Caring Enough to Know and Value Individual Students
Caring Enough to Know and Value Individual Students An excerpt from the Second Edition of Teaching Practices from America’s Best Urban Schools. Available now at all book retailers. Hattie (2009) synthesized over 800 studies of factors that influenced student achievement. He found that teacher-student relationships have a major influence on student learning, more powerful than most […]
Making Students Feel Valued and Capable
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Making Students Feel Valued and Capable [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 2 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] An excerpt from the Second Edition of Teaching Practices from America’s Best Urban Schools. Available now at all book retailers. [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] A group of six high school students from Dayton Business and Technology High School met with a researcher from the National Center for Urban […]
Connecting with Student Interests, Backgrounds, Cultures, and Prior Knowledge. Part 2.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Connecting with Student Interests, Backgrounds, Cultures, and Prior Knowledge [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 2 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Not Simply for the Sake of “Interesting” [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] It is important to note that in high-performing schools, lessons are rarely designed or pursued simply because they are likely to be interesting to students or because they are likely to relate to […]
Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding | Part 4: Observing and Adapting
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 4: Observing and Adapting [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] In high-performing urban schools, teachers check for understanding because they want to know how each student is proceeding toward mastery of the lesson’s specific objective. They ask questions to determine which concepts are understood by which students and which concepts […]
Connecting with Student Interests, Backgrounds, Cultures, and Prior Knowledge
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Connecting with Student Interests, Backgrounds, Cultures, and Prior Knowledge [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Building Connections [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] As usual, the conversations in this sophomore English class at one high-performing urban school we studied, were intense. Groups of three or four students (mostly Latino and African American) were leaning in, talking to each other with an air of urgency. […]
Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding | Part 3: Well-Distributed Checking for Understanding
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 3: Well-Distributed Checking for Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Nuthall (2005) discussed how some educators tend to cling to the belief that telling and teaching are the same thing; that what works in face-to-face conversation will work with a class of twenty to thirty students; and that attending only to […]
Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding | Part 2: Frequency of Checking for Understanding
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 2: Frequency of Checking for Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] In most classrooms in high-performing urban schools, student voices are heard more frequently than teacher voices. Teachers spend less time presenting. They spend more time trying to determine what students understand. Teachers present new information but then check almost immediately […]
Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Acquiring and Responding to Evidence of Understanding [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 1 [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] In a fourth-grade classroom at one high-performing school NCUST has studied, students worked busily in small groups pursuing their reading assignment. Each group had the task of reading a novel and creating a book review. Every student had a specific role that was […]
Introducing Content Logically, Clearly, and Concisely | Concise Presentations
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Introducing Content Logically, Clearly, and Concisely [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Part 4: Concise Presentations [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Teachers in high-performing schools help students master new content by keeping presentations brief. Rarely did we observe long lectures. Overwhelmingly, we heard student voices more than we heard teacher voices as we visited classrooms. Often teachers would present a concept in a […]
