purposefully implement DAP. 

Research indicates certain professional learning models are particularly impactful with changes to teaching practices. One study found that targeted training provided via classes to early childhood teachers helped decrease teachers’ contrasting beliefs and practices that go against the principles of DAP, removing a key barrier to their adoption (Heisner & Lederberg, 2011).

Other effective professional development strategies include:

• Online courses designed for independent learning around particular topics
• Staff learning communities organized for peer collaboration in a supportive environment
• Practice-based coaching (PBC) tailored to individual practitioner needs

Coaching is most impactful in driving tangible shifts to teacher practices, whether it serves to help educators meet Head Start performance standards, embrace DAP best practices, or achieve other program priorities.

The power of coaching to improve DAP best practices

Strong relationships between coaches and mentees has proven effective in shifting developmentally appropriate instructional practices across a wide range of learning areas. Programs focused on social-emotional development via the Pyramid Model benefit just as much from practice-based coaching (PBC) as those concentrating on literacy development in the classroom.  

Part of the power behind PBC is helping staff recognize what specific DAP best practices look like in action and adapting them into their approaches. A high-quality coaching program allows teachers to self-reflect and receive targeted feedback from their coach, while also celebrating progress.

A few ways that an early childhood educator may set goals for coaching around DAP include:

• Refining their strategies for building relationships with families and learning about their cultural, linguistic, and personal backgrounds (key to “getting to know” each child)
• Shifting how they adapt the same teaching strategy for early numeracy skills (like recognizing and naming numbers) to children at different cognitive development stages
• Learning how to effectively and correctly use early childhood assessments to determine where a child is in their development

5 Ways Technology Supports Developmentally Appropriate Practices

No matter what learning goals a program sets with DAP, technology is quickly becoming a crucial part of effective practitioner growth. In particular, online learning platforms (OLPs) form the backbone for many successful adult learning models, including PBC.

The right technology can connect educators, streamline data collection, and drive improvements in developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood organizations.

Let’s explore five ways that technology cultivates a culture of continuous improvement and growth when it comes to DAP, as well as what features administrators should look for when choosing an OLP.

1. Creates visibility into teachers’ practices

OLPs must allow coaches and other professional learning practitioners to see teaching practices in action—without solely depending on live, in-person observations. While valuable, such observations are time- and resource-intensive, especially for early learning programs serving multiple sites or large regions.

This is where video technology can help reduce costs to programs and boost visibility into classroom practices. 

OLPs that have native video capabilities create flexible opportunities for:

• Teachers to record their practices for self-reflection or goal-setting
• Coaches to witness teachers’ instructional strategies anytime, anywhere—and provide specific feedback to teachers via time-stamped comments 
• Teachers and coaches to connect virtually for individual sessions, from any location at a time that works around their daily responsibilities
• Program leaders to curate videos demonstrating high-quality DAP in action for other educators to explore

TORSH Talent stands out with respect to these capabilities. Its mobile app allows teachers to record practices, even without internet access, and later upload videos when connectivity is restored. The platform provides programs with a digital library to gather exemplary videos and additional resources for collective learning purposes. Lastly, administrators, teachers, and coaches can fine-tune user permissions, ensuring that only those team members authorized to see a video can access it in the solution.

2. Centralizes program resources and guidelines for DAP

In addition to visibility into practice, an OLP must allow programs and practitioners to develop a repository of materials that guide any professional learning approach used to improve DAP. 

TORSH Talent’s Resource Library can include those videos of exemplary practices as mentioned above, but it can also house:

• Standardized rubrics and frameworks to guide coaches with engaging mentees consistently in embracing DAP best practices
• Goal-setting templates to establish each teacher’s coaching goals in connection to program priorities around DAP
• Policies and requirements for educators related to utilizing DAP, participating in professional development efforts, and more

Learn more about this and other critical features available within our all-in-one professional learning platform, designed to support the unique needs of early learning programs.

3. Monitors key data to measure PD impact and DAP fidelity

Continuous data insights, reflection, and improvement are necessary for the ongoing cycle of DAP best practices.

At the individual level, the right OLP supports teachers and coaches by capturing metrics that pertain to their unique goals around DAP best practices. Data insights may include coaching session frequency, total coaching time, self-reported progress on goals, and more.

Moving up a level, OLPs can also help coaches explore patterns about their engagement across mentees, perhaps even surfacing areas of growth for a coach themselves in how they engage with teachers and drive their successes with DAP. 

At the highest level, program administrators need an OLP that synthesizes all these data and more—even from sources outside of the platform itself—to analyze the overall impact of professional learning efforts on critical priorities related to DAP. 

TORSH Talent supports all three layers of data analysis and collection. With configurable data collection forms, customizable insight reports, and multiple forms of data integration with other education platforms, staff at every level of an early learning program have the insights they need all in one central location.

4. Develops individual learning paths for independent growth

Even in an organization that emphasizes a practice-based coaching model, educators benefit from independent resources and learning opportunities. OLPs that not only support coach-mentee relationships but also facilitate self-learning offer a winning combination to early childhood education programs.

In addition to TORSH Talent’s virtual coaching features, your program can utilize customizable Learning Paths to cultivate professional growth. Learning Paths offer self-paced modules and courses that target specific training areas based on program data, coaching observations, and individual educator needs including:

• Targeted professional development to focus on specific areas for growth or skills, helping teachers continuously improve their practice.
• Courses structured to meet specific certification or recertification needs, making it especially useful for early-career educators.
• Flexible, asynchronous learning opportunities for educators to upskill on their own time, which is critical for those balancing heavy workloads.

The best part? The Learning Paths modules can point directly to those exemplary resources curated in the Resource Library, making it easy for educators to access a wide variety of learning tools at the click of a button.

5. Cultivates collaborative learning in hybrid or virtual environments

Last but not least, the right OLP creates space for easy collaboration. These features are especially handy for programs that utilize a peer-to-peer mentorship model or otherwise wish to facilitate collective learning among their staff. 

For instance, professional learning communities (PLCs) empower teachers to share reflections, ask for colleagues’ input, or keep up to date with the latest insights related to DAP best practices in the classroom. When exploring technologies to support a PLC, program administrators should look for OLPs that flexibly adapt to a virtual, hybrid, and in-person version of this collaboration model.

TORSH Talent’s Communities feature allows PLC members to connect asynchronously and access the curated Resource Library as part of their PLC engagement.. Educators aren’t limited by the bounds of their physical program sites, either. TORSH often sees its early learning partners use Communities to facilitate multi-site PLCs on key topics like DAP. 

Drive High-Quality, High-Impact DAP Best Practices With TORSH

Ready to up-level your early childhood educators’ developmentally appropriate instructional strategies? TORSH Talent is the ideal platform for your professional development needs. From designing targeted Learning Paths to facilitating high-quality virtual, hybrid, and in-person coaching, early childhood education programs benefit from the easy-to-use and secure tools built into TORSH Talent, including:

• Video-based observation
• Targeted, specific feedback to teachers on their interactions with children and families
• Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration with coaches and among peers
• On-demand training for professional learning and certification
• Individualized coaching tools for goal setting and tracking
• Insights to guide professional learning and training

Discover how TORSH Talent can support your practitioners to take DAP to the next level, ensuring they meet every child and family where they are to help them thrive.

The post Implementing Developmentally Appropriate Practices ∣ DAP Best Practices in Early Childhood Education appeared first on Torsh.

In early childhood education, the Pyramid Model is a powerful framework to foster social-emotional competence. Yet, implementing this model effectively requires more than just good intentions—it necessitates a structured, systematic approach in which educators are supported by practice-based coaching. This blog explores how practice-based coaching not only supports the Pyramid Model but also transforms its application in real-world settings, as demonstrated by two TORSH customers who have seen remarkable success.

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Table of Contents

• SEL in Early Education: Why the Pyramid Model Matters
•  How SEL Impacts Early Childhood Outcomes
• Layered SEL Support for Children and Families
• Practice-Based Coaching Is the Heart of the Pyramid Model
•  Stories From The Field: Combining Practice-Based Coaching and the Pyramid Model for Social-Emotional Development
• Ensure Coaching Supports Your Pyramid Model Implementation with TORSH

SEL in Early Education: Why the Pyramid Model Matters

Positive social-emotional development in young children relies on attentive adults supporting specific skill-building that matches a child’s developmental growth. With effective practices, educators will successfully support most students as they develop their social-emotional competencies. However, some children will still struggle with things like challenging behaviors or strong emotions, especially those impacted by trauma or other adverse childhood experiences. 

Fortunately, no matter what support a child needs to grow socially and emotionally, early childhood educators can turn to the Pyramid Model for help!

The Pyramid Model is a comprehensive framework for early educators to aid in developing core social and emotional skills in young children. It is a powerful and preventive approach that sets up little learners for long-term success.

Using the Pyramid Model for supporting social-emotional competence in children requires thoughtful program-wide implementation and a structured approach to developing educators’ effectiveness with the model’s strategies. In other words, programs need a quality professional development strategy in place. 

And the most effective strategy for adopting the Pyramid Model leans on a practice-based coaching framework.

Let’s unpack the connection between this method of professional learning and the impact it has on programs embracing the Pyramid Model for social-emotional competence.

How SEL Impacts Early Childhood Outcomes

It may be obvious to most early learning experts, but it is worth remembering why social-emotional learning (SEL) is so crucial for our littlest learners in the first place.

Between the ages of birth through 5 years old, children undergo incredible physical, emotional, and linguistic growth. They learn to recognize more than 10,000 words (Shipley & McAfee, 2015). They develop critical gross and fine motor skills that allow them to move through the world. And, they practice a huge array of capabilities that support their blossoming relationships with other people, as well as their own physical and emotional self-awareness and management. 

All of these skills—especially the social-emotional ones—are essential to their future success, from getting school-ready to “adulting” in the world beyond the classroom. Among the many positive outcomes for children associated with effective SEL are:

• Improved academic performance (Durlak et al., 2011; Taylor et al., 2017)
• Lower truancy and absenteeism (Huan Wang et al., 2016; Cook et al., 2014)
• Fewer challenging behaviors and psychological distress (Reback, 2010)

Further, SEL benefits persist as young learners grow. A meta-analysis in 2017 examined the long-term impact of SEL interventions provided to children in kindergarten. Those who received this support were, on average, more likely to:

• Graduate from high school
• Complete a college degree
• Obtain stable employment in adulthood

Continuous, systemic SEL remains an important learning thread for children until they graduate from high school (Mahoney et al., 2021). And it all starts in early childhood.

But the challenge becomes how to systematically and effectively implement SEL supports for our littlest learners. This is where the Pyramid Model comes in.

Layered SEL Support for Children and Families

From nurturing positive relationships to managing challenging behavior, the Pyramid Model supports early childhood professionals and students with SEL. 

According to the National Center of Pyramid Model Intervention, the Pyramid Model of Social and Emotional Competence is “a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children’s healthy social and emotional development.” Though not itself a curriculum for SEL, the model creates a structure through which early childhood programs can systematically nurture core life skills in little learners. 

Image: Pyramid Model (NCPMI)

The Pyramid Model includes four layers of support (listed below from the bottom of the pyramid upward): 

• Effective Workforce
• Nurturing, Responsive Relationships & Environments
• Targeted Social-Emotional Supports
• Intensive Interventions

Those strategies at the bottom of the pyramid apply to all children and families across all programming. Moving up each layer focuses on support for more targeted populations, such as children with disabilities or special needs, and others who may benefit from intensive services such as home-based early interventions.

Research has demonstrated the power of applying the Pyramid Model for promoting social-emotional competence in children. One recent study in Australia found that among preschools that trained their educators on the Pyramid Model, children developed core social and emotional skills at a faster rate compared with children at other preschools (Swalwell & McLean, 2021). 

Is it any surprise that this entire model relies on having high-quality staff implementing effective teaching practices?

Program administrators should immediately recognize that at the heart of high-quality teaching lies high-quality professional development that nurtures this effective workforce—including impactful mentoring strategies like practice-based coaching.

Practice-Based Coaching Is the Heart of the Pyramid Model

Many of us in early childhood education already know the power of having the right job-embedded professional learning for teachers. A coaching process to support classroom teachers can impact positive child outcomes in areas like early literacy development. A coaching relationship can also improve teachers’ effectiveness and accuracy by using tools like early childhood assessments. Last, coaching supports programs using the Pyramid Model for challenging behavior in young children and social-emotional growth in general. 

So what does effective professional learning and coaching look like when it comes to the Pyramid Model? 

First, coaching must be systemic. In one 2021 study, researchers supported 92 teachers with systemic PD and coaching around how to effectively implement the Pyramid Model with children in their classrooms at an elevated risk of worse social and emotional outcomes. They found that systemic support (including a practice-based coaching cycle) increased implementation fidelity among educators and improved social and behavioral outcomes among children. A 2023 study and a 2022 study both found similar results with variations on these professional learning supports. 

When given systemic, targeted, practice-based coaching, educators are better able to utilize the Pyramid Model. 

Second, coaching must be consistent. Whether it’s delivered one-on-one or through group settings, a practice-based coaching framework is more impactful when teachers receive this kind of support on a regular basis throughout a program year. That’s why one of the Head Start performance standards concentrates just on the professional learning ecosystem of a program, and the importance of developing a cyclical process of ongoing engagement between coach and mentee. 

Stories From The Field: Combining Practice-Based Coaching and the Pyramid Model for Social-Emotional Development

Educators can learn from their fellow early learning professionals who have successfully leveraged practice-based coaching to bolster their program’s Pyramid Model adoption and drive positive SEL outcomes for young children. Let’s explore how two programs in Illinois and New Mexico made pivotal shifts in their professional development approaches to embrace coaching.

The Center: Early Childhood Professional Learning (ECPL)

The Center ECPL provides early learning educators throughout Illinois with free professional learning, resources, and other information. These offerings are all geared toward one purpose: helping programs implement high-quality, effective teaching practices that improve learning outcomes for young children and their families. 

The Center aids programs embracing the Pyramid Model as part of their approach to SEL  in two ways. First, the team holds ongoing webinar training opportunities centered on social-emotional competency. A recent discussion offered practical tips and strategies for developing culturally responsive social emotional supports, utilizing guidance from the Pyramid Model and another framework for cultural competence.

Second, through their ECPL Coaching Project, The Center provides teachers with virtual practice-based coaching and a professional learning communities-like model called Collaborative Learning Sessions. These offerings are provided through TORSH Talent, a secure web-based platform designed to streamline professional development and coaching practices for early education professionals. 

Thanks to the platform’s video-based coaching, time-stamped feedback capabilities, and a centralized library of resources, The Center delivers support to teachers in even the most rural or hard-to-reach areas of Illinois, helping them implement evidence-based teaching practices. 

Additionally, through TORSH Talent’s Communities feature, Collaborative Learning Sessions aid teachers across different programs to gather and discuss topics, projects, or professional development activities of interest. Among their focus areas is the effective use of the Pyramid Model and its benefits in supporting young children with development or learning disabilities. 

Cindy Berrey, Director of The Center explained, “Preschool teacher practices in the state of Illinois are improving because of our coaching model and virtual practice. And we know that a high-quality teacher positively impacts student outcomes.”

Read the full story to learn more about The Center’s success with applying modern technology to practice-based coaching for the Pyramid Model. 

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The post Practice-Based Coaching: The Key to Applying the Pyramid Model to Social-Emotional Learning appeared first on Torsh.

Seema Tejura, Founder and Managing Director of The Literacy Architects, first met George in 2003 while volunteering at an adult literacy center. After a quick diagnostic assessment, Tejura verified that he struggled to read most of the three-letter words presented to him. Right away, she set to work using explicit, systematic, multisensory phonics teaching strategies to develop his foundational literacy skills. 

One day during a tutoring session, George was progressing well with accurately decoding a list of new words. Suddenly, he stopped mid-word, looked directly at Tejura, and asked, “Why didn’t I learn any of this in school?”

George’s story reflects the experiences of the 93 million adults in the U.S. who struggle with reading. It’s these stories that underscore the importance of evidence-based literacy instruction in early childhood classrooms. That way, people like George become lifelong readers well before graduating from high school. 

Tejura and her colleague Caitlin Deckard, a Science of Reading Specialist with The Literacy Architects, recently joined TORSH to discuss the implications of the science of reading for early literacy support and how early learning programs can embrace these findings. This article offers a glimpse into the power of professional learning, a foundational pillar to strong instructional practices that cultivate literacy skills in our youngest learners.

Watch the full webinar recording here, or learn more about TORSH’s partnership with The Literacy Architects here. 

Table of Contents

• Why Evidence-Based Literacy Development Matters — Now More Than Ever
• Professional Learning & Impactful Instruction Go Hand-In-Hand
• 3 Coaching & PD Strategies To Shift Literacy Instruction for the Better
• Lay the Foundation for Excellent Literacy Instruction with TORSH

Why Evidence-Based Literacy Development Matters — Now More Than Ever

Oral language skills evolved in humans nearly 100,000 years ago, but reading and writing skills developed far more recently. This means that our brains have had time to localize oral language to use only one part of the brain, while literacy requires no less than four parts to do successfully. 

The result? Reading is not a natural process like spoken language development. While students may naturally learn how to speak through repeated exposure and immersion, they need much more explicit, systematic instruction to learn how to read their favorite books. 

[Image: The Reading Brain from The Literacy Architects]

Additionally, reading requires more cognitive load (or effort and energy by the brain) to understand written texts. Tejura stressed that this matters for high-quality instruction with young learners: “Instruction should help students spend less cognitive energy on [basic skills like] decoding and word recognition in written texts to learn and comprehend those texts.”

Understanding the Science of Reading

A body of empirical research commonly known as the science of reading highlights the critical building blocks for learning how to read and shifting this cognitive load. Though these findings are not new, they have recently been expanded and are improving educators’ knowledge of which evidence-based teaching strategies cultivate strong reading skills.

In short, the science of reading stipulates that students must develop the following foundational literacy skills, in explicitly and systematically structured ways: 

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics knowledge, decoding, and encoding
• Vocabulary development
• Fluency
• Comprehension

As educators re-examine how to support literacy development in the classroom, they are increasingly recognizing the value of evidence-based reading strategies for young learners — strategies demonstrated through research to improve literacy in students. Research findings from the science of reading underpin the most effective instructional approaches. 

Learn more about the science of reading with The Reading League’s comprehensive overview. 

What the Science of Reading Tells Us About Early Literacy Support

This research is incredibly important for early learning programs to understand and embrace within early childhood classrooms.

Remember those five skills emerging from the science of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, etc)? There’s a particular order in which students best learn them; each skill builds upon one another to unlock stronger reading abilities and higher reading levels. This order should inform literacy strategies to support instruction.

Young students must first develop their phonological awareness (recognizing sounds in spoken language) — specifically their phonemic awareness (manipulating the individual sounds in words). In turn, these skills are required for kids to become adept at alphabet awareness (recognizing written letters) and sound-spelling correspondence (understanding which letter(s) and letter combinations represent each sound).

Here’s an example of one instructional practice that brings this order of operations to life. Recent empirical literature suggests that linking phoneme awareness to letter-sound knowledge strengthens a student’s use of phoneme awareness, improving their reading and spelling performance (Brady 2020). Literacy support strategies that reflect this evidence may look this:

• First, students practice isolating phonemes (like /s/) as they read and spell them.
• Next, they blend phonemes (such as /s/ /a/ /t/) to form a word and read it (‘sat’).
• Last, they practice segmenting phonemes in words (such as segmenting ‘ship’ into /sh/ /i/ /p/) and spell words with segmented phonemes (s-h-i-p).

“The classroom implications of this [research] are significant,” Deckard underscored. “If teachers stack phonemic awareness and letter-knowledge instruction, they can maximize instructional time while making stronger connections for their students.”

But Tejura explained too that, despite the importance of adopting such practices for early literacy support, actually changing instructional approaches isn’t easy: “To improve school readiness, early education programs need to focus on early phonemic awareness with kids, yet many instructors across the U.S. may be struggling to make this seemingly simple shift in practice.”

What can administrators and program directors do to support staff to shift classroom practice and ensure all students experience positive literacy skills development in preparation for kindergarten?

Professional Learning & Impactful Instruction Go Hand-In-Hand

Any change in a classroom or across a program requires time and consistent support. Some research estimates that it may take up to four years for educators to successfully shift instructional practices to embrace evidence-based programs and strategies (Fixsen et al, 2009). 

With such a long runway for meaningful change, early education programs can’t make just one or two quick swaps in literacy curricula and instruction. Change for a positive impact on literacy requires time and effort, both granularly and systematically.

This means going beyond one-and-done training on early literacy instructional methods and instead embracing a model of ongoing support, thoughtful professional development, coaching, and feedback. These components are must-have ingredients to alchemize reading instruction to support literacy development. 

Research shows that both students and teachers benefit from deliberate practices in sharing feedback and ongoing support. But it’s coaching that generates the greatest effects when assessed against other strategies for instructional improvement, including pre-service training and merit-based pay incentives (Fryer, 2017).  

With two-thirds of teacher preparation programs failing to adequately address phonemic awareness instruction — a critical piece of the literacy puzzle — the urgency could not be greater (NCTQ, 2023). Early childhood education programs must invest in professional learning and coaching to help teachers implement evidence-based practices in literacy.

3 Coaching & PD Strategies To Shift Literacy Instruction for the Better

From our expertise in professional learning for early childhood educators, here are three strategies that early childhood programs can adopt right now to support a stronger, impactful approach to early literacy.

Create a Safe Space For Educators From the Start

Change management is a natural part of any shift to programming or practice. For many educators, adapting evidence-based literacy practices may easily qualify as second-order change, which involves not only shifting instruction in classrooms but also adjusting educators’ mindsets. 

Naturally, the scale of such change can feel daunting and may conjure many different emotions and reactions. At the same time, second-order changes are also necessary for educational reforms to be achieved and sustained.

A safe, supportive environment is essential to help educators navigate second-order change. When teachers and administrators feel safe to share their concerns, ask for support, and experiment with new and unfamiliar approaches, the entire program can better move forward. 

Here are a few tips to help you cultivate a safe and supportive space for your team as you prepare professional learning to drive major changes in literacy instruction:

• Start small. A huge list of new changes can quickly overwhelm even veteran staff members. Try focusing on one piece of the literacy puzzle at a time. For example, first spend time exploring how a child’s brain processes written texts and learns how to read. This gives you space to address teachers’ questions about the topic and gives teachers time to get comfortable with a new biological model for literacy development. 
• Focus on actionable steps as much as theory. As you design each professional learning opportunity, ask yourself: what small, tangible, and practical steps can teachers take TODAY to shift practice? Again, keep these steps focused — it greatly supports educators to make incremental shifts to teaching practices without trying to tackle everything all at once. 
• If exploring specific curricula or programs rooted in evidence-based literacy practices, assemble a diverse group of stakeholders for your selection committee. This means including the voices of teachers, administrators, and support staff in the review, discussion, and selection processes.

Prioritize Collaboration Among Teachers

Nothing builds positive camaraderie like collaboration. In adult learning, collaboration is often more effective than pure information sharing or solo practice. 

As a bonus, collaboration creates a spirit of shared learning and responsibility around major changes to literacy instruction. This experience can deepen staff’s buy-in for the changes themselves — IF collaboration is thoughtfully cultivated. 

Take a look at these suggestions to create collaboration opportunities centered on evidence-based literacy instruction:

• Create professional learning communities (PLCs) dedicated to teachers’ collective growth in reading instruction. PLCs are excellent spaces for staff to share their insights, ask for support or guidance when navigating challenges, and surface resources that may help colleagues with their practice improvement. PLCs can be conducted virtually or in hybrid settings to connect early childhood educators across multiple program sites. Many early learning programs use TORSH Talent’s Communities feature to build PLCs for asynchronous collaboration.
  

• If you seek support to facilitate targeted collaboration for early literacy instruction, explore the Literacy Masterminds program. This partnership between TORSH and The Literacy Architects offers a unique job-embedded professional learning approach for early learning professionals. 

Establish Ongoing, Varied Adult Learning Opportunities

Just as young students learn best through different methods, so too do adult learners. Offering a wide variety of ongoing learning opportunities is a powerful way to support your instructors in reshaping their mindsets and expanding their skill sets around literacy practices. 

Explore these tips for designing a comprehensive professional learning system that supports multiple learning styles and approaches among teaching staff:

• Offer coaching through virtual, hybrid, and/or in-person methods to maximize coaching time with teachers. TORSH Talent contains all the tools you’ll need to modernize job-embedded coaching. From easy-to-use video recording tools to capture teaching practices in action and provide targeted feedback to digital portfolios to support coaches with managing mentees’ goals and resources, TORSH Talent catalyzes and centralizes professional learning for early childhood educators and programs.

• Prioritize bite-sized learning sessions over marathons of training. For many learners, it’s easier to digest smaller chunks of new information repeatedly over time. TORSH Talent can support your program here with the innovative Learning Paths feature. Learning Paths allows administrators to craft customized journeys for their staff to layer information and skills practice through connected online courses linked to additional resources curated in your Exemplar Library. 

Lay the Foundation for Excellent Literacy Instruction with TORSH

Curious to learn more about the science of reading and how professional learning improves literacy instruction? Watch the webinar with TORSH and The Literacy Architects to dive deeper into the research and its implications. 

Ready to coach your educators through transformational change in early literacy support? Learn more about the Literacy Masterminds program or connect directly with one of our experts.

The post How to Support Literacy Development in the Classroom: Coaching & PD as the Foundation for Strong Instructional Practices appeared first on Torsh.

Just yesterday, we launched a new and improved version of our Exemplar Library that was a direct result of client feedback. Building Excellent Schools, a national nonprofit that strives to improve academic outcomes for underserved students, approached us with suggestions to make the Exemplar Library a more valuable and useful tool. The development team got to work bringing these ideas to fruition, and the new version went live yesterday. 

So what’s different?

The Exemplar Library is now able to accept not just videos, but almost any type of file. Examples include PDFs, Excel files, Word documents, PowerPoint decks, etc. Regardless of format, teachers’ best practices, how to’s, lesson plans, presentations, curriculum materials and other artifacts can be posted directly into the Exemplar Library.

Of course, we still expect the Exemplar Library to contain many videos, and we want these videos to be as useful as possible. Therefore comments, rubric tags, supporting documents, and more can be transferred over with the video when publishing in the Exemplar Library. This eliminates the need to re-upload files, copy over comments, and otherwise repeat the hard work you’ve already done.

We renamed “Channels,” which will now be called “Exemplar Collections.” And these collections are nestable, meaning subfolders can be created easily to better organize, and specify, the materials they contain.

Each week, every member of the Torsh team — not just the tech team but marketing, sales, account services, and finance — sets aside his or her work to participate in a development call. Among other topics, we review client requests, and discuss the pros and cons of any changes we hope to implement. That’s how the request from Building Excellent Schools was brought to our attention. They use the Exemplar Library regularly and recommended enhancements that the entire TALENT community would benefit from.

We want TALENT to be the best and most valuable tool in your PD arsenal. If you have suggestions for how TALENT can improve, reach out to your account manager or send an email to support@torsh.co.

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Upload this year’s videos!

Since you took the time to make videos to showcase your practice within the classroom, now is a great time to upload those materials onto TALENT if you haven’t already done so. Keep in mind…summer is the season when smartphones and even iPads land in lakes and pools or at the bottom of soggy beach bags. Don’t take a chance on losing your valuable videos. Get them uploaded!  

Edit Your Videos Into Bite-Sized PD Clips
The most powerful and effective videos are usually the shortest ones. Make sure your videos focus on one topic or concentration. Instead of adding the entire lesson, clip the video down to 3-4 minutes ideally, or at most 15 minutes. Add time-synced comments, to highlight relevant parts of the video. Showcase these videos during summer PD sessions! To learn how to create a clip, check out our FAQ, How do I edit my video’s length?

Curate your Exemplar Library Videos

The exemplar library is a powerful tool on TALENT that enables the sharing of best practice videos among colleagues, or throughout your network. But a school’s exemplar library only has value if there is content. You’ve uploaded and edited your videos, now be sure that they can be easily found and viewed by your colleagues. An exemplar library, if it’s to serve as a truly effective teacher professional development tool, must be well-organized and accessible. We recommend organizing videos into channels and sorting them by subject, focus and Common Core Domains when appropriate.

Use TALENT for Hiring And/Or Teacher Training

Sometimes hiring gets done in the summer. If that’s on your plate, then TALENT can help. Use TALENT to give candidates a glimpse inside your classrooms. Record their interviews and share them with other colleagues who will potentially be working with them, to gain feedback from all members of your team. Or, share videos and ask a candidate to give their thoughts, ideas and feedback on videos in your library. This is a  great way to test their understanding of what is working or not working in the classroom, and can help you gain valuable insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

Engage in Self-Reflection and Growth

You’ve been faithfully videotaping your practice all year long. Have you had the chance to review your videos, to reflect on your practice and pinpoint areas for improvement? Sometimes these activities are more feasible once the dust has settled on the school year. The pace slows down, and you have time to truly focus. “How were my interactions with students?” “How can I connect the teaching I’m seeing here with effective teaching practices?” “How successful was I in implementing new curriculum?” “Was I able to successfully engage struggling students?” The opportunities for self-reflection are endless, and summer provides some much-needed time for self-reflection.

Educate Yourself On How Talent Can Work For You This school year we launched Coaching Corner and a variety of new tools and functionality. Summer is an ideal time to get caught up on what’s new with TALENT, and determine how you can best use TALENT in your teacher professional development efforts.  We recommend you peruse the “Resources” section of our website, which has a number of materials that may be helpful. But if that’s not enough, we are more than happy to walk you through a TALENT demo, so you can become fully conversant in all the ways this powerful platform can help you achieve growth in your teaching practice. If you’re a current customer, reach out to your account manager or through the Contact Support button in TALENT. Or if you’re still thinking about TALENT, sign up for a demo today!

The post Spice Up Your Summer Professional Development and Training with TALENT appeared first on Torsh.

BES has grown to drive the success of more than 27,000 students in over 100 schools across the nation. Consistently high-performing schools are selected to join The Network for support in strategizing and sharing valuable practices for sustained student achievement. The Network Leaders Meeting brings together school leaders from 21 schools in 17 cities that are part of the BES system. Courtney is excited to join, visit with old friends and connect with new leaders. A lot of the leaders are likely to be familiar with TALENT since nearly 1/3 of The Network schools are currently utilizing the platform. All in all, there are currently more than 750 BES teachers and leaders using TALENT but we expect that number to significantly grow this next year. Together with BES, we have built out new features to facilitate collaboration across The Network. 

The purpose of the project is to create a space where leaders can coach, communicate, and collaborate in the common pursuit of excellence. The schools within this network can have their own individual systems for their teacher professional development – but can also share exemplar videos across the entire BES network. They can create peer groups enabling 4th-grade teachers at Purpose Prep in Nashville to connect with Valor Academy teachers in California, further refining their practice through collaborative reflection and ongoing coaching.

Teaming up with the BES leaders to complete this framework has provided an invigorating experience for our team, and new opportunities for educator learning. The Torsh TALENT platform is chosen by educational institutions nationwide to supplement their professional development, and we are happy that it is also a tool of choice for one of the leaders in high-achieving, college-preparatory charter schools. We look forward to the continued growth of our relationship with Building Excellent Schools, and their continued progress in developing schools that are “truly excellent, founded by talented leaders and grounded from the start in proven strategies and design elements”.

For more information about BES and the amazing work they do, you can visit their website here.

The post Torsh CEO Is Back In Boston For BES Leaders Meeting appeared first on Torsh.

Back in 2011, Sand Hill School opened its doors thanks to a combination of vision and philanthropy. The vision was provided in part by Rosalie Whitlock, the Executive Director of the Children’s Health Council (CHC). CHC, a non-profit that specializes in ADHD, Learning Differences, Anxiety/Depression and Autism, has been serving kids and families in the greater San Francisco area for over 60 years. Ms. Whitlock, together with Cindy Lopez, who currently serves as Head of School, recognized the need within the community for a school like Sand Hill. Their idea required initial funding, which fortunately came from philanthropists, education advocates and long-time CHC supporters, John and Betsy Kriewall. 

The initial student body consisted of seven students. By 2013, the school was serving 47 students in K-5. Today, it serves about 70 students in grades 1-8. 

Many kids arrive at Sand Hill frustrated and disillusioned. Their learning differences, often combined with attention and social challenges and other conditions such as anxiety, are inhibiting their success in the classroom and squelching their excitement about school. Sand Hill offers these bright and highly capable kids a unique, specialized program, which es their individual needs in ways that traditional schools do not. Instructors are trained in best practices for educating kids with conditions such as dyslexia. A six to one student ratio and access to skilled occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists and psychologists also contribute to student success. 

The school has developed what they call the “Sand Hill Approach.” A research-based curriculum, focus on social and emotional skills and the development of executive function, access to technology, and an emphasis on family partnerships are all important facets. The goals of the program include instilling kids with self-confidence, reigniting a love of learning, and ultimately preparing each student to return to a traditional classroom, where they can not just survive, but truly thrive. 

And, the program is working. Last year,  85% of students at Sand Hill School met their personalized academic goals in mathematics problem-solving, while 90% of students met their goals in reading comprehension. 

We especially love Sand Hill’s unwavering belief in their students’ potential. As the school’s website puts it, “Sand Hill students are the future visionaries, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers of the next generation who will shape the future of the Silicon Valley and beyond.” Such an empowering message helps fuel student growth and achievement. Students at Sand Hill learn to expect great things from themselves. We are so proud to play a role in this vibrant and transformative school community, and we look forward to seeing how Sand Hill alumni will ultimately contribute to society at large. 

The post Client Spotlight: Sand Hill School appeared first on Torsh.

Step 1: Build your team

Step one is establishing a Video Team of staff members who will take the lead on this project. 

There are three main roles needed: the Champion, the Professional Development Liaison, and the Daily Administrator. These three roles are vital to ensure that your school or organization is successful in integrating video into your PD plan.

The Champion: champions the project, creates an implementation plan and sets the overall vision and goals.

The Professional Development Liaison: ensures that the video project goals and implementation plan are successfully integrated with the overall PD goals of the school or organization.

The Daily Administrator: manages the day to day tasks of the project including training, technology issues, general video platform management and communication with the video technology provider.

Understandably, based on the size and needs of your school or organization, three separate people may not be possible. If one person takes on the responsibility, their role should span all three critical areas.

Step 2: Integrate PD into video plans

With the lead of the Professional Development Liaison, the Video Team should ensure that video is fully integrated with the school’s or organization’s current coaching and PD strategies.

Video is best used in conjunction with current strategies and not as an additional task. Torsh TALENT is a high-quality video platform that provides custom integration with schools or organizations online portals or Learning Management Systems (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas, Sakai, etc.). This integration allows schools or organizations to seamlessly incorporate video into current work rather than adding another online system to log into and use.

Step 3: Take advantage of the onboarding webinar

TALENT provides an initial onboarding training session for the Video Team. Take advantage of this valuable training opportunity.

During these onboarding sessions, the main focus is for the account team to get a better sense of the school or organization’s goals and main video needs. This allows us to best support the school or organization during the implementation process. It is also a great venue for the Video Team to bring up questions or concerns and set up a plan to manage technology issues, initiate a general user training, and talk through available ongoing support.

Step 4: Review all help resources

When a school or organization first starts using a new video platform, it is important to learn as much as possible about the system. 

The Video Team should have a very clear understanding of how to use the new platform. We provide numerous resources in various formats to ensure that users can get the help and support they need. Some important resources to review are our Getting Started Documents, Help Video Tutorials, and FAQs. The Video Team and especially, the Daily Administrator, should peruse these resources and make sure they have an intimate knowledge of the system overall. The Video Team should think through the best plan for distributing these resources whether it be through posting them on their own website, sending out emails, or including information in newsletters.

Step 5: Introduce video to leadership

One main responsibility of the Champion is to introduce video to all leadership staff at the school or organization. 

It is most important to generate initial leadership buy-in and support for video coaching and feedback. The Champion should showcase a clear need and relevant goals for video in order to help impress upon leadership the value of video in professional development efforts. It may also be valuable to demo the video platform to leadership staff. The more that leadership supports the integration of video into PD, the more likely the school or organization will have a successful implementation.

Step 6: Decide on a plan for video capture equipment

A vital part of a video implementation plan is deciding on the ideal video capture devices and processes for all users. 

TALENT provides video uploading applications for most smartphones and tablets to ensure an easy and quick video upload experience. If tablets/smartphones are not an option for your school or organization, any recording device is sufficient. Another consideration is capturing good quality audio and a stable recording. These can be accomplished through the use of an external microphone and a tripod. Check out two of our other resources on Tips for Recording Good Quality Video and Video Capture Equipment Recommendations for more information on video best practices.

Step 7: Educate all coaches on the video platform

All coaches using video should have a clear understanding of and comfort level using the platform. 

The Daily Administrator should onboard all coaches to the system, make sure they are competent using the technology, and ensure that they understand the goals and plans for using the video platform for PD. The coaches will need to be the first line of technical support for teachers. Therefore, prior to introducing video to teachers, all coaches and leadership staff should have general knowledge of the video platform, plans for implementation, and should work to improve their knowledge base on an ongoing basis.

Step 8: Introduce video to teachers

Once all leadership staff and coaches are onboarded to the video platform, it is now time to introduce video to the general user population at your school or organization.

For most schools and organizations, the general population is teachers. It is important that teachers are introduced to video and the video platform before accounts are set up or assignments are given. The process of educating teachers about video and the video platform prior to implementation will greatly support buy-in and understanding. A couple strategies to support teacher education is to start introducing content around using video in PD through email communication and newsletters and through an initial training session, which we will cover in the next step.

Step 9: Host an initial training session

It’s also a good idea to set up an initial video training for teachers.

It is important to designate one training session exclusively for video and the video platform. An intensive initial training process supports users through the initial learning curve that is customary when introducing any new system. This is especially important if your teachers are not familiar or comfortable with using technology in their daily practice. Setting them up with a strong foundation and knowledge of the video platform will set them up for success. In addition to going over the “What?” and “How to’s,” it is important to make sure teachers understand where to find support and help resources, and whom they can contact for technical issues and concerns.

Step 10: Ramp up gradually

Using a new system and technology with the whole or even just part of a school or organization comes with a learning curve for all. 

This is why it’s helpful to start the general user off with simple video-related activities and assignments to introduce them to the new experience of video and the video platform. Teachers must first become comfortable with using video and specifically using video in their PD work before they can fully take advantage of the new technology. One recommended strategy is to start off users with an initial practice exercise, such as simply uploading a video of their choice onto the new platform, sharing that video with a colleague, and beginning to use the annotation features available. This is a good way to introduce users to the basic features of the new platform and get them comfortable with everyday video activities.

Step 11: Generate teacher buy-in for video

It is just as important to generate buy-in with teachers as it is with leadership.

There are numerous strategies to create buy-in, and depending on the school or organization, different strategies may work better than others. One strategy that some of our customers have used successfully is adding incentives, such as professional development credit, to all teachers who upload videos and begin to use videos in their practice. If teachers see video as an additional task to complete on top of all their other responsibilities, they are less likely to actively participate. Incentives help build up teachers’ desire to use video and limit the feeling of video being another task on their plate. Additionally, self-selection of videos allows teachers to have greater self-efficacy and agency in the sharing, coaching, and observation process. Giving teachers the option to record and upload their own videos allows teachers additional control. This control helps create the conditions needed for greater safety and trust in the coaching and feedback processes.

Step 12: Provide easily accessible support 

All teachers should have access to multiple lines of support, especially in the beginning when they first start using video and the new video platform for PD. 

Everyone should have knowledge of who they can contact for support (i.e. The Daily Administrator, Coaches, and the video platform’s customer support) with video in general and any technical issues. In addition, everyone should understand and have access to all available help resources.

We hope you found these 12 steps helpful! As always, if you have questions about implementation or need additional support, you can always reach out to your account manager or the support team at support@torsh.co!

The post 12 Steps To A Successful Video Implementation appeared first on Torsh.

This is a timely topic because Louisiana, the state in which our office resides, will soon include students’ growth as a weighted measure of school performance, a breakthrough development in light of a longstanding debate in the education community. It’s been recommended to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that academic progress account for up to 25% of a school’s performance score. However, continuing coverage of the proposal highlights the contention surrounding how much student growth should influence school performance.

A major concern of opponents to the proposal is that “overemphasizing” academic growth misleads parents and stakeholders about the quality of education provided by the institution. This concern calls attention to a fear that struggling students, and the schools that fail but advance their learning, will be misrepresented in performance data. 

However, that worry may be unfounded (and possibly unfair). The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading education policy think tank, has asserted that systemized “growth measures are truer indicators of school quality” which can “identify a considerable number of chronically underperforming schools.” At the same time, according to data analyses published by Urban Institute researchers, “Judging schools based on their average test scores will tend to penalize schools that serve large numbers of lower-income and racial minority students.” Furthermore, emphasizing growth will support higher achieving students as well, a group that has demonstrated “comparatively slower growth in reading during the school year” according to a study published by The Journal of Educational Research.

Starting in June of 2016, the Louisiana Department of Education met with educators and representatives from across the state to discuss the changes to school accountability systems afforded by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The resulting ESSA Listening Tour Report includes themes of aligning expectations, raising standards, and serving struggling students. Likewise, widespread support for strengthening the teaching profession through consistent classroom observation was mirrored by a focus on the continuous improvement of students of all abilities. Weighting student growth by 25% (or more!) of a school’s performance score is reinforced in the report by the idea that, “Schools should be motivated to focus on the improvement of all students to achieve at their full potential.”

Growth as a performance measure acknowledges that school educators are serving students in consideration of a critical factor: their needs. Rather than misleading parents, growth indicators show that students’ progress and achievement is focal; and that on the path of education, each step forward is as important as where your journey began, and where your journey ends.

What are your thoughts on proficiency and growth? We would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.

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