Getting Started With Teacher Clarity

Help elementary school students engage in the learning process and achieve their goals in the classroom with the effective and proven principles of teacher clarity. Clear communication between students and teachers is crucial for effective learning. When students understand the why and how of learning (aka “teacher clarity”), it’s so much easier for them to fully comprehend and engage with the material. But it can be hard to ensure good communication while also juggling curriculums, state standards, grading, and the other elements of teaching in an elementary school classroom. That’s where Getting Started with Teacher Clarity comes in. This friendly, all-in-one guide breaks down the basic elements of teacher clarity, gives advice on how to incorporate those elements into the school day, and even provides classroom-ready activities for busy teachers to implement right away. This book not only explains the importance of the shared learning progressions between the student and the teacher, but also offers effective teaching practices for classroom settings, including: • Deconstructing state standards to develop learning intentions and objectives • Developing success criteria to support new learning • Building student awareness through structured language talk • Embedding self-assessment checks for students to assess their levels of understanding throughout a lesson • And much more! Through the research-based methods of teacher clarity, educators will understand the importance of partnership between students and teachers, which in turn fosters improved student success.

Help elementary school students engage in the learning process and achieve their goals in the classroom with the effective and proven principles of teacher clarity. Clear communication between students and teachers is crucial for effective learning. When students understand the why and how of learning (aka “teacher clarity”), it’s so much easier for them to fully comprehend and engage with the material. But it can be hard to ensure good communication while also juggling curriculums, state standards, grading, and the other elements of teaching in an elementary school classroom. That’s where Getting Started with Teacher Clarity comes in. This friendly, all-in-one guide breaks down the basic elements of teacher clarity, gives advice on how to incorporate those elements into the school day, and even provides classroom-ready activities for busy teachers to implement right away. This book not only explains the importance of the shared learning progressions between the student and the teacher, but also offers effective teaching practices for classroom settings, including: • Deconstructing state standards to develop learning intentions and objectives • Developing success criteria to support new learning • Building student awareness through structured language talk • Embedding self-assessment checks for students to assess their levels of understanding throughout a lesson • And much more! Through the research-based methods of teacher clarity, educators will understand the importance of partnership between students and teachers, which in turn fosters improved student success.

An essential resource for student and teacher clarity With the ever-changing landscape of education, teachers and leaders often find themselves searching for clarity in a sea of standards, curriculum resources, and competing priorities. Clarity for Learning offers a simple and doable approach to developing clarity and sharing it with students through five essential components: crafting learning intentions and success criteria co-constructing learning intentions and success criteria with learners creating opportunities for students to respond effective feedback on and for learning students and teachers sharing learning and progress The book is full of examples from teachers and leaders who have shared their journey, struggles, and successes for readers to use to propel their own work forward.

Unlock the secrets to student achievement with purposeful learning and clear expectations On a clear day, you can learn forever— that’s the adapted lyric you’ll be happily humming once you’ve covered this playbook, because you will have mastered using learning intentions and success criteria, the twin engines of Teacher Clarity. This template-filled guide shows you how to own it, do it, and live it—and your students will be more successful as a result. In this fully revised edition, this succinct, smart, and swift book’s nine learning modules take you systematically through a process that begins and ends with standards. With abundant and all new examples that span grade levels, planning templates for every step, key professional learning questions, new videos, revised success criteria and relevance sections, and the latest research, you have the most practical and up-to-date planner for designing and delivering highly effective instruction: Identifying Concepts and Skills Sequencing Learning Progressions Elaborating Learning Intentions Crafting Success Criteria Modifying Learning Intentions to Include Language Expectations Determining the Relevance of the Learning Designing Assessment Opportunities Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences Establishing Mastery of Standards Designed for PLCs or independent teacher use, The Teacher Clarity Playbook helps practitioners align lessons, objectives, and outcomes of learning seamlessly, so that the classroom hours flow productively for everyone. For any teacher striving to be more organized and have stronger relationships with students, this is the book that shows you how.

Provide students a clear view of what success looks like for any process, task, or product. What does success look like for your students? How will they know if they have learned? This essential component of teaching and learning can be difficult to articulate but is vital to achievement for both teachers and students. The Success Criteria Playbook catapults teachers beyond learning intentions to define clearly what success looks like for every student—whether face-to-face or in a remote learning environment. Designed to be used collaboratively in grade-level, subject area teams—or even on your own—the step-by-step playbook expands teacher understanding of how success criteria can be utilized to maximize student learning and better engage learners in monitoring and evaluating their own progress. Each module is designed to support the creation and immediate implementation of high-quality, high impact success criteria and includes: • Templates that allow for guided and independent study for teachers. • Extensive STEM-focused examples from across the K-12 STEM curriculum to guide teacher learning and practice. • Examples of success criteria applied across learning domains and grades, including high school content, skills, practices, dispositions, and understandings. Ensure equity of access to learning and opportunity for all students by designing and employing high-quality, high-impact success criteria that connect learners to a shared understanding of what success looks like for any given learning intention.

AN ESSENTIAL RESOURCE FOR STUDENT AND TEACHER CLARITY With the ever-changing landscape of education, teachers and leaders often find themselves searching for clarity in a sea of standards, curriculum resources, and competing priorities. Clarity for Learning offers a simple and doable approach to developing clarity and sharing it with students. Are both teachers and students clear about what must be learned, why students are learning it, and how they can be successful? Are students able to determine their next steps in learning through quality feedback and assessment? Have teachers had the time and support to collaborate around clarity to ensure an aligned approach within your school system? This book offers five powerful practices that include: Gaining clarity Sharing clarity Feedback with clarity Assessing with clarity Collaborating with clarity In addition, the book is chock-full of examples from teachers and leaders across North America who have shared their journey, struggles, and successes to provide examples, exemplars, and models for readers to use to propel their own work forward. This is a don’t-miss resource!

Feeling overwhelmed—constantly, on a daily basis—has unfortunately become the status quo among educators. But it doesn't have to be. Schools need to stop adding more programs, strategies, activities, resources, projects, assessments, and meetings. Though they are often implemented with the best intentions, these things ultimately end up as clutter—that which inhibits our ability to help students learn. Instead, teachers need more clarity, which emerges when we prioritize our efforts to do less with greater focus. This isn't simply a matter of teachers doing less. Rather, teachers need to be intentional and prioritize their efforts to develop deeper understanding among students. In Teaching with Clarity, Tony Frontier focuses on three fundamental questions to help reduce curricular and organizational clutter in the interest of clarity and focus: * What does it mean to understand? * What is most important to understand? * How do we prioritize our strategic effort to help students understand what is most important? By prioritizing clear success criteria, intentional design, meaningful feedback, and a shared purpose, teachers can begin to clear away the curricular clutter that overwhelms the profession—and embrace the clarity that emerges.

Make learning visible in the early years Early childhood is a uniquely sensitive time, when young learners are rapidly developing across multiple domains, including language and literacy, mathematics, and motor skills. Knowing which teaching strategies work best and when can have a significant impact on a child’s development and future success. Visible Learning in Early Childhood investigates the critical years between ages 3 and 6 and, backed by evidence from the Visible Learning® research, explores seven core strategies for learning success: working together as evaluators, setting high expectations, measuring learning with explicit success criteria, establishing developmentally appropriate levels of learning, viewing mistakes as opportunities, continually seeking feedback, and balancing surface, deep, and transfer learning. The authors unpack the symbiotic relationship between these seven tenets through Authentic examples of diverse learners and settings Voices of master teachers from the US, UK, and Australia Multiple assessment and differentiation strategies Multidisciplinary approaches depicting mathematics, literacy, art and music, social-emotional learning, and more Using the Visible Learning research, teachers partner with children to encourage high expectations, developmentally appropriate practices, the right level of challenge, and a focus on explicit success criteria. Get started today and watch your young learners thrive!