Teacher Clarity: Understanding How Learners Learn
Teacher Clarity: Understanding How Learners Learn
Explore innovative student-centered learning frameworks that empower ownership of learning, integrate standards-based practices, foster teacher clarity, ensure academic rigor, and build strong student agency. Find practical strategies and insights to transform classrooms and empower learners for success.
Seeking Rigor In PBL What is Rigorous Project Based Learning? Robert Marzano presents a way to design projects that emphasizes the enhancement of students’ options. He uses structures that provide clear pathways to rigor from his book Understanding Rigor in…
Identity and Agency Defined Identity refers to our comprehensive understanding of our own features, our self- perception in relation to others, our perceived abilities, and our recognition of our weaknesses, as stated by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Dominique Smith,…
Creating a Culture of Inquiry Culture of Inquiry Six key things educators can do to create a culture, atmosphere, and environment where students are more comfortable asking questions and more inclined to do so are: Foster an Appreciation of Questioning…
What Makes a Good Question? Jim Knight, author of The Beautiful Questions, asks what makes a good question? Answer effective questions are Empowering Authentic Respectful Invitational Empowering Asking good questions empowers the one receiving the inquiry, not the one posing…
3 Authentic Strategies To Take to Your Classroom to the Real World There are ways to take your classroom to the real world by making the classroom a real-world setting, where students make real-world decisions with real-world consequences. 3 strategies…
Effective Feedback Effective feedback needs to be reviewed as just right, just in time, and just for me. It can nourish unprecedented growth in learning for all students. O’Connell and Vandas, authors of Partnering With Students Building Ownership of Learning,…
I am sure many educators have heard this before: Many students who disrupt learning are actually struggling academically, and would rather be seen as “the bad kid” than as “the stupid kid.” Educators know how important engagement is for student…
Effective SEL Teaching Practices In their book, Building Blocks for Social-Emotional Learning, Tracy A. Hulen and Ann-Bailey Lipsett introduce ten SEL instructional practices you can use to teach and integrate social-emotional skills into academic and social settings throughout the school day: I…
Introduction To help facilitate Project-Based Learning of your own, a fourth-grade teacher and James Fester, author of Creating a PBL unit Based on Local History in Elementary School, give 5 important tips that are effective in creating a Project-Based Learning…
What is Hexagonal Thinking? Hexagonal thinking involves students recording ideas, questions or facts on hexagonal tiles and arranging them so that related tiles are next to each other, essentially building a web of connections. It can be used to provide…
Why Empower Student Learning So Important 6 Truths came about when I read Spencer and Juliani use the Louis Braille story to focus on giving kids the knowledge and skills to pursue their passions, interests, and future. Louis Braille as…
Building Sense of Belonging Building a sense of belonging is a strong sense of connection to a group or community. Feeling respected and accepted, having a sense of group purpose, and being part of a bigger system are ways to…
Build Framework for Student Agency What is an Agency? Bill Zima, author of Mindsets and Skillsets for Learning: A Framework for Building Student Agency, defines agency as the perceived ability of the individual, based on his or her capacity, to…
Using Student Choice to Support Motivation Chase Nordengren, author of Step into Student Goal Setting book, writes ‘no matter how your classroom is designed or how much authority you exercise over students, they always retain the most important decision: the…
Introduction To build better rubrics, it needs to be high quality. According to Karin Hess, author of “6 Key Questions to Better Rubrics”, 3 important qualities of a better rubric are: Creating a better rubric is more than slapping expectations…
Introduction To build commitment to learning in students, you need buy-in from students and staff with school vision, values, and goals. School functioning as Professional Learning Communities uses their mission, vision, values, and goals as successful businesses use Big, Hairy,…