How to Use Data as an Instructional Coach and Host a Data Dive

Being an instructional coach is all about helping teachers maximize their time and resources to create engaged students who become life-long learners. The best way to accomplish that is through taking a dive into a nice pool of data! While we all know data is important, it can be taxing to go through and sometimes a little frustrating, especially if the results are not what you were hoping for. A great way to get your teachers and administrators into data is to host a Data Dive.

When you host a Data Dive, you are setting up a meeting with your teacher (or a group of teachers) to specifically look over the data, such as results from a recent common assessment like a district or schoolwide benchmark, weekly assessments on a particular skill, or an end of course or chapter test that you as well as the teachers have collected. While you are diving into this data, you will discover what has been done well and what can be improved upon. Looking at this data helps us determine where we should go next and ensures that students aren’t falling between the cracks. In addition, looking at the data can help make a cultural shift in our school to focus on what is needed the most within our classrooms.

What is a Data Dive for instructional coaches?

A Data Dive is a planned meeting where the coach and a teacher or team sit down with one set of results and leave with one plan. It has a purpose that is named out loud at the start, it begins with what went well, and it ends with an action step that the teacher owns. That last part is what separates a Data Dive from the data meetings most of us have sat through, where everyone looks at the spreadsheet, agrees that scores are low, and goes back to class.

You should host several Data Dives throughout the school year in order to be most effective. Having several allows you to set specific focuses during these meetings. It also helps you move on from goals you have already accomplished. So, when should you do a Data Dive? Well, that depends on what your school’s set up is. For every instructional coach this will be different, and looking around assessment dates could give you your best data. A few places I’d look first:

• The week after a district or schoolwide benchmark comes back
• The end of a unit, when the common assessment is fresh
• Weekly skill checks, for a teacher you are already working with in a Coaching Sprint (coaching cycle)
• Any point where a team has reteaching time on the calendar and needs to decide what to reteach

It is best to structure your Data Dive as an “Instructional Cycle.” When you begin this process, you are planning, doing, checking, and acting (PDCA). Planning is essential because that’s where you and your teacher will plan for “patch ups” or set new goals to further your students. Your goal will be based on the data you are using. The results are VERY IMPORTANT in this step! Each step that follows is also equally important.

Why a Data Dive changes what happens in classrooms

After the planning meeting has taken place, the data should have been reviewed, an action plan should have been developed, and you are now moving into the “doing” part of the Instructional Cycle. Teachers should be creating goals with students and reteaching the skills based on the action plan developed. This is the step that shows up in the classroom. The teacher knows which students, which skill, and which strategy, because the three of them were decided in the room with the data on the table.

After skills have been taught, we are now moving into the “checking” part of the Instructional Cycle. Remember that Corrective Action Plan you and your teachers developed while in that meeting? Yep, you are right, pull it out and look at the new assessment and see how well those students did. Check to see if the actions outlined in the plan made a difference. If so, document the strategies used for the future. If not, begin the process over and develop a new action plan. That is the acting part, and it is what keeps a Data Dive from being a one-time event.

Whether you love it or hate it, data is what needs to drive us as instructional coaches and leaders. Data tells us what goals need to be set. Data shows us what goals have been met. Data drives us to push our kids to higher levels with confidence because the data tells us they can do it. Completing these Data Dive meetings will allow you to document and track the best practices that have worked for your school culture, and to document along the way.

How do you host a Data Dive meeting?

Let’s check out what a planning meeting (Data Dive meeting) looks like. Each planning meeting should follow the five steps below, and in each one, teachers should leave with an action step. Before each meeting, it is imperative that the instructional coach or leader has already prepared and discovered the talking points for each of the steps, because a Data Dive that starts with “so, what do we see?” turns into forty minutes of scrolling. You should complete data meeting planning forms to help you guide your planning and then complete each section with teachers. Following the Instructional Cycle, you will want to establish roles and responsibilities and start the cycle again after each check. This cycle will help you go through data with your teachers smoothly, and a little faster too. The download has the planning form with a talking-point line under each step.

The water’s fine

Data doesn’t have to be the part of coaching you dread. Hosted as a Data Dive with a purpose, a celebration, and one action step, it becomes the meeting teachers ask you to schedule, and it makes sure no one falls through the cracks on your watch.