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.

But the performance standards aren’t just critical in guiding how program funds are used and what factors to consider when providing comprehensive services for children with disabilities (though these are certainly important). The National Head Start Association (NHSA) emphasizes that these performance standards are “intended to ensure that all Head Start programs provide comprehensive, high-quality individualized services that support school readiness.” 

Put another way, they give educators a roadmap for enhancing program quality and cultivating effective practice. And this roadmap paves the way to positive learning outcomes and family well-being. 

Included in the Head Start performance standards is the central requirement for programs to provide all staff with comprehensive training and professional learning, including research-based coaching. This coaching must give staff members the opportunity to build skills both by sharing targeted feedback and by modeling effective practices directly related to program goals. 

But with so many forms of coaching available, which is most effective for driving excellence in the Head Start program performance standards?

Many Head Start programs have implemented practice-based coaching (PBC), a research-backed approach to continuous improvement and professional development. It is a catalyst for improving program quality and delivering strong child outcomes. When implemented well, practice-based coaching benefits everyone in the learning community — staff, students, and families alike.

The Benefits of Practice-Based Coaching in Head Start Programs

ECLKC defines practice-based coaching as “a… strategy that uses a cyclical process… that supports teachers’ use of effective teaching practices that lead to positive outcomes for children.” This method is all about ongoing, collaborative partnerships between coaches and teaching staff, tailored to meet a teacher’s individual learning goals and drive Head Start performance standards.

There is a plethora of research that validates the impact that PBC has on early childhood learning, developmental outcomes, and social and emotional well-being. One 2018 study conducted by the University of Florida found that preschool students in classrooms where teachers participated in their PBC model, BEST in CLASS, demonstrated fewer challenging behaviors throughout the school year. Another 2021 study with Vanderbilt University discovered that PBC methods could still improve the effectiveness of teachers’ practices in the classroom setting — even when coaching was delivered via text messaging. 

PBC is a powerful mechanism for unlocking effective practice. Head Start programs that invest in the effective implementation of this coaching strategy support their staff to successfully meet and exceed performance standards. This in turn means that teams provide those high-quality services that nurture early childhood development and ultimately cultivate strong child outcomes.

Technology-Driven Coaching for Excellence Against Performance Standards

These days, educators have access to many resources — including digital ones — to build a culture of continuous improvement through effective coaching. Video recordings of classroom lessons improve the quality of in-person exchanges between a coach and a teacher by providing concrete artifacts for collaborative review. Video-based coaching sessions offer additional flexibility and ample time for continued mentorship outside of live meetings and around busy schedules.

But true, lasting technology-driven change to teaching practices requires coaches to go beyond offering virtual coaching and reviewing pre-recorded lessons from the classroom setting. Programs that leverage technology must also align their implementation to program goals, learning standards, team resources, and the Head Start program performance standards — while cultivating direct, personal, and ongoing professional development for teaching staff.

In short, Head Start programs need a comprehensive digital strategy to support practice-based coaching — using robust platforms like TORSH Talent to easily manage all of its components.

3 Digital Practices That Enhance PBC and Support Head Start Performance Standards

TORSH has partnered with hundreds of early childhood organizations to support their professional development and learning programs. We know how critical it is for Head Start programs to create a culture of continuous program improvement and the power that digital tools offer toward that end. 

Across our Head Start partners, our team has observed three patterns of effective technology use in programs. In each case, these applications of technology not only help teams meet minimum requirements for programs — but also enhance their PBC efforts in ways that deliver a greater impact on child learning outcomes. 

Effective implementation of technology with PBC means that Head Start programs:

• Curate resources to align teachers and coaches to the standards themselves
• Leverage digital tools to personalize staff feedback and goal-setting under the framework of the standards
• Provide easy access to exemplars and best practices that demonstrate the standards in action

With these best practices, teams build a shared understanding of the Head Start performance standards among all staff. More crucially, they cultivate ongoing and collaborative efforts to improve teaching strategies, ultimately delivering positive child and family outcomes.

#1: Align staff knowledge of Head Start performance standards

Before staff can be expected to meet Head Start program performance standards, they need to understand them and their responsibility to uphold them. This remains true whether or not a program implements PBC as a professional development strategy for their team.

From a PBC perspective, both a teacher and their coach benefit when they are aligned on which core teaching practices and learning standards they can improve. Shared understanding means individual coaching is that much more impactful. For example, a coach can guide their mentee to match a personal teaching goal with one or more specific performance standards. As a result, the mentee can then draw direct connections between their own professional growth and their impact on Head Start performance standards and overall program quality. 

A coaching rubric is a handy tool for coaches and mentees to connect program performance standards with personalized learning goals. Digital platforms like TORSH Talent give Head Start programs flexibility and a unified place to design and distribute standard coaching rubrics for all of their staff. That way, both coachees and coaches operate under the same guidelines through personalized collaboration and coaching — all tying back into those crucial Head Start performance standards. 

Additionally, program staff can curate resources and training materials to support the development of practices aligned with the Head Start performance standards and make them available to all staff in their TORSH Talent resource library. This collective resource pool ensures everyone — from teachers and coaches to administrative staff — has information at their fingertips about the standards that are guiding their program and services to children. Teams can also access resources to help them effectively implement curricula and research-based practices to result in positive learning outcomes for children.

Having shared knowledge and coaching guidelines makes all the difference for both coaches and teachers to uphold the Head Start program performance standards. Easy-to-access digital rubrics and libraries ensure teams are aligned and armed with tools to navigate the standards successfully.

#2: Use digital tools to personalize coaching feedback connected to performance standards

The performance standards for Head Start programs create common ground for all programs to nurture children’s well-being. And yet, effective PBC also requires that coaches shape their mentorship strategies to a teacher’s individual goals to help them grow personally and professionally. How can technology support balancing a collaborative, personalized coaching relationship with alignment to performance standards?

First, coaches can build off of standard coaching rubrics to set specific and targeted goals with their mentees. Though these goals will tie back to the standards, it’s important that they also reflect the teacher’s current strengths, opportunities for improvement, and personal vision for their own effective practice. TORSH Talent provides the perfect sandbox in which coaches and coachees can create, revise, and track their goals. After all, a well-crafted personalized goal is a critical anchor for coaching and professional growth. 

Second, coaches can integrate technology into their delivery of feedback and mentorship. Video-based coaching is commonly used among Head Start programs as it offers additional flexibility in the coach-teacher relationship. It increases the frequency in which coaches can meet with teachers, and in turn, gives coaches greater access to observe teachers’ practices in action. Feedback is no longer limited to coaches visiting a teacher’s classroom a few times a year. Instead, a teacher can simply record a lesson or activity, then share it virtually through TORSH Talent with their coach at any time. Their coach can watch this video at their convenience to ensure ample time to carefully reflect on the practices recorded. 

However, PBC is more successful when coaches provide targeted, ongoing feedback to their mentees aligned with their specific goals. This is why TORSH Talent allows coaches to provide time-stamped feedback on videos uploaded by teachers that they mentor. This level of precision helps coaches pinpoint exact moments during a recorded lesson in which the teacher demonstrates meeting or even exceeding Head Start performance standards. With this level of targeted feedback, coaches can also highlight evidence of teachers’ successfully engaged in practices that align with their personal goals. 

The more precise the goals and feedback, the higher quality the coaching relationship can be — and the greater the opportunity becomes for a teacher to shift their practices.

#3: Ensure easy access to teaching best practices within and beyond your program

Thanks to technology, teachers have many resources beyond their coaches that can help them improve teaching practices, deliver high-quality services, and ultimately exceed the Head Start program performance standards. Digital resource libraries again come into play here, as they help program teams curate information about the standards themselves as well as exemplars of standards-in-action for teachers. In fact, TORSH encourages program teams to fill their TORSH Talent resource library with model teaching videos, online courses, lesson plans, and other materials that both coaches and teachers can access to support professional learning. 

For example, let’s imagine a Head Start teacher who wants to improve their classroom management technique. Their coach points them to videos in their TORSH Talent library that demonstrate effective practices and concrete methods in this area that meet program standards. The teacher then incorporates these practices into their own classroom, recording a lesson and uploading it into the platform. From there, the teacher’s coach watches the lesson and provides feedback on what went well. They also offer prompts for the teacher to reconsider different approaches to areas that may still need improvement. When they meet next, the coach and teacher can review an exemplar video alongside the teacher’s video to discuss how the modeled techniques could be used.  

But coaches aren’t the only ones who provide valuable feedback and guidance to Head Start staff! TORSH often sees programs combine video-based coaching and curated libraries with professional learning communities on the platform. 

PLCs are a powerful mechanism for improving teaching strategies, whether they represent a small group of teachers from a local program or a state-wide community forum. These communities offer spaces in which staff can share input, inspiration, or innovation with fellow educators — including one’s own video-recorded exemplars of comprehensive services and teaching practices in action. By leveraging the power of PLCs, both virtual and in-person, teachers gain additional coaching and learning opportunities to tie back into their teaching goals and drive excellence in meeting Head Start performance standards.

Practice-Based Coaching Benefits the Entire Head Start Program

Intentional, personalized, and aligned approaches to practice-based coaching are game-changers for Head Start programs. Educators can take advantage of many resources like technology to enable collaborative learning partnerships among their teaching staff and coaches that exceed core requirements for programs. 

At the end of the day, though, digital coaching and professional learning tools are just that — tools. It’s up to individual programs to chart their own path to supporting the  professional growth of their team and positive learning outcomes for families and children. By using the Head Start performance standards as an anchor for practice-based coaching, everyone is better positioned to drive continuous program improvement and overall excellence for their staff, students, and families!

Exceed Head Start Performance Standards with TORSH Talent

Triumph Inc. in Massachusetts relies on TORSH Talent to improve teacher practice and student outcomes in their Early Head Start and Head Start programs. From new teacher orientation and ongoing coaching and professional learning aligned to the Head Start program standards, to providing parent education, Triumph Inc. takes full advantage of the easy-to-use and secure tools built into TORSH Talent, including tools for:  

• Video-based observation
• Providing targeted, specific feedback to teachers on their interactions with children and families
• Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration
• Individualized coaching 
• Insights to guide professional learning and training

Take a look at how your Head Start or early education program can leverage TORSH Talent to implement practice-based coaching and so much more.

The post How to Use Practice-Based Coaching to Meet and Exceed Head Start Performance Standards appeared first on Torsh.

One thing that was made abundantly clear in the transition to remote learning is how critical it is that WHAT we teach in the classroom -and HOW we teach it-can be transferred to other formats. I learned this same lesson with coaching. The WHAT and HOW of our coaching must build teacher and administrator capacity to do their best work in whatever environment is presented. 

Coaches can and must be models of flexible thinking and instructional adaptation. We must use the tools we have and learn new ones so that we can reach teachers and administrators by whatever means necessary. To do this, it requires us to look at the tools available through new, innovative lenses to see what they “could” do rather than for what we have always done with them. For me, this has meant becoming familiar with the Workflow feature in TORSH and using it as a content management and delivery system for professional development and coaching. I can create workflows related to specific instructional goals for asynchronous coaching. Teachers are assigned to a workflow (I call them Learning LABS).

Each of the LABS consists of a predetermined number of coaching cycles. Each cycle is set up as a page in the workflow and consists of objectives, learning content, and an activity in which teachers upload videos of themselves applying the learning for feedback. They have a self-reflection that they use as they watch their own videos, and I give them written feedback and/or schedule a personal debrief call to debrief. This has allowed for both differentiation in my coaching and building personal connections that a 30-minute classroom visit on campus would not have provided. 

Providing support in flexible ways not only allows the important work of coaching to continue, but it also models the possibilities that can exist when we look at the tools we have through new eyes. With the challenges presented to educators by Covid, the opportunities for coaches to be creative are not only endless but necessary.

Robyn Hartzell has served in education since 1998 and has experience in a variety of roles: teacher, instructional coach, interventionist, trainer, consultant, and program coordinator at the campus and regional levels. Currently, she works as an independent consultant and coach promoting effective instructional and leadership practices and championing the need for quality professional learning. Robyn takes privilege in coaching professionals in their craft and is passionate about helping organizations develop leaders who make a lasting, positive impact on the programs and people they serve.

Be sure to follow Robyn on Twitter @robynhartzellpd and check out her website at www.hartzellpd.com

The post Flexible, Personalized Coaching Models to Support Educators in Changing Times appeared first on Torsh.

In this guide, we will break down the elements of classroom observation, methods, techniques, and more.

Contents

• What Is Classroom Observation?
• What Is the Purpose of Classroom Observation?
•  What Type of Teachers Need to Undergo Classroom Observations?
• Methods of Classroom Observation

Learn how Torsh can help support classroom observations

What Is Classroom Observation?

A classroom observation is an act of watching a teacher’s performance in their classroom or learning environment. Classroom observations are a quantitative way of recording and measuring teacher behavior and mastery by systematically watching and recording them in action. 

There are two basic types of observations:

1. A school administrator watches a teacher’s performance as a part of a formal job performance evaluation at a regularly scheduled interval (often annually).  
2. An observation performed by a teacher’s peer or peers, instructional specialist, or coach with the stated goal of providing the teacher with relevant feedback based on their interactions with students and their execution of teaching methods with the primary goal of making improvements in their classroom management and instructional techniques. 

What Is the Purpose of Classroom Observation?

The fundamental purpose of classroom observation is to improve student outcomes by improving the instructional prowess of the teacher. 

A secondary purpose of observation is to perform an investigation into possible inequities in instruction among different groups of students. This allows teachers and researchers to identify biases in how different groups of students are treated based on their gender, socio-economic standing, or other differentiating factors to help eliminate them.  

A final purpose is to provide researchers with information on current educational practices and to identify instructional problems.

What Type of Teachers Need to Undergo Classroom Observations?

Typically, it is new general and special education teachers who are the focus of classroom observations as they have less experience and stand to benefit the most from the process. 

That said, experienced teachers can benefit from the feedback and insights gained through observation as well as provide another perspective on their performance that may shed light on techniques that they are using improperly or not at all. 

Classroom observation can be as brief as a few minutes or as long as an entire school day or more. 

Methods of Classroom Observation

There are many different ways for an observer to effectively perform an observation. 

Some utilize homegrown in-house methods while others deploy nationally recognized models created by educational experts and further validated by research-based data. It really depends on the standard operating procedures of the school and the person performing the observation in which methods are used in a specific circumstance.  

The Elements of Classroom Observation

Good classroom observation will contain most or all of the following elements:

• A stated purpose for the observation
• A specific observational focus
• Operational definitions of all the observed behaviors
• Training procedures for observers
• An observation schedule
• A setting
• A unit of time
• A method to record the data
• A method to process and analyze data

Classroom Observation Techniques

Checklists, charts, rating scales, and narrative descriptions are examples of observational techniques that have proven to be effective ways of examining a teacher in action. 

However, the most prevalent procedure for systematic observation is the use of interactive coding systems. 

The reason they are used so often is that they allow the observer to document almost everything that happens between the teacher and their students during the observation. They are a widely used tool because they are objective and they are designed in a way that helps keep the observer’s personal judgments or inferences from skewing the data collected over the course of the observation. 

Interactive coding systems can readily identify and capture specific and easily identifiable behaviors in a way that lends the data to easy coding and categorization which is especially helpful for analyzing the data and providing the teacher with objective feedback.

TORSH Talent is an effective tool for classroom observation and feedback. With TORSH Talent, coaches can provide feedback in custom, digitized rubrics that are specific to each induction teacher and their goals. 

Click here to learn more about how Rockdale County Public Schools was able to provide structured feedback to teachers that led to drastically improved classroom practices using TORSH Talent.

Video Classroom Observations

Traditionally, all classroom observations were performed in person. Technology is now regularly being used to make the process more accessible and effective. 

The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets that have high-quality recording devices has made the video recording of classroom performances not only possible but easy and cost-effective. 

There are also subscription-based online services that are capable of providing another level of observational functionality and data analytics that are difficult to reproduce using the more traditional face-to-face observation and paper recording methods.

See how others are improving teacher effectiveness through video classroom observations.

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Happy Fall, y’all! We’ve launched many new and exciting features this past year including a revamped Exemplar Library, Forums, Coaching Corner, and In

Happy Fall, y’all! We’ve launched many new and exciting features this past year including a revamped Exemplar Library, Forums, Coaching Corner, and Insights! We hope you’ve been using TALENT and implementing these new features this school year. If you ever need support, or have questions or comments to share, please reach out to us at support@torsh.co. Feature Updates We’ve been constantly updating and improving the functionality of Coaching Corner to ensure it meets the diverse needs of our clients. As we roll out changes, we want to hear from you! If you use Coaching Corner, please fill out our Coaching Corner Survey and share your valuable feedback. We’d love to hear what’s working for you and what we can improve! Management Panel Update: If you are an admin in your TALENT system, you can now set your own Role Aliases! The standard roles are Teacher, Coach, and Admin. If you’d like to customize these role names and haven’t already done so, you can check out your system settings page and edit them today! Blog Posts One of our newest releases is Document Annotation. If you need help using this feature, check out our blog post, Collaborating Made Easy: Introducing Document Annotation. Our CEO Courtney Williams recently published two articles on Forbes, where he is a regular contributor. Check out his advice to other entrepreneurs in Five Ways To Market Your Startup With Little Or Zero Budget. Also read After the Storm: How Tragedy Galvanized A Post-Katrina New Orleans, to learn how entrepreneurs can play a key role in revitalizing other hurricane-ravaged cities. We always love to shine a spotlight on our amazing clients! Our blog currently features Leading Educators, a non-profit teacher training organization that develops and trains teacher leaders who drive transformative changes within their schools and districts. Top Articles to Read – One-Third of Girls With 4.0 GPAs Don’t Think They’re Smart — and Other Findings From National School Survey…How can we do better by our girls? – There’s building evidence that higher teacher pay encourages people to enter and stay in the classroom. Chalkbeat discusses in their recent article. – Ohio State University launches its new Digital Flagship University with Apple. Will more universities be jumping on the bandwagon? Courtney’s Quote of the Day “I’m proud to say that our current customers are our number one source of new leads. We have a great product, but that’s only one piece. We also have a great team in place — in both sales and client management — who work hard to keep our clients happy. And, we actually listen to our customers. When they have ideas or suggestions for how to improve our platform, we take this feedback directly to our development team. Of course not every idea is incorporated. But enough ideas are that we’ve gained a reputation for responsiveness, which makes our customers happy.” – Torsh CEO Courtney Williams Courtney discusses how a start up can ramp up their marketing efforts. Read more in his recent Forbes blog post, Five Ways To Market Your Startup With Little Or Zero Budget. ©2017 Torsh, Inc. | 1307 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., New Orleans, Louisiana 70113

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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.

1. Upload Videos, Audio Files, PDFs, Word Documents and Images

Ever wanted to upload a document and share it with colleagues without tying it to a specific video? Now you can! You can upload a variety of files to TALENT including word documents, PDFs, audio files, and images. After all, a picture says a thousand words, and an audio track says 110–150 wpm. 

2. Find Files Easily With Improved Search

Searching for your uploads and your colleagues’ uploads should be easy. The new Videos & Files page increases the speed and precision of your searches. You can still do a simple search of all files or by matching tags. Now, you can also narrow down your results by searching within a collection or by file type and then, filtering the list by username or title. For example, if I want to find a video I know Krystal shared with me, I can search all of the files shared with me, or I can search just the videos shared with me and then filter by “Krystal.”

3. Change The Layout To Suit Your Needs

There are now three views on your Videos & Files page. The default view looks most like what you have seen before. However, you also have the option to select a tile view without the video stats to view more files at once. You can also select a compact table view. This can be really helpful for doing bulk actions. This allows you to view up to 100 records per page. You can easily select the videos you need and add them or remove them from a collection.

4.  Drag and Drop To Upload

As the old saying goes, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  Now, instead of selecting the upload button at the top of TALENT and selecting the folder to find the file you need, you can simply drag and drop it from your computer. You can even upload and organize in one fell swoop: if you are currently viewing a collection, drag and drop your files to instantly upload them to that collection. 

5. Nest Collections Within Collections

Ever wanted to create a sub-collection? Now you can! For example, you can create a collection called “2016-2017 School Year” and then add three additional collections within the school year for math, language arts and science. Simply click “Manage Collections” from the gear icon drop-down menu and then click on “New Subcollection”.

We hope you are as excited about these new features as we are! You can always reach out to support@torsh.co if you need any help navigating a new feature. Also, feel free to send us your recommendations and we will do our best to listen to your feedback and add it to our roadmap. We would love to hear from you!

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1. Take a look at your dashboard to see an overview of your system data

Click the “Insights” button on your navigation bar to see your community’s activity and performance over the last month. Perusing your Insights dashboard will notify you of your team’s movement on their goals, observations, and study of exemplars from your library.

2. Choose a report to review system-wide information

Compile your system’s data based on measures of frequency and performance over time. Performance reports are based on indicators from goals and rubrics, formal and informal observations, and coaching sessions. Activity reports track the frequency of collaboration within your community, including video sharing, coaching observations, completed coaching session, and more!

3. Drill into your data using filters

On each reporting screen, you can specify which populations to explore using the reporting filters. Use the calendar filter to change the reporting period. There are filters to specify the users’ roles, groups, grade level, and teaching subjects for the report. Choose which rubric and observation type to analyze for the most defined data. Then click the green “Run Report” button to apply the filters and populate your report.

4. Analyze your observation data using rubric/framework reports

Review the data for each rubric/framework available in your system. Filter the groups, subjects, and reporting period to compare results on each observed dimension and criteria. Use the View Population button to see a person-by-person breakdown of goals, sessions, and observations tied to the rubric.

5. Review your teams’ progress on their goals

Use the Goal Mastery and Domains and Dimension for Goals reports to see the progress towards mastery, and the linkage of goals to rubric items across your system. Hover over each colored section to see the exact number of users who are progressing toward, or have reached, mastery of their Primary and Secondary goals. Use the Export button to create and download a .csv file with a population breakdown of your data.

6. Use reporting so that it aligns with your success measures

You may find that you want to use reporting to monitor how often people are sharing and commenting on videos, how many formal observations are being conducted by each coach, or where the most people are challenged in reaching a goal. You may also find that there are reports that you’d like to see in your Insights that haven’t been implemented yet. Insights is designed to enhance your data-driven professional development and classroom observation strategies, so reach out to us to share your feedback on this new feature.

We’re enthusiastic about optimizing and adding more to the reporting suite, and are happy to hear from you!

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BC: Last year, Torsh TALENT became more than just a video platform. How do you plan to expand the use case for TALENT in the next year?

CW: We’ll continue to expand on what we did in 2016. Our goal is to become the premier go-to platform for districts, schools and other organizations that provide coaching, resources and ongoing professional development to educators. We launched Coaching Corner last year, which was a huge step forward. But there are still a number of new features we hope to develop. We also want to improve a number of our existing features and modules.

BC: You mentioned new features. What’s on the horizon?

CW: We will continue to broaden our feature set beyond video observation and feedback. Specifically, we will significantly improve our community and collaboration features. We plan to launch new features that will allow our customers to find, create, and host a wide variety of content that is necessary to support ongoing coaching and development. We will also launch a comprehensive reporting tool that includes a data dashboard and a host of standard and custom reports. These will be optimized for the organization that wants to track educator growth, manage access to content and use data to continually improve the delivery of professional development services.

BC: That’s exciting! As of now, what do you think sets TALENT apart from other professional development platforms?

CW: There are many things that set TALENT apart from our competitors, but I’d have to say one of our key strengths is the robustness and flexibility of our platform. TALENT is built in such a way that a wide range of customers can use it to satisfy their distinct needs. We serve K-12, higher education, early education and service organizations. This encompasses a wide range of clients from district schools, charter schools, teacher preparation programs, Head Start programs, state-based professional development, alternative certifications, and teacher support organizations. We provide tools and services that allow this diverse set of clients to do the important work of training and developing educators. 

BC: It sounds like TALENT has covered a lot of ground in education. Do you think TALENT has applications outside of education as well?

CW: Most certainly, although at this point in time we are 100% focused on building a coaching platform that truly supports and satisfies the needs of our education clients. I got into this game because I wanted to make an impact in education. Down the road, I see applications in the medical field for doctor and nurse training, in law, sales, psychology and a number of other industries. 

BC: That sounds great. Thanks, Courtney! I know there’s a lot of work left to be done but thanks for finding the time to sit down and share your vision for Torsh TALENT. It’s always exciting to hear what’s on the roadmap and learn more about the direction of the company. 

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