This fall you are walking into a school carrying deep knowledge, proven skill, and a genuine desire to make a difference. The curriculum is in hand. The training is done. The teachers are waiting.

And the most important coaching you will do this year may have nothing to do with phonics.

Your curriculum assumes you already have some things in place

Underneath every scripted lesson, every pacing guide, every fidelity checklist, there are assumptions about the classroom where the lesson will be taught.

The assumptions are that:

• students know how to stay engaged in a whole group lesson
• transitions between whole group instruction and independent practice are smooth and quick
• students know where materials are and what to do when they finish
• students can sustain their own work while the teacher moves through the room
• when the teacher steps away to sit beside one student, the rest of the class keeps reading, keeps writing, keeps working
• students know how to solve small problems on their own.

When a classroom has that kind of predictability, when students own their work and move through the day with focus and direction, a strong literacy curriculum does exactly what it was designed to do.

The teacher delivers a clear, focused lesson. Students practice. The teacher moves through the room, confers with one reader, pulls a small group who needs the same thing, responds to student needs in real time.

When those conditions are still being built, the teacher spends their energy differently. They stop the lesson to redirect. They answer the same procedural question several times. They stay close to the whole group because the moment they step away, hands go up. The curriculum is present, but the foundations of that classroom are still taking shape.

This is skilled, specific work the teacher must do first. Building a classroom with that kind of ownership and focus takes time and intentional teaching. Many teachers are doing pieces of it already, from years of instinct and experience.

Over two decades in classrooms, from Daily 5 to CAFE to Prepared Classroom, we kept seeing the same nine practices in strong teaching.

When we mapped them to John Hattie’s research of over 2,100 meta-analyses, the research confirmed the success we've been seeing in classrooms.

These are the highest-leverage moves teachers can learn, use, and return to at any stage of a career.

The Teaching Practice puts all nine of those practices in your hands before you walk into your first classroom. It provides a clear picture of what each one looks like and how to build it deliberately with every teacher in your building.

Why this matters to me

There is a reason I feel strongly about coaches having this before they start. I lived the alternative.

In 2010 I stepped out of the classroom and into my first coaching role at Meridian Elementary in Washington State. Instructional coaching was so new as a field that the roadmap was still being written. I went in full of belief and readiness.

I remember walking into classrooms that first week of school and feeling something different from any other building I'd been at. The literacy programs were not yet open. What I was seeing instead was teachers welcoming students who had just arrived and were just getting to know each other. They were building community. Teaching routines for how we work together, how we support each other, how we move through our day. Practicing what it looks and sounds like to work on your own.

At the time I wasn't sure what I was seeing. Now it's blatantly obvious.
About two weeks in I sat down and reflected on how everything was going. I had gone in believing I was coaching on literacy. And I was. But I was also realizing that we had hardly even touched the curriculum, yet it wasn't a detour from the learning. We were establishing the conditions that made true learning possible. We were setting the stage for the rest of the year.

Coaching on literacy is a marathon. It is ongoing, deepening, never finished. But the sprint, welcoming students, building belonging, establishing the routines that let students focus and sustain their own work, that sprint is what allows the deep learning to take hold. I wish I had known then what I know now. Not just what I was seeing. What to call it. What to build next. And how to help every teacher in that building run that sprint with clarity and purpose.

I want it to be different for you. You are arriving with a mandate, a curriculum, and a genuine desire to make a difference. What most coaches do not yet have, and what this is about, is a complete framework for teaching itself. Not just literacy instruction, but the relationships, the environment, the routines, the ownership that make any instruction possible.

Prepared Classroom was built to answer that. Nine practices that together answer the question every principal, every teacher, and every coach is eventually asking.

What does effective teaching look like here?

And the answer to that question reaches well beyond how to teach a phonics lesson. It lives in whether students feel known by their teacher. Whether the room is set up to support focus and direction. Whether routines are strong enough that the teacher can move freely and teach the student right in front of them. Whether students have the ownership to sustain their own learning while the teacher works with someone else.
That is the classroom where literacy instruction takes hold. And building it is exactly what coaching can do.

Coaching begins with these first four practices

Here is the question worth sitting with before you walk into your first classroom, or your next one. What does the teacher in front of you actually need in order for literacy instruction to take hold? The curriculum assumes the classroom is already set up for learning. The coach's job, especially in those first critical weeks, is to make sure it is.

That is why the nine practices have a sequence. The first four are the foundation. When they are in place, everything that follows, conferring, small group instruction, responsive teaching, the deep literacy work you are there to support, takes hold in ways it simply cannot when the classroom is still finding its footing.

The nine practices build on each other. The first four are where coaching starts, because they create the conditions everything else requires.
Building relationships. Creating learning-ready environments. Teaching clear routines. Developing student ownership.

Relationship is the first practice because it is what makes teaching possible. When students feel genuinely known by their teacher, they take the risks that learning requires. They attempt the unfamiliar word. They ask when they are confused. They stay with something hard long enough to understand it. Every phonics lesson, every fluency routine, every comprehension strategy a teacher introduces goes deeper in a classroom built on that kind of trust.

Environment is the second practice because the physical space either supports learning or competes with it. When materials are organized and accessible, students find what they need on their own. When spaces are clearly defined, students know where whole group happens, where focused practice happens, where collaboration happens. The teacher moves freely because the room is set up to run. They can sit beside one student and give that student their complete attention.

Routines are the third practice because they turn procedures into automatic behaviors. A classroom with strong routines transitions quickly and smoothly. Students know what to do when they finish, when they are stuck, when they need a material, when the teacher is working with someone else. The cognitive energy that would have gone to figuring out logistics goes to reading instead.

Developing student ownership is the fourth practice because it is what the teacher's responsiveness depends on. A teacher whose students are focused, directed, and invested in their own learning can pull a small group, confer with individual readers, and adjust instruction in real time based on what they are actually seeing. Once that ownership is there, the teacher has the freedom to teach responsively in ways that change what students are able to do.

Start here with every teacher in your building. Help them see these four practices clearly, build them deliberately, and watch what opens up for the literacy coaching that follows. The sprint, run well, is what makes the marathon possible.

The Coaching Curriculum That Is Already Built

Here is what coaching without a shared framework often looks like. Building everything from scratch. Drawing on your own experience to name what effective teaching looks like. Searching for videos and articles to share with teachers. Creating resources in real time, while also learning the craft of coaching itself.

That work takes years. And the teachers in a school can only grow as far as what one coach has had time to build.

John Hattie put it plainly: we want great teachers by design, rather than by chance. A school where teacher growth depends on what one coach has managed to create on their own is a school growing by chance.
The Teaching Practice on TeachDaily.com was built to change that.
Every one of the nine practices is named, defined, and taught through video, articles, milestones, and success criteria. The expertise lives in the platform. The coach walks alongside a teacher who is building something named and visible, without having to build the tools from scratch.

That shift changes how teachers receive coaching. When the nine practices are named and held inside a shared resource, the coach is a colleague on the same journey. The teacher is the expert on their students. Together they have a common map and a common language. Every conversation goes somewhere specific. Every next step is clear.

And when an entire school is working from that map together, something larger becomes possible. A new teacher arrives in September and is oriented to the nine practices from day one. A mentor and a new teacher debrief after an observation and both know exactly what they are looking at. A principal walks in and the feedback points to something the teacher can go work on that same afternoon. Professional development compounds from year to year because every teacher is building on the same foundation.

That is a school growing by design.

Before School Starts

The most powerful thing you can do right now is get clear on the nine practices before you walk into your next classroom.

Know what each one looks like when it is fully present. Know where to begin with a teacher who is eager and where to begin with a teacher who is still finding their footing. Know what the sprint looks like, those first critical weeks of building relationships, environment, routines, and student ownership, and how running that sprint well opens everything the marathon of literacy coaching requires.

Your teachers are going to open their doors to you. That is an act of trust. It deserves the best you have to give them. The Teaching Practice makes sure what you bring is comprehensive, research-grounded, and ready to use from day one.

Explore the nine practices at TeachDaily.com. You now have what every coach needs before the first lesson. A clear picture of what effective teaching looks like here, and a path to build it with every teacher in your building.