PARENTS

Guide to Coaching Children

The coaching process provides an individual with guidance, feedback, and direction to achieve a set of goals. Coaching implies a partnership between a coach and a client, rather than one person serving as a teacher. It involves communication, team work, exploration, and resolution. Coaches are knowledgeable in facilitating and developing the skills of others. They often do not have an expertise in the specific content of? an individual’s goal. For example, the parents and teachers coaches in LearningWorks will often know less about a particular digital technology or game than the children. However, by observing, listening, and understanding of goal setting, they are able to help children develop executive function skills. 

The following is a set of five steps that were developed by the Harvard School of Business to assist in coaching individuals in the workplace. They have been adapted to the LearningWorks project.

Step 1: Observation

• Take the time to watch children in game play without making judgments.
•  Observe children in their use of executive functioning skills (Prior to coaching, familiarize yourself with information about executive functions and the use of the game coaching guides.) 

• Assess the children’s strengths and weaknesses in their game play, problem solving, and executive function use. 
• Be ready to build on their existing skills. 
• Determine whether the children are ready to learn new skills or should continue to practice what they are doing.
• See how their limitations in the use of executive functions affect their behaviors.  (e.g., Are there signs of frustration, are they learning from their mistakes?)
• Assess how their use of executive functions vary in different situations. (e.g., Are similar problem-solving strategies/approaches tried at various game levels?)

Step 2: Questioning

• Questioning should be non-confrontational and designed to promote further understanding of behavior.
• Use open-ended questions such as, “How did you come to that decision?”
• Avoid close-ended questions; ask to clarify a specific point.
• Use mixed questions such as, “What do you think were the three most important strategies in the game?”
• Ask the children to tell you how they are making decisions and determining goals within the game.  (e.g., How did you decide to make that move? or “How did you learn from your mistakes?)
• Have the children elaborate on their choices.

Step 3: Listening

• Listening involves attending to both verbal and nonverbal cues. Listening is an effort to learn more about children’s decision making.
• Ask the children to talk out loud about what they are doing and take notes. Later use these notes to ask for further clarification.
• Observe for signs of emotion, involvement, frustration, and focus.
• Attend to verbalizations of satisfaction or low self-esteem.
• Use listening to respond in ways that communicate your understanding of what the children are doing and saying.
• Listening skills also include making statements such as, “I see,” or “I understand.”  “That was good.”

Step 4: Feedback

• Once you have listened, questioned, and observed, it is time to start talking, perhaps offering explanations or feedback. 
• It is often helpful to have a “verbal playbook” of some planned statements that facilitates making useful observations and suggestions. 
• Use LearningWorks coaching guides to assist with feedback.
• It is important that feedback be descriptive, describing what you see and not assuming motivation. 
• Attempt to give feedback in an uncomplicated, straightforward fashion. 
• You may ask the children to replay portions of the game to get further understanding. 
• Alternatively, perhaps the coach can play the game and have the children serve as the advisor or game coach by showing how to play it successfully.

Step 5: Agreement

• This involves arriving at a consensus around the children’s use of specific skills.
• Children are able to tap into potential skills.
• Children feel that they have new skills to use in other places.