Making the Standards Come Alive! is a must read for any educator committed to ensuring that students’ engagement and achievement levels are significantly increased. The author, Heather Clayton, principal of Mendon Center Elementary School, Pittsford Central School District, New York, explores strategies that can help us design instruction based on rigorous standards in ways that maximize their positive impact on student learning. We encourage you to use entire issues to promote thought-provoking discussions and use key points as handy inserts in newsletters or posts on district and school websites. We love to read your tweets and your posts on Facebook and Pinterest about points you find thought-provoking and/or helpful. Subscribe Now!
Quickwrites
Boost Writing Production and Engagement
In this issue Heather writes, “As we return to another school year, there will still be many unknowns. What we do know, however, is that our students deserve the promise of sound instructional practices that meet them where they are and prepare them for what’s to come. Now, more than ever, it the time to have predictable routines, opportunities to build stamina, and classrooms where it is safe to take risks as learners. One way to do this is through the use of daily Quickwrites.
In his book, Conditions for Learning, Brian Cambourne shares how “The majority of teachers frame writing as a medium for communication. Very few frame it as a medium for thinking, learning and solving problems.” However, that is precisely what writing should be for our students: the opportunity to think on the page and put writing to paper every day, rather than spending their time thinking about what to write. According to author Paula Bourque, “Frequent short bursts of writing throughout the day give our students more time to think on paper with greater automaticity, fluency, and agency to discover what they know.”
- Becoming More Mindful
- Bringing the Standards to Life through Project-Based Learning
- Building a Literacy Community with a School-wide Book of the Month
- Classroom Community Building Circles
- Classroom Meetings
- Close Reading of Complex Texts
- Common Core Mind Shifts
- Creating Classroom Cultures for Thinking
- Cultivating Creativity
- Feedback in the Mathematics Classroom
- Growth Mindset
- High Quality Reading Instruction for All Learners
- It’s Amazing How Authentic Writing Can Motivate K-12 Writers
- Keys to Productive Discussions in the Math Classroom
- Learning Targets
- Learning Teams: Data-Driven Decision Making
- Let’s Hear It for Activism!
- Let’s Hear It for Civility!
- Let’s Hear It for Empathy!
- Making Parents Your Common Core Partners
- Math Fact Fluency
- Mathematical Practice One: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them
- Mindfulness for Students
- Misconceptions About the Common Core
- Narrative Non-Fiction: Uncovering Truths
- Norms and Protocols: The Backbone of Learning Teams
- Planning and Teaching Mini-Lessons
- Power Standards: Focusing on the Essential
- Promoting Student Reflection
- Providing an All-Access Pass via Academic Vocabulary
- Quickwrites: Boost Writing Production and Engagement
- Renewed and Reenergized: A New Beginning
- Robust Core Instruction and Response to Intervention (RtI)
- Socratic Seminars: Making Meaningful Dialogue
- Teaching Argumentative Writing: An Inquiry Process
- The Art of Questioning: The Student’s Role
- The Art of Questioning: The Teacher’s Role
- The New Normal: Using Lessons Learned to Promote 21st Century Learning
- The Thinking Behind the Content: Standards for Mathematical Practice
- The Writer’s Notebook – A High Leverage Practice for Uncertain Times
- Ten Tips for Promoting Student Engagement During Online Sessions
- Tips for Recording and Using Instructional Videos
- Why and How to Engage Students in Classroom Discourse and Argumentative Writing
