A coaching cycle is a way to structure your instructional coaching practice. Coaching cycles focus on developing specific learning targets or educator goals and on providing support to teachers to help them reach their goals. You can read more about implementing coaching cycles within your instructional coaching practice on KickUp's blog.
With KickUp you can:
Start a coaching cycle with a teacher
Before you can take any actions working with a teacher within their coaching cycle, you will need to start a cycle with that particular teacher. To start a coaching cycle with a teacher:
navigate to your roster in your coaching instance
click on the name of the teacher with whom you want to start a cycle
click on the cycles tab
click start cycle
Complete steps in a teacher's coaching cycle
Coaching cycles in KickUp contain several steps, which represent discrete actions taken as part of your coaching process. The names and contents of steps will vary depending on which framework you are using within KickUp. In general, steps represent and help you to document processes like goal-setting, collecting student evidence, observing a classroom, or reflecting on the coaching cycle. Most steps can be completed by you, the coach (though it's possible that certain steps may only be completed by the teacher).
To complete a step:
click the blue button beside the step you want to complete. This will open up a form if the step has an associated form for data entry
fill out the form fields
click Submit
Add or remove optional steps from a teacher's coaching cycle
For some coaching frameworks, like The Impact Cycle or Student Centered Coaching, some steps may be optional. If an optional step is included on a teacher's coaching cycle, then it can be completed, whereas if it's not included it cannot be completed. Adding and removing steps only impacts a specific teacher's coaching cycle - there is no way to add or remove a step for all of your teacher's coaching cycles at once.
To add or remove an optional step:
from your roster, click on the teacher's name to go to their coaching page
navigate to the cycles tab
select the three-dot action menu on the far right of the page
click Add/remove steps
5. From the modal that opens, click "Add" or "Remove" to add or remove optional steps from the coaching cycle. Remember that adding and removing steps will only impact that specific teacher's coaching cycle.
Add files or links as artifacts
Files from your computer or web links can be added to a specific step within a teacher's coaching cycle. Adding artifacts, as they are called in KickUp, will allow both you and to the teacher to download the file and open links that have been added as artifacts. Both you and the teacher can add artifacts and view artifacts added by either of you.
To add an artifact:
click the name of the step to which you would like to add an artifact. This will expand the drawer for that step
click Add artifacts
select a file from your computer, or enter a web link
To remove an artifact, click the trash icon beside the attachment. Note that you and the teacher may only remove artifacts that you yourselves added.
Scan your roster to track cycle progress and support trends
From your roster, you can see a progress bar next to each teacher who has an open coaching cycle. The progress bar shows the progress that each individual teacher is making through your coaching cycle with them. The numbers shown to the right of the bar represent the number of steps completed and the total number of steps in their cycle.
The "Last activity" column shows the date of the most recent activity log you have submitted about each teacher on your roster. The "All activities" column shows the number of activity logs you have submitted about each teacher on your roster.
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