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As an instructional math coach, walking into a classroom means balancing observation with intentional support. But what happens when a teacher is in the early stages of implementing an effective practice? In this episode, we explore how to apply the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions to plan meaningful coaching moves. We’ll dive into the power of assessing and advancing questions—both for guiding student learning and for fostering rich coaching conversations. How can we anticipate the questions that will move a teacher forward? Let’s practice together and refine our approach to coaching with purpose.

Key discussion points include:

• How to enter a classroom with a clear focus on an effective teaching practice.

• How to prepare questions in advance to guide reflection and next steps.

• Real-world examples of assessing and advancing questions in action.

• How thoughtful questioning supports gradual implementation and teacher growth.

Rather than pushing against resistance, this approach amplifies successful implementation.

Resources:

• Register for the Make Math Moments Virtual Summit
• Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

Attention District Math Leaders:

Not sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ 

Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com 

Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Yvette Lehman: All right, Jon, so during a call last week with one of our district leaders, we had kind of an aha moment. We saw a parallel between a practice that we use in the classroom and a practice that could be leveraged for coaching. And I thought, why not discuss it on the podcast this week?

Jon Orr: Yeah, let’s share. Let’s share with this is what we want to do. We want to share the discussions, the stories, the strategies that we’re having with coaching district leaders, coaches, math coordinators, as we support them during the year on the work that they’re doing to build sustainable math improvement plans and create change and impact in their classrooms for their teachers. yeah, let’s talk about effective coaching and effective coaching with purpose.

for the, for the people that we’re supporting, know, like we may be, you may be a math coordinator listening, but you may be coaching coaches. you may be a coach, who’s then coaching classroom teachers. we’ve done all of those things and, and we’re, you know, talk with those people every single day. But I think what we, what we are seeing is some of the pebbles that those are, our folks are having is, is an understanding, like I think.

we’re coaching and then we’re not seeing adoption or we’re coaching or not seeing the impact and we’re coaching and it’s like, I, you know, I wish, you know, this was, you know, more impactful. Like we’re not seeing the change that we’re looking to see. And that’s probably the most common response we get when we, talk with coaches and support them. And I think when we roll back and go, okay, so what’s really happening here under the hood and we dig a little bit.

we, we dig to find out, you know, they may be needing to kind of like restructure some of the language that they’re using, also restructure the purpose around what they’re doing.

Yvette Lehman: I’m gonna paint a picture of what’s happening in the district that I was just describing. So in this district, the advantage that they absolutely have is that there’s a lot of clarity around the change that they’re hoping to see in their classrooms. And so like many other districts, they’re working toward mathematical discourse. They want to see students justifying, reasoning, really strengthening those particular practices that rely on strong communication.

Jon Orr: Okay, let’s do it.

Yvette Lehman: create establishing an environment where student voice is the dominant voice rather than the teacher voice being the dominant voice. So this district has done a lot of work around communicating that clear objective. They’ve also created a kind of rubric or look for document that’s been shared with teachers and administrators and coaches to really define the shift that they want to see. So it’s like, this is what it does not look like. And this is what it looks like. So an example of that would be, you know, the dominant voice in the classroom is the teacher voice.

Jon Orr: Nice.

Yvette Lehman: And then on the other end of the implementation scale would be the dominant voices, the student voice. And so they have done a lot of the work necessary to have a very clear understanding of the work that they’re doing collectively, the change that they’re hoping to see. And so the leader that we’ve been collaborating with has made an investment this year to build capacity amongst the instructional mentors.

So this is like the team of teachers who are coaches in buildings who have the opportunity to, as you always say, like work elbow to elbow with a teacher, with students. And so, you know, an action step is like, if we build the capacity of our instructional mentors, then we’ll have greater impact on the practices that are happening daily in the classroom. And so the unique challenge they’re facing though is that not all of their instructional mentors have a math background.

Jon Orr: Sure.

Yvette Lehman: They are effective teachers, but they’re not specific to math instruction. They’re not math teachers. And so we were brainstorming, you know, what do you do to prepare these coaches, these mentors, to have impactful coaching conversations? And that’s where the idea dawned on us that, you know, we, as anybody who listens to the podcast knows, we are, you know, huge fans of the five practices for orchestrating mathematical discussions.

we’ve adopted in our own classrooms. It’s almost like a framework that we use anytime we’re delivering a lesson. But we had this moment where we thought about, you know, that anticipation stage where we anticipate what students are going to do and then we plan assessing and advancing questions is something that we could adopt for our coaching as well. And so what I mean by that is it’s a big ask.

of a facilitator to just have the right questions to ask on the fly in every situation that they encounter, particularly if they’re new to the role, they’re new to the content area, this learning is new for them. And so if that was in a classroom, what would we tell that teacher to do? We’d say, well, anticipate, know, think about what students might do and then already have those questions in your back pocket so that you are in a position to help that student move along the trajectory.

So can we use this same approach when it comes to coaching teachers? So if we have clarity on the goal, we know exactly what we’re working toward.

Can we anticipate where teachers might be along the implementation trajectory from zero implementation to full implementation? And then for all of the observable behaviors, could we anticipate by planning, assessing and advancing questions that would guide us in those coaching conversations?

Jon Orr: You know, it makes a lot of sense. think this goes to a bigger, in a way, an issue as well. What you’re saying is that we want our teachers to be doing this in the classroom. We’re we’re helping them think about assessing and advancing questions. We’re helping them think about how to plan for our lessons using the five practices. It tends to be a big focus for the work that we’re doing when we’re supporting our district.

you know, we, we are in it was coaching roles where we’re trying to have our teachers do this. But then when we think about it, that’s good for good learning, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s not like, it’s not just a math thing, right? Like it’s, it’s, it is good structure for good learning to be able to basically anticipate, plan for those, those questions. And then in the moment, when you see it, you’re ready to kind of like,

add that question in or add that thought to keep the learning going. And, you know, we don’t tend to do that in our coaching roles. Like we tend to be like, try to be studying and to be good coaches, good listeners, you know, go where teachers are going to go. you know, having the anticipatory component of that means you have to do a lot of, a lot of actual thinking here before you go in. Because like what you’re saying though, is like, in order for you to do that well,

You have to have a bunch of things, right? Like you have to, and this is what we want our teachers to be doing too, is you have to have a clear trajectory of the learning goal. Like what is it we’re trying to do? What does it look like along the learning goal so that we’re ready to have those questions? We want our teachers to do that too. know, have I communicated to my students what it looks like when we’re doing, you know, we’re along this trajectory? Like, so did we made sure the learning goal was present? Did we make sure that the success criteria is evident? Did we make sure that

you know, we can communicate these things to the people we’re trying to get them to move towards this learning goal or along this trajectory. We need to do the same thing with coaches, like with teachers, when we’re trying to help them along a learning journey, which means like, have we defined what the learning goal is and have we made it clear to them? Have we communicated the success criteria along the way? In this district, they had, right? In this district, they had said, these are the things we’re looking for. Here is our rubric that we co-created together.

you know, we help them structure what that looks like so that they had this clear map of where we wanted to go. And there and then then it’s like, okay, now we have the clarity of where we’re going to go, everyone can see that this is a priority. And these are the moves we want to get to. Now let’s now structure the support to move them along that trajectory. Like, we do need to be making sure that that’s a huge component of the work. If you are going to say strengthen adoption in classrooms or move teachers down different, you

different trajectories of what we want, which starts with defining what it is, giving you a clear map, and then let’s now plan to support along the way.

Yvette Lehman: So what I think we’re envisioning is that once, you know, all of those other components are in place, imagine you have an hour or a half day with your coaches. The coaching team is coming together. A really great exercise might be to actually co-plan these questions because the reality is this is hard work. Like John and I are gonna do it now.

and it’s not going to be easy. Like it requires collaboration and a think partner and so why not come together as a coaching team and say to ourselves, okay we know what the look-fors are. Now imagine we observe this behavior, you know this is what the teacher is doing, this is what the student is doing in this classroom. What’s an assessing and advancing question that we could ask to nudge them along this trajectory? And so let’s make sure we’re defining for everybody what we mean by assessing and advancing if they aren’t familiar with the five practices.

So an assessing question in the classroom or in this coaching context helps us understand where the person is currently. It helps us unpack their current understanding, what they currently no understanding can do. So basically I’m just going to take what I observe and ask a question about it to dig a little bit deeper, to kind of lift the hood to see the thinking that went into that particular strategy or approach. That would be our assessing question.

Our advancing question is a question that I posed to help them move further, get closer to the learning goal. And in the classroom with students, that might mean, you know, getting them to think about a strategy that’s maybe more efficient or more sophisticated. So in the context of this coaching scenario, it’s like asking them a question that’s going to have them maybe reflect or consider something they hadn’t considered before.

Jon Orr: Right. That in a way makes me think of like, when we think about the assessing questions, we shared the, you know, the seven coaching questions we all need to be asking, which, you know, we’re from the coaching habit, which is not a teaching book, but it’s a book specifically around how to talk less and hold off on advice giving, which is in a way the assessing components, right? So asking, asking the questions like what, you know, we always use the, what’s the pebble of rattling around in your shoe, right?

which was helps, you know, get a problem out. But if you’re asking an assessing question, it might be more specifically to kind of like what you’re saying is help us understand what’s happening. The other question that we were saying in that say seven key questions for coaching that helps you kind of gain some clarity is I think a key question that we can always kind of ask is if you ask a question about their understanding of where they are on on on say a particular practice.

and they start to kind of give you some of the pebbles that are along the way, because that’s going to happen with educators, is ask the what else question. Like what else is happening here to help you kind of go down this pathway. Those are two from the seven questions. Yvette, what about some assessing questions for you?

Yvette Lehman: Okay, well let’s paint a scenario. Let’s actually dig in and give an example. Imagine we’re in this coaching session with our team and let’s keep the goal the same. So we’re working toward a student-centered classroom environment that allows meaningful mathematical discourse. So let’s describe, not zero. Zero would be like the teacher does all the talking and the students are passively sitting and getting.

So that would be like zero implementation. But let’s say we’re closer to like level one, you know, where it’s like, it’s still a lot of direct instruction, but the teacher is asking questions and giving students an opportunity to maybe turn and talk. Okay. So it’s like we, we’ve made a shift. Like we’re starting to see more student discourse, but it’s like, you know, very limited. It’s in the direct instruction environment and it’s really only leveraging the one routine of like,

think pair share. Like it’s like, you we’re turning to our elbow partner and we’re having a quick conversation and we’re coming back to direct instruction. So I think we can envision what this classroom looks like, sounds like. What would be an assessing question to ask that teacher?

Jon Orr: So I am observing that we’re asking, you know, teachers, the teacher is asking kids to turn and talk in this lesson. And that was their understanding of I’m and also you have to also make the assumption that we’ve clearly articulated that what it looks like when we’re doing, or we could be doing say the discourse at a higher level, right? So

you’ve got divine to me what discourse looks like at a higher level so that I know where I’m trying to go so I can ask an assessing question to see where they currently think they are.

Yvette Lehman: man, so I always use this quote from Lucy West, is, know, students are sitting around talking like little mathematicians. So it’s like they’re, you know, debating and justifying and defending and they’re using math vocabulary. And it’s like a really robust environment where you almost think about it as, know, we’re all working towards proof or mathematical understanding. And there’s all of these spaces where students are learning with each other, with the teacher.

And the dynamic is not, you know, I also love this. Lucy West says that when you are in a classroom where it’s all like the it’s all like teacher, student, teacher, student, teacher, student. So it’s like, you know, you’ve seen this classroom where it’s like the teacher asks a question and then one kid puts their hand up and that one kid answers it. She always says like, that’s like sleepy time for everybody else. It’s like the one or two kids that you’ve, you know, put their hand up are engaged and everybody else is asleep.

So the opposite of that is like, you know, the teacher isn’t the knower or the sole keeper of knowledge in the classroom. They’re just a really strong facilitator. And it’s like the community of learners is coming together to, you know, come to common understanding of generalizations of math. So like that’s the far extreme, you know, and you can picture it, right? Like all these little mathematicians debating, you know, patterns and structures that, yeah, like I mean, I’ve seen it. It’s possible. I’ve seen it. you know, when all the conditions are in place, this is possible. So imagine it’s like, on one end, again, you have direct instruction. The other end, have this, you know, community of learners who are justifying reasoning, defending, debating, you know, seeing relationships, all these things happening. The teacher’s not the sole keeper of knowledge in that room. So now we have a teacher who, you know, has stopped the monologuing.

Jon Orr: Great. Great.

Yvette Lehman: and is at least, you know, pausing during the monologue and putting some of the opportunity for the students. And we always say, I quote this all the time, it’s like they’re beginning to understand that the person doing the talking is doing the thinking. And so they’re building in, you know, brief moments throughout the direct instruction monologue to have students turn and talk. So now let’s set, you know, let’s plan a question for this teacher.

Jon Orr: Right. Yeah, yeah, okay, that paints a great picture. I think the question that I would ask, and I think a good question is, and this can be asked in lots of different contexts, right, is to say like, okay, so you’re clearly asking for the turn and talk. What is it that you’re hoping that they learn or you learn from that turn and talk? And then again, assessing because you wanna hear what they have to say because you’re trying to say, is there clarity?

on the purpose of using, say, these strategies in the classroom and what you’re trying to elicit from your students. So asking that question of just kind of saying, what is it you’re hoping to gain here can help you understand whether they’re on the right track or not.

Yvette Lehman: Maybe another assessing question that I would ask is, why at that point in the lesson? So I noticed that after you said this, you stopped and you asked students to turn and talk. What was that strategic? Why did you feel that that was the appropriate time to hand it over to them?

Jon Orr: Why there? Hmm. Yeah. And the anticipation there, right, is, is, is because now you have to anticipate to what the responses could be, right? Like when you’re thinking you have to, you have to role play this out as an effective coach to go like, okay, well, if they say, well, I thought I was talking too much. And therefore I stopped to ask that, like, you know what I mean? Like you got a sense of like where their thinking is on this and where their, their, their real thinking is on, on what they’re trying to do. Because I think that will tell you a lot if they can answer that question appropriately.

Yvette Lehman: All right, so what would be an advancing question? it’s like you want to, so you’re, you’ve seen a change maybe. So we describe like maybe this teacher, used to be all direct instruction, all sleepy time for everybody else. And now they’re finding opportunities to give students an opportunity to turn and talk. What might you say to them as a question that would help move them further along this continuum?

Jon Orr: Yeah, I think what I would do is because I want to maybe this is still an assessment question. I don’t know. You kind of decide because I feel like it’s both. I mean, just I, I find it because it’s, I think it’s both is it helps them do helps you see but also them see, which can be an advancing question. Because in that question, I think would be like, well, is there anything preventing you from like, finding more spots like that? Right? Like, so which means though, it’s going to make them go

I can then advance my thinking to go, I’m going to find more, what would help me find more spots? But then it also tells you if there’s a blockage, you know, a pebble along this journey that’s preventing them from doing that, which can then help you on the next part for advancing as well.

Yvette Lehman: advancing for sure. I definitely think any I think that it’s and I think I’m struggling to distinguishing the two because it’s like I need to unpack and that’s why you need both. It’s like they almost go together. It’s like I need to unpack the current thinking in order to you know extend or promote thinking. So the one that I was thinking of it’s like kind of goes back to what you said which is like did you get what you were hoping to get out of that turn and talk? Right so it’s like did that

Jon Orr: Yeah, think it’s a both.

Yvette Lehman: turn and talk help you get closer to your goal? Like what did you learn from it? What did students learn from it? And then I think my advancing question would be, are there other structures and routine beyond turn and talk that we could put into place to promote meaningful discourse?

Jon Orr: Yeah, or like, what does it look like? Like, what would class look like if we had, you know, more meaningful discourse in the classroom and let them decide on like what, because that’s, that’s a similar, that’s a variation on what you just said, because it gives them the ability to paint the picture of what their class looks like. And then the follow up for me would again would be, well, what are the pebbles? What are the things preventing us from getting there so that we can deal with those on a case by case basis?

Yvette Lehman: So I think that, you know, our big idea from this episode today is that this work is hard, you know, and especially, you know, we know there’s a lot of change. We hear this all the time. It’s like you just get the ball rolling with a coaching team and then you have changes in coaches next year. And maybe you’re starting with a new group or you’re onboarding two new coaches and we’re making the assumption that all coaches feel comfortable walking into these situations and know what to say.

And I just don’t know that that’s fair. Like I certainly wouldn’t be confident if I didn’t have a community to talk it through with ahead of time. So if we do have meetings with coaches, I think it’s worthwhile to kind of engage in this process where it’s like, okay, it’s in, know that the district that we’re working with is doing this, like they are role playing where it’s like, imagine we walk into a room and we identify that a teacher is at step two on the implementation continuum.

We know that because this is what we’re observing, this is what teachers are doing, this is what students are doing, okay, what types of questions could we ask them to assess where they are and advance them along the learning trajectory?

Jon Orr: Yeah, no, this is a good example to talk about, you know, the four stages that we typically help our partners with through in designing improvement plans for sustainable growth. You know, this falls in like stage two land, is really optimizing sustaining your structures because I think a lot of times we miss

when we’re planning for improvement and we’re planning for professional development to happen in our schools and our school districts, we plan for teachers to get professional development. We talk about strategies, we talk about, you know, maybe we do focus in on content knowledge for those teachers. But I think the part that I think often gets missed, and this is the part in stage two that we often bring up with our partners is how are we planning to support the support, right? Like, if I’m at the math coordinator level and I’m trying to design what my

program looks like, how do I make sure that I’ve now accounted for supporting the people to make them quality facilitators? Because, because like you said, like, there’s hype, maybe high turnover, or maybe we just making an assumption, like you tap someone on the shoulder and say, Hey, you are great in the classroom, you’re gonna be awesome coach, like, that’s not necessarily true. How are we making sure that our coaches are supported and have the right

tools in their pockets to do the work. Because if we are going to build a sustainable program, we are going to point at, say, this classroom that we’re trying to create, this vision of mathematics in our schools, in our districts. If we have that clarity, we also know what are the two to three things we’re going to focus in, our focus zones for the year. How do we support all those people that are going to help us do this work so that we can all move together stronger and faster?

Because the reality is you’ve got coaches that are in the building, like you said, this district has coaches that are, say, not math specific, they’re instructional coaches, but we probably overlook supporting them. And we didn’t plan to support them, we just kind of planned around supporting teachers, but not the coaches. And that’s a misalignment, right? Like there’s a misalignment there around the two different structures, because you’ve got one arm of the work that’s happening is not aligned with the other arm of the work. And we got to make sure that alignment is happening.

even though we’re specifically talking about how do we plan for assessing and advancing questions here, the bigger picture is now zoom out. We’ve got to make sure that we’re actually designing structures and plans to support people who we probably overlooked in the past.

Okay, so we talked about that specifically. The four stages that I kind of mentioned is what we do to support schools and school districts. But really those four stages are around how do we create and support the six components of effective mathematics in our schools, our school districts, and even our classrooms. We have a free assessment that you can take if you have not yet taken it already. You can head on over to makemathmoments.com forward slash grow.

MakeMathMoments.com forward slash grow. It’s going to ask you, you know, I think it’s a seven minute to maybe 10 minute questions on the six areas. It’s going to send you a customized report based off those those questions that you answer, and it will pinpoint which of the six you may want to focus on first when you’re designing improvement plans, when you’re designing effective professional development for your district or for your school. So again, MakeMathMoments.com forward slash grow, check out that resource.

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