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4/8/2024

Collect and Analyze Observational Data

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Plan observations and track data with intention, in service of developing engaging instruction.
Observations can be a powerful tool for formative assessment and data-informed teaching, whether you're working alone, or in a co-teaching partnership that's utilizing the One Teach, One Observe approach.

This observational planning template utilizes a before, during, and after approach to observation, providing an outline to guide you in identifying the focus of your observation; a place to collect and record observational data during the lesson; and a guide for analyzing the observational data in order to inform instructional next steps.

As you track your findings intentionally and connect them to your instruction, students are more likely to be engaged and appropriately challenged in the classroom. 
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Mastering in the Moment Assessments
​Promising practices for assessing and adjusting your instruction to meet students' needs. 

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Designing Coherent Instruction
​​Develop instructional planning methods that support rigorous and engaging learning experiences.

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Making Data Meaningful
​Discussing the obstacles and opportunities of data collection and analysis in schools.
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3/20/2024

Revitalize Writing: Using Descriptive Language

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Support students with word choice and the use of descriptive details.
This resource includes student-facing questions to guide the writing process, as well as a wheel of emotions to help students choose descriptive, emotionally-provoking language. 

By engaging in this exercise, students can acquire tips and techniques for their own writing. 

This resource is brought to you by the Student Press Initiative, which partners with schools and community-based organizations to raise the bar for what, how, and why students write. Since its founding in 2002, SPI has been revolutionizing education by advancing teacher leadership in reading and writing instruction, and bringing authentic student voices to life. ​
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Celebrating Student Voice
Writing for publication can create awareness, raise social consciousness, and provide students with essential life skills.

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The Power of Project-Based Learning
Discover how you can create authentic projects that promote student engagement and intellectual growth. ​

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Amplifying Student Voices
Writing projects can feel like a distraction, unless we look at the ways in which we can integrate them without losing teaching time for skills or content.
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2/5/2024

Increase Student Performance on Exams

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A five-step process to help students develop discrete skills needed for test-taking. 
How can we intervene when our students struggle to develop necessary skills in our classes?

This resource is a five-step intervention process for teachers to increase student performance on discrete skills as they prepare for exams. Through intervention and targeted instruction, students’ learning outcomes will improve on exams like the Regents and disciplinary-specific content. 
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Building Perseverance Through Healthy Habits
Support students in developing a plan to build endurance for a testing environment.

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Rocking the Regents
Locate instructional leverage areas and prepare students to pass the NYS English Regents. 


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Equity in Assessments
An equitable approach to assessment is critical for planning curriculum and instruction, and for authentically documenting what students know.
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1/18/2024

Prepare Students for Regents Exams

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A three-fold approach for helping students move out of cycles of failure.
How can we help students to feel empowered and prepared for their Regents exams?

Our intervention resource provides a three-fold approach to helping students move out of cycles of failure. By utilizing these straightforward entry points for planning and instruction, you can help your students to excel on the Regents and beyond. 
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All of the Above: 3 Steps to Analyzing Multiple Choice Data
​How to recognize patterns in student performance as you take your next steps toward strategic instruction. 

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Rocking the Regents
​Locate instructional leverage areas and prepare students to pass the NYS English Regents. 

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Equity in Assessments
​Exploring how equitable assessments can broaden our understanding of student knowledge, and how schools and districts can address their own assessment practices.
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11/13/2023

Encourage Student Exploration

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Set students on a path to conduct their own research, gather information, and generate real questions that lead to deeper exploration.
In the science classroom and beyond, we hope for our students to explore genuine questions and inquiries that interest them. 

This resource is a graphic organizer that can be used with students as they generate their own wondering or question, discover potential answers through research, and then consider how their findings might inform future inquiries. 
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By inviting students to pursue their own questions and answers, this resource can be a tool to support student agency in their own learning. 
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What Makes a Rigorous Question?
How one high school is constructing their own definition of rigor, in service of developing high expectations and meaningful work for students. 

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21 Skills for the 21st Century
Teach critical capacities that will prepare today's students for tomorrow's changing world.

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Principles of Practice: Cycles of Inquiry
Engage in a quest for understanding that helps you evolve and meet the changing needs of your students and school community.
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6/30/2023

Strengthen Your Co-Teaching Partnership

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Move through a mindful reflection protocol that will increase understanding between co-teachers and act as a bridge for broaching conflict. 
If you teach with a co-teacher or work closely with a colleague, it could be that you’ve experienced moments of disagreement. This mindful reflection protocol provides a series of four steps adapted from Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (2015). 

These steps support collaborative, critical reflection and strategic action planning with your co-teacher to resolve disagreements and chart a course forward together. 
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Unpacking the "Co" in Co-Teaching
Understanding your co-teaching partnership through the four stages of group development.

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Keys to Co-Teaching
Navigate the complexities of co-teaching relationships and find the right balance for your partnership.

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Station Teaching
Make the most of your co-teaching partnership as you transform traditional classrooms into dynamic learning environments. 
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5/30/2023

Cultivate a Reading Community

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Encourage student-led annotating that builds a community of readers.
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How can you make annotating a student-led process that builds a community of readers? 

This resource includes directions and materials for an annotation method called The Traveling Text, which invites students to collaboratively annotate short passages of texts in small groups, writing and responding to one another’s thinking. 
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Leaving Behind A Trail: The Traveling Text
Encourage students to expand their repertoire of ways to read and respond to literature.

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Best Practices for Guided Reading
Explore this highly effective approach to engaging and supporting readers at all levels.

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Literacy Strategies for Student Engagement
Spark students’ interest and their understanding of the importance of storytelling about world events and the human experience.
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4/30/2023

Explore Literature: Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Invite students to unpack and engage with Zora Neale Hurston's novel.
Finding ways to engage students in the reading of classic texts can be difficult. Invitations to Create — a method from our Literacy Unbound initiative, which reinvigorates students and teachers through project-based, collaborative curricula developed around challenging texts, ultimately increasing student engagement and building classroom community in the process — offer engaging multimedia prompts that are designed to support students in their reading and understanding of a shared piece of literature. Each invitation offers an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and synthesize the text at hand. 

Our Invitations to Create provide key opportunities for educators to move students from talking about the text to experiencing the text. Through Invitations to Create, students can feel the story in ways that might not otherwise be possible — they can talk from within a text, and speak directly from the perspective of the characters. This process allows rich meaning-making to happen, and will allow you and your students to find ways to experience literature together.

Each invitation is focused on a meaningful quote that our team identified as a hotspot for further thinking, discussion, and creation. Additionally, the hotspots are accompanied by multimedia connections, which are meant to inspire further thinking, engagement, and curiosity for students while they're reading. ​​
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Getting the Students to Read: The Power of Annotation
​Encourage meaningful reading habits as you ask students to engage in a dialogue with their text. 

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Elevating Literacy Engagement
Inspire students to read and respond to challenging texts through multiple modalities.

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Scaffolding Complex Texts
​​Reflect on why reading can elicit such emotional responses, and focus on how you can support readers of all ages.​
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4/1/2023

Analyze Student Data

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Reflect on student data and develop an action plan for responding to the data at hand.
Analyzing data leads us to a few different ‘tions:
  • Confirmation — confirming something we believed to be true but didn’t have the evidence to prove
  • Revelation — new information we’d never thought of
  • Inspiration — new ideas for us to use
  • Application — space for us to take action

This resource offers guiding questions for each of these ‘tions to support data analysis, critical reflection, and the process of developing an action plan for responding to data. 
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Setting Instructional Expectations
Set clear instructional expectations that help elicit students' most quality thinking. 

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Rocking the Regents
Locate instructional leverage areas and prepare students to pass the NYS English Regents. 

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Making Data Meaningful
Talking through the obstacles and opportunities we’re witnessing when it comes to data collection and analysis in schools.
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4/1/2023

Revitalize Writing: Final Task Investigation

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Backwards plan the skills & knowledge required to complete a final writing task. 
Backwards planning is one of the keystones of project-based learning, and this template supports educators in thinking about the skills and knowledge required to complete the final task, as well as anticipate where we might see strengths and struggles. 

By engaging in this exercise, students can acquire tips and techniques for their own writing. 

This resource is brought to you by the Student Press Initiative, which partners with schools and community-based organizations to raise the bar for what, how, and why students write. Since its founding in 2002, SPI has been revolutionizing education by advancing teacher leadership in reading and writing instruction, and bringing authentic student voices to life. 
DOWNLOAD

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Create a Culture of Writing
Promising practices that can help nurture confident, capable student writers.

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The Power of Project-Based Learning
Discover how you can create authentic projects that promote student engagement and intellectual growth. 

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Amplifying Student Voices
Writing projects can feel like a distraction, unless we look at the ways in which projects increase learning for students, and the ways in which we can integrate them without losing teaching time for skills or content.
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2/1/2023

Revitalize Writing: Define & Analyze Genre

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Support students in examining mentor texts and acquiring tips and techniques for their own writing. 
Defining a genre serves to support students in thinking about the genre, audience, and purpose of a text to identify the key traits of the genre, as well as moves for how to write to a particular audience and for a particular purpose. 

This analyzing genre template supports students in examining mentor texts by thinking about their content, structure, and format. By engaging in this exercise, students can acquire tips and techniques for their own writing. 

This resource is brought to you by the Student Press Initiative, which partners with schools and community-based organizations to raise the bar for what, how, and why students write. Since its founding in 2002, SPI has been revolutionizing education by advancing teacher leadership in reading and writing instruction, and bringing authentic student voices to life. 
DOWNLOAD

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Celebrating Student Voice
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Writing for publication can create awareness, raise social consciousness, and provide students with essential life skills.

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The Power of Project-Based Learning
Discover how you can create authentic projects that promote student engagement and intellectual growth. 

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Students As Authors
Discussing our approach to real-world writing instruction, and its proven impact on students and teachers.
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1/1/2023

Promote Instructional Rigor

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Utilize the spectrum of thinking skills to promote rigor in your daily lessons.
How can we utilize the spectrum of thinking skills to build rigor in our daily lessons?

This resource is a visual meter of the developing levels of mastery of learning new skills presented alongside Bloom’s Taxonomy. In addition, the meter includes verbs for constructing AIM questions, skills, and curricular objectives. 

This tool empowers teachers and administrators to build rigor into their daily lessons by visualizing the process of learning in a new way.
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What Makes a Rigorous Question?
​How one high school is constructing their own definition of rigor, in service of developing high expectations and meaningful work for students. 

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Differentiating Like a Star
​Explore differentiation strategies that will help you add depth and complexity to your lessons. 

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Intellectual Student Engagement
​Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz returns to share her insight on engaging scholars at all levels.
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12/21/2022

Identify Leverage Areas

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Tap into critical reflection and unpack professional challenges.
Using our 5 Whys protocol, we can tap into critical reflection and dig below the surface to identify factors within your sphere of influence that are contributing to the challenge you're facing.

This resource is a thought-organizer for identifying the most common factor among the challenges you are experiencing and engaging in the process of critical reflection. By investigating the root of the common factor, you can ​then identify leverage areas that will help you to reframe your challenge and feel empowered to take action. 
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Creating Transformational Change
​A suggested sequence of sessions that encourages learning, application, reflection, and the sharing of promising practices.

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Coaching for Change
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​Strengthen your leadership skills and learn how to provide instructional coaching with clarity, confidence, and compassion.

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Book Talk: Atomic Habits
​The Main Idea's Jen David-Lang examines tiny changes we can make to remarkably improve our habits and routines in the classroom and beyond.
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11/30/2022

Facilitate Close Readings

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A “during reading” structure designed to invite students to engage with a text three times, each time employing a different modality.
How do we encourage and support students to close read texts? 

Three Highlights is a “during reading” structure designed to invite students to engage with a text three times, each
time employing a different modality. This structure invites students’ minds and bodies into the reading process, uncovering multiple meanings in an author’s words and choices. 
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Literacy Strategies for Student Engagement
​​Spark students’ interest and their understanding of the importance of storytelling about world events and the human experience.

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Designing Invitations to Create
​Inspire students to read and respond to challenging texts through multiple modalities.
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Centering Students for Literacy Engagement
​Exploring the connection between instructional autonomy and student engagement. 

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11/22/2022

Understand Off-Task Behaviors

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​Recognize common types of student behaviors, understand the motivations behind them, and explore how to respond appropriately.
As teachers, we need as many tools as we can to interpret student behavior and respond appropriately. In order to interpret behavior, we must challenge ourselves to see beneath the surface and identify why the behavior is happening.

This resource describes the four types of off-task behaviors and ways that teachers can respond to each. When encountering inappropriate student behavior, our goal is to respectfully communicate the expectations, de-escalate the conflict, and maintain teacher authority.
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Behavior As Data: What Are Your Students Communicating? 
​Engage in low-inference observations that can lead to new discoveries about your students' needs. 

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Creating the Classroom Culture
​​Cultivate the building blocks of your classroom community. 

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De-Escalating Classroom Conflicts
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Support your students by creating a compassionate classroom culture and understanding behavior as a form of communication.​
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8/1/2022

Explore Literature: The Jungle

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Invite students to unpack and engage with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Finding ways to engage students in the reading of classic texts can be difficult. Invitations to Create — a method from our Literacy Unbound initiative, which reinvigorates students and teachers through project-based, collaborative curricula developed around challenging texts, ultimately increasing student engagement and building classroom community in the process — offer engaging multimedia prompts that are designed to support students in their reading and understanding of a shared piece of literature. Each invitation offers an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and synthesize the text at hand. 

Our Invitations to Create provide key opportunities for educators to move students from talking about the text to experiencing the text. Through Invitations to Create, students can feel the story in ways that might not otherwise be possible — they can talk from within a text, and speak directly from the perspective of the characters. This process allows rich meaning-making to happen, and will allow you and your students to find ways to experience literature together.

Each invitation is focused on a meaningful quote that our team identified as a hotspot for further thinking, discussion, and creation. Additionally, the hotspots are accompanied by multimedia connections, which are meant to inspire further thinking, engagement, and curiosity for students while they're reading. ​
DOWNLOAD

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Centering Students for Literacy Engagement
​A look at high-leverage areas for student engagement in reading and writing.

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Designing Invitations to Create
​Inspire students to read and respond to challenging texts through multiple modalities.

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Literacy Strategies for Student Engagement
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​Spark students’ interest and their understanding of the importance of storytelling about world events and the human experience.
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6/15/2022

Support Independent Reading

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​A template students can use to independently identify, track, and archive unfamiliar words as they read.
How do we support students in using context to figure out the meaning of new and challenging words? 

This resource can be used as a tool with students that prompts them to look for context clues, make predictions, connect to prior knowledge, and discover definitions of new words. By teaching a process for figuring out difficult words, we can empower students to monitor for their own meaning as they read. 
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Getting Students to Read: The Power of Annotation
Encourage meaningful reading habits as you ask students to engage in a dialogue with their text. 

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Best Practices for Guided Reading
​Explore this highly effective approach to engaging and supporting readers at all levels.

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Literacy Strategies for Student Engagement
​
Spark students’ interest and their understanding of the importance of storytelling about world events and the human experience.
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6/6/2022

Develop An Effective PD Sequence

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Provide structures that help your community cultivate ways of working, learning, and growing together to meet the evolving needs of students.
The L.A.R.S. cycle — learn, apply, reflect, share — is an effective sequence of PD sessions when we’re seeking to not only build the knowledge base of our participants, but when we’re seeking our participants to implement specific strategies, concepts or techniques into their practice.
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This resource includes a detailed explanation of the sequence, as well as usable agenda and reflection templates for participants to use as part of sessions. 
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Creating Transformational Change
​Bring professional learning into focus and initiate changes in teacher practice and improvements in student learning.

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Coaching for Change
Strengthen your leadership skills and learn how to provide instructional coaching with clarity, confidence, and compassion.

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Leadership & Adult Learning
A conversation about how leaders can better connect with the adult learners in their school communities.
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6/1/2022

Scaffold Your Instruction

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Outline a path toward mastery and balance necessary supports for students, no matter where they start from.
How can we help students to build independence and mastery over new skills and content information?

This framework is a tool for teachers to use progressive scaffolding: techniques, learning activities, and assessments that help students to build their own independence & mastery over new skills and content. 

The framework for progressive scaffolding is applicable to all content areas, grade levels, and performance levels to increase student agency and purpose over their own learning.
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Unpacking the Progressive Scaffolding Framework
Move toward rigorous learning goals while developing a clear path forward for students who begin at every level.

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Differentiating Like a Star
Explore differentiation strategies that will help you add depth and complexity to your lessons. 

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Intellectual Student Engagement
Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz returns to share her insight on designing authentic and engaging instruction for scholars at all levels.
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5/15/2022

Develop Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

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A comprehensive guidebook for implementing culturally relevant and sustaining education. 
Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education was adapted by the New York State Education Department in 2018, as a part of their wide-ranging plan to meet students’ needs through the Every Student Succeeds Act. The approach includes a commitment to acknowledge and affirm that students’ culture and identity are valid and valuable and that educators who cultivate culturally relevant, responsive and sustaining spaces for learning will increase student academic, intellectual, social, and emotional growth.

NYSED identifies four elements of the CR-SE Framework: Welcoming and Affirming Environment, High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction, Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment, and Ongoing Professional Learning. To further develop these broad categories, this professional learning document that expands on the original elements to bring the principles to life.

Our Guidebook is organized by five Pedagogical Principles: Welcoming and Affirming Environment, High Expectations, Rigorous Instruction, Inclusive Curriculum, and Assessment Design. Within each principle, we’ve illustrated specific attributes that serve as characteristics of the principle.

This project sought to provide an in-depth analysis of CRSE principles and attributes, including connections between The Danielson Framework for Teaching and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Framework. These concepts are illustrated through portraits of practice, and concrete look fors to support teachers, school and district leaders to identify CRSE aligned practices.
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Centering CRSE
​Develop inclusive and responsive curriculum that celebrates student identity.

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An Equity Framework
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​How the CRSE framework can reduce the burden on educators and help teachers to synthesize expectations in practical ways.

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Affirming Diverse Identities
Create a space where each student sees themselves as someone who belongs, someone who matters, someone with value.
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The Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) at Teachers College, Columbia University is committed to making excellent and equitable education accessible worldwide. ​CPET unites theory and practice to promote transformational change. We design innovative projects, cultivate sustainable partnerships, and conduct research through direct and online services to youth and educators. Grounded in adult learning theories, our six core principles structure our customized approach and expand the capacities of educators around the world.

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  • Home
  • Who We Are
    • Our Team
    • Our Partnerships
    • Our Authors
    • Principles of Practice
    • Job Opportunities
  • What We Do
    • Services
    • Equity in Action
    • Literacy Unbound Summer Institute
    • Signature Initiatives >
      • Literacy Unbound
      • New Teacher Network
      • Student Press Initiative
  • Educator Essentials
    • Book of the month
    • Online Courses
    • Professional Articles
    • Ready-to-use Resources
    • Teaching Today Podcast
  • Support CPET