“Let's FaceTime Tonight”: Using Digital Tools to Enhance Coaching

Abstract

Abstract This article documents a collaboration between a second‐grade teacher and a university‐based literacy coach to implement dialogic instruction as part of a 14‐week cross‐disciplinary curriculum unit. The coach–teacher dyad used digital technologies to enhance a problem‐solving approach to coaching. The authors describe the coaching interactions, the digital tools used (e.g., e‐mail, FaceTime, text messaging, video and audio recordings), the problems that the coach–teacher dyad collaboratively addressed over three phases of the unit, and the student learning that occurred in response. Throughout, the authors highlight how the coach and teacher made flexible use of digital technology to carve out additional time and space for problem solving as they worked to support the language and literacy skills of a group of multilingual second‐grade students.