Improving Student Learning One Teacher At A Time

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.

This book's breakthrough approach to supervision, built on the Teaching Schema for Master Learners introduced in the ASCD best-seller Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time, is a simple 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. Here you'll find clear, practical guidelines designed to complement and enhance your school's existing observation and evaluation models. Jane E. Pollock and Sharon M. Ford explain how to Focus classroom observations and feedback on the critical classroom decisions that promote meaningful, lasting learning. Guide teachers toward the most effective curriculum, teaching, assessment, and feedback strategies for each stage of the lesson. Support teachers' efforts to align the plan book and the grade book for better instructional decisions and higher student achievement. Along with these research-based recommendations, the book also features the voices of working administrators who share the difference this approach has made for them, their teachers, and their students. You too may find it's the tool you've been looking for to revitalize yourself as instructional leader, shift your focus from inspecting teaching to improving learning, and build a more positive and more successful school.

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.

A how-to manual for achieving excellence despite budget cuts This book offers a comprehensive framework to enhance student achievement in good times and in bad. The author provides a school improvement action plan and then shows how to target resources to implement that plan. More than just a “theory” book, this text describes concrete, specific actions that can be taken immediately. Key strategies include: Using data to support boosting student performance Focusing on effective instruction Setting goals to drive resource allocation priorities Setting priorities for situations that require budget cuts Hiring top teachers and providing ongoing professional development Providing needed technology resources

"Educators will find a wealth of classroom examples and success stories that bring this proven practice to life. In addition to boosting achievement, Feedback helps students develop a lifelong learning skill that they will use in everything they do." -- Back Cover.

A companion to 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. --from publisher description

This book helps you make sense of the data your school district collects, including state student achievement results as well as other qualitative and quantitative data. Easy-to-use templates, tools, and examples are available on the accompanying downloadable resources.

In this 2nd edition of Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, Mike Schmoker extends and updates the case that our schools could be on the cusp of swift, unparalleled improvements. But we are stymied by a systemwide failure to simplify and prioritize; we have yet to focus our limited time and energy on the most essential, widely acknowledged, evidence-based practices that could have more impact than all other initiatives combined. They are: simple, coherent curricula; straightforward, traditional literacy practices; and lessons built around just a few hugely effective elements of good teaching. As Schmoker demonstrates, the case for these practices—and the need for them—has grown prodigiously. In every chapter, you’ll find late-breaking discoveries and practical advice on how to simplify the implementation of new state standards in the subject areas; on the hidden pitfalls of our most popular, but unproven instructional fads and programs; and on simple, versatile strategies for building curriculum, planning lessons, and integrating literacy into every discipline. All of these strategies and findings are supported with exciting new evidence from actual schools. Their success confirms, as Michael Fullan writes, that a focus on the best "high-leverage practices" won’t only improve student performance; they will produce "stunningly powerful consequences" in our schools.

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.