Better PD through Design Thinking
This article describes Martin County School District’s innovative professional development series, CampTEACH (Technology Empowering Academic Change), which helps teachers more effectively leverage technology to foster learning. During two-day workshops teacher teams redesign a specific lesson plan using a design thinking approach to empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test their ideas. This engaging type of learner-centered… Read More ›
Involving Families: A Relationship-Centered Approach
This article describes the efforts to more fully include Latino parents at a school in Boulder Valley School District. While the featured school is an elementary school, the ideas in this article can be applied when working with families with students of any age. School leaders, community outreach specialists/parent coordinators, and teachers will all get… Read More ›
Black Lives Matter at School Teaching Materials
As part of the Black Lives Matter at School Action Week, this webpage lists resources which align with the Black Lives Matter guiding principles and focus on improving the school experience for students of color. Resources include the Black Lives Matter at School 2020 Curriculum Resource Guide as well as resource compilations created for this… Read More ›
Teaching for Deeper Learning
In this webinar authors Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver will preview content from their new ASCD book Teaching for Deeper Learning: Tools to Engage Students in Meaning Making. Participants will learn about their simple, two-pronged approach to teaching for deeper learning which can be used across grade levels and content areas. They authors will highlight… Read More ›
Making Student Success Visible: How to Act on Growth Scores
Given the new accountability models driven by ESSA, schools must show that students are not just reaching proficiency but growing within and across school years. In this edWebinar for education leaders, an assessment expert will share insights on analyzing student growth scores, along with tips for using growth data to enhance curriculum in your school… Read More ›
Bringing a Culturally Responsive Lens to Math Class
This article describes how a 7th-grade math teacher created a 3-week unit project to connect math to a real-world issue identified by students. The author outlines a simple 4 step process any math teacher could use to design a similar unit to build student engagement, including tips to ensure all students can demonstrate mastery through… Read More ›
Teaching Tolerance
This website is full of resources to promote diversity and inclusion, including classroom activities and lesson plans, as well as professional development activities and readings. The well organized site includes a section on classroom resources which are aligned with common core standards as well as Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards. This section includes a large database… Read More ›
4 Questions to Ask About Multimedia Content
This short article provides advice on selecting the best multimedia resources. To ensure they will lead to deeper learning experiences, teachers can select multimedia resources with their end goals for the activity or project in mind. Building on interactions with hundreds of educators, the author suggests 4 probing questions teachers of any subject can use… Read More ›
Tapping Students’ Interests to Develop Literary Analysis Skills
This article introduces a strategy for increasing student voice in English Language Arts (ELA) classes. A veteran teacher shares how passion blogging on topics of their choice helped students develop key analytical skills such as argument design, and use of evidence. This exercise provided scaffolding before moving on to analysis of complex literary texts, while… Read More ›
How Systems of Assessments Aligned with Competency-Based Education Can Support Equity
This report from the Aurora Institute and Center for Assessment looks at ways in which state leaders can build balanced assessment systems that support mastery-based education. In assessment systems aligned with competency education, assessments are coherently linked to target competencies and learning progressions, provide a range of evidence for each student, and monitor progress over… Read More ›
6 Strategies to Support the Development of Self-Directed Learners
This article explores several strategies to help students build the skills needed to be self-directed learners. The author, an experienced teacher, explores the importance of helping students develop skills in 3 categories: executive functioning, metacognition, and social-emotional learning. Teachers in any subject can try out the concrete classroom activities suggested here. Source Organization: Education Reimagined… Read More ›
Advancing Equity by Building Development Relationships
This story looks at the importance of building developmental relationships in which adults and youth share power, especially for students from traditionally underserved communities. Developmental relationships are are purposeful relationships built on trust, designed to help young people: Discover who they are Cultivate the abilities needed for them to shape their own lives Learn how… Read More ›