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.

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: Seek and acquire new information. Use visual images and nonlinguistic representations to add meaning. Interact with others to obtain and provide feedback and enhance understanding. Engage in inquiry-use and develop a thinking skill that will expand and extend knowledge. 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.

The hinge-factor to improving student learning is right before our eyes in the classroom, and yet big budget reforms continue to look outside of the classroom. The hinge-factor is ofeedback.oe The new cognitive feedback definition improves upon the old behaviorism one, offering new techniques and new strategies for teachers to use in classrooms. All teachers employ what they perceive to be feedback strategies, but most need to revisit the what, why, and how about feedback and the latest buzzword u formative assessment. Feedback is information communicated about an action, event, or process that relates back to the original source or goal. In the classroom, timely feedback can be any information that a learner receives as a consequence of performance that can be used to make improvements. Research and practice show that what is critical about feedback is: Not who gives it but who receives it. That it needs to be timely. Teachers need to learn basic techniques to efficiently turn curriculum statements into just-right learning targets so students can learn efficient progress monitoring with the help of the teacher. Students are adept at self-reporting and can learn strategies to track their own performances when instruction is deliberate. Learning to use a new definition of feedback, the hinge factor, teachers will find gains in classrooms without making other structural changes that are costly and political. Administrators can learn techniques to support teachers using the research during supervision.

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.

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.