Minding The Achievement Gap One Classroom At A Time

The achievement gap is a persistent and perplexing challenge for educators. While school- and system-level reforms continue to be discussed in statehouses and district offices, individual teachers are challenged to do something now to help students who are falling short of standards, including students who are English language learners and receiving special education services. A companion to the ASCD best-seller Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time, this book identifies small, specific adjustments to planning, teaching, and assessment practices that will support more effective learning in every student, every day, and help close the achievement gap on a classroom-by-classroom basis. Here, you'll learn how to * Use readily available tools--curriculum documents, a plan book, and a grade book--to improve all students' access to, interaction with, and mastery of lesson content. * Design daily lessons that clarify learning goals and require students to use high-yield learning strategies, seek feedback, and reflect on their progress. * Promote the progress of English language learners through coordinated pursuit of content and language goals, and synchronize instruction to improve the performance of special education students in both co-teaching and resource environments. This book also features the voices of working educators who share how "minding the gap" has helped them engage academically at-risk students, ELLs, and special education students; improve students' test scores; and sustain these gains over time. If you are a classroom teacher or specialist committed to helping all your students become more successful learners and unwilling to wait for high-level solutions or even the results of another "data retreat," then this is just the resource you need.

A companion to the ASCD best-seller Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time, this breakthrough approach to supervision offers principals a simple, positive way to help teachers make the right adjustments in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and feedback -- the four areas of practice that make the most difference in how learners learn.

This book offers fresh insights into your students' learning difficulties and moves you to explore classroom practices that align with the functioning of memory and the ways students learn.

In this second edition of Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time, Jane E. Pollock and Laura J. Tolone combine updated research and real-world stories to demonstrate how it takes only one teacher to make a difference in student performance. Their approach expands the classic three-part curriculum-instruction-assessment framework by adding one key ingredient: feedback. This "Big Four" approach offers an easy-to-follow process that helps teachers build better curriculum documents with * Curriculum standards that are clear and well-paced, and describe what students will learn. * Instruction based in research, from daily lessons to whole units of study. * Assessment that maximizes feedback and requires critical and creative thinking. * Feedback that tracks and reports individual student progress by standards. Pollock and Tolone demonstrate how consistent, timely feedback from multiple sources can help students monitor their own understanding and help teachers align assignments, quizzes, and tests more explicitly to the standards. The Big Four shifts the focus away from the basics of what makes a good teacher toward what makes good learning happen for every student every day.

"They don't care about their education." "They are not capable of learning." "I can't work with them." "I can't get through to them." Just as you may have thought these things about your students, they, too, may have similar thoughts about you: "She doesn't care about my education." "He is not capable of understanding me." "I can't work with her." "I can't get through to him." While all students in your class, building, or school district need your support, the Black and Latino male students—the most underserved, suspended, and expelled students in education—need you to understand them as you support them so that they can thrive academically. In Becoming the Educator They Need, former professional athlete turned educator Robert Jackson reminds teachers and administrators that although "a great majority of all the stories in the news about Black and Latino males are negative," these young men—the most likely to be incarcerated, drop out of school, and become victims of homicide—need you to work through any biases you may have and internalize and employ the five core beliefs and mindsets necessary to best serve your Black and Latino male students, the six core values for teaching Black and Latino males, and the 11 characteristics of strong, healthy relationships and become the educator that these students need.

If the three r's define education's past, there are five i's—information, images, interaction, inquiry, and innovation—that forecast its future, one in which students think for themselves, actively self-assess, and enthusiastically use technology to further their learning and contribute to the world. What students need, but too often do not get, is deliberate instruction in the critical and creative thinking skills that make this vision possible. The i5 approach provides a way to develop these skills in the context of content-focused and technology-powered lessons that give students the opportunity to 1. Seek and acquire new information. 2. Use visual images and nonlinguistic representations to add meaning. 3. Interact with others to obtain and provide feedback and enhance understanding. 4. Engage in inquiry—use and develop a thinking skill that will expand and extend knowledge. 5. Generate innovative insights and products related to the lesson goals. Jane E. Pollock and Susan Hensley explain the i5 approach’s foundations in brain research and its links to proven instructional principles and planning models. They provide step-by-step procedures for teaching 12 key thinking skills and share lesson examples from teachers who have successfully "i5'ed" their instruction. With practical guidance on how to revamp existing lessons, The i5 Approach is an indispensable resource for any teacher who wants to help students gain deeper and broader content understanding and become stronger and more innovative thinkers.

This book presents the five I's: information, images, interaction, inquiry, and innovation, and how they relate to developing students' critical and creative thinking skills. It provides step-by-step procedures for teaching 12 key thinking skills and shares lesson examples from teachers.

Learn how making the right adjustments in four critical areas of practice-curriculum, instruction, assessment, and feedback-can help any teacher significantly improve student learning.