In the first 8 introductory lessons, students learn to be a coach. In these lessons, the students practice coaching on pre-written papers that have typical errors made by students on them. Before continuing, take out the teacher manual so that you can stop and look at the lessons and the worksheets as they are discussed in the following sections.
As you look at this Table of Contents, you can see that the coaching icons are introduced one at a time and practiced before moving on to another icon. We teach place in I-2, then size in I-3. Then, in I-4, we combine place and size. Shape is taught in I-5. Finally, in I-6, all three icons are combined. They do not do any writing until lesson 7.
If you look at the lesson goal column, you will see the main goal of the lesson. When you are teaching the lesson for the first time, it is called “introduce.” The second time you teach it, it is called “practice.” The third time, and any time after that, it is called “complete.”
Coaching Symbols
Students are taught to look for three types of errors — place, size, and shape of the letter. Four icons are used to help students coach. We will describe each of these in the order they are taught. Students are taught to move from left to right through the icons, looking for errors. Once an error is found, the icon is circled. Only one icon is circled at a time. If no errors are found, students circle the thumbs up icon.
