Integrate essential capacities that research suggests will include the most valuable and valued skills in the future.

In the field of education, we strive to prepare our students for our current and future world. In our Global Mindset Framework, we offer an accessible framework of five core mindsets that support students to thrive in our increasingly globalized world. 

Each mindset includes an accompanying list of skills that can be integrated into your existing classroom practice to support students in developing 21st century expertise. 

Multiple models of lesson planning that can support you in identifying goals, activities, assessments, and more.

Where and how do we, as teachers, begin to plan a cohesive and engaging lesson for our students? 

Our lesson planning resource includes templates to support pre-, during-, and post-instructional planning for lessons. Through strategic planning, implementation, and reflection, we can engage students in rigorous and relevant lessons that invite inquiry and collaboration. 

Effectively educate your students while caring for their social and emotional health by identifying what pressures they're facing.

Often in our schools, students are burdened by different pressures that can impact their social and emotional health. As educators, our job is to help students succeed academically, while also nurturing their social and emotional health — two tasks that can often come into conflict with one another. 

The graphic organizer and examples within this resource are intended to help you think of ways to effectively educate your students while caring for their social and emotional health.
​
By identifying pressures that impact students, teachers and schools can respond to these pressures proactively. 

Jumpstart your inquiry process and strategically plan next steps related to student data.

What do we do with student data? Why does data matter? How does data inform our next steps? 

This resource helps administrators and teachers to observe, analyze, and inquire into their students’ data. By analyzing facts, trends, and patterns, this data tool helps administrators and teachers strategically plan for next steps and future interventions to support students’ learning. 

Diversify your classroom management techniques and trigger positive reactions from students.

Classroom management can be challenging for highly experienced and new teachers alike. It may feel like you are trying the same classroom management techniques over and over again, without seeing positive reactions from students. 

This resource provides 25 different ways to negotiate student behavior in the classroom, along with relevant examples of how they might play out in various classrooms. By expanding your toolbox of strategies, this resource provides new ways of addressing disruptive student behaviors. 

Capitalize on critical thinking, reflection, and action to keep your students actively engaged. 

How can we engage students in the classroom? 
​
This resource offers practical strategies for engaging your students both intellectually and emotionally. 

Strategies for lesson timing, transitions, and closings.

Have you ever struggled with your lesson pacing? Do some components of your lesson plans always run too long or too short? Our Foundations of Timing resource provides some helpful tips and tricks to tighten up your lessons. 

With some simple tools for timing, your planning and instruction can be focused and intentional in supporting students. 

Address disruptive students by encouraging engagement and productivity, as opposed to punishment.

Disruptions can throw a lesson off track, influence other students, and often leave teachers feeling helpless in their own classrooms. The best way to deal with disruptions is to avoid them all together.

In an effort to proactively prevent disruptions, this resource provides three simple, daily rituals to connect with students. By avoiding disruptions, we can engage and support all students in focused and meaningful lessons. 

Differentiate using data, tasks, texts, and groups. The more stars you're able to introduce, the more strategic and targeted the instruction.

​In EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon, Diane Ravitch defines differentiating instruction as a form of instruction that seeks to “maximize each student's growth by recognizing that students have different ways of learning, different interests, and different ways of responding to instruction.”

This strategic planning resource supports teachers in differentiating their instruction using techniques like strategic grouping and targeting particular texts.

Through differentiation, teachers can maximize their students’ growth by responding to each student’s varied needs and interests. This resource provides straightforward, implementable ways to engage and support students’ learning. 

Invite students to unpack and engage with Kate Chopin's 1899 novel, The Awakening.

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. 

Self-study opportunities for English language learners.

​This resource is designed to help students who are still acquiring English language skills and need extra supports for self-study. Language learning requires extra attention and focus, and this can be exceptionally hard when learning independently or at home. In this collection, we have compiled some of our favorite and most useful resources for guiding and supporting learning both within and outside of the classroom. Links, descriptions, and advice for using each resource are included.

We hope this collection can help to guide those who may be struggling with language learning, especially in the ELA setting. We know how difficult it can be to learn a new language, and hope that these resources can help facilitate an elevated learning environment and a comprehensive approach to leveling the learning environment for all of our amazing learners.

​Guide and support English language learners both within and outside of the classroom.

We know how difficult it can be to reach all learners in a class — especially when some students are language learners who may need extra attention — which is why we've compiled a collection of resources, designed for teachers of English Language Arts (ELA), in order to support ELLs in the classroom and at home. Included in this collection are resources for lesson planning, creating materials, and guides and suggestions for teaching new language learners.

​Invite students to unpack and engage with Alice Walker's short story.

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. ​

​A collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to enhance their social-emotional skills.

The activities included in our Learning Through Living resources are designed to engage K-5 students who are learning at home. Included in this set are a collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to enhance their social-emotional skills.

These resources cover a range of SEL-related topics, including:

• Reflection
• Coping with challenges
• Imagination
• Awareness

Using minimal materials, you can use these resources to encourage play and creativity as your students sharpen their social-emotional skills. You can also consider allowing older students to lead and teach those who are younger, or using the included ideas as a springboard for new ways to play and think about social-emotional learning.

A collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to improve their science skills.

The activities included in our Learning Through Living resources are designed to engage K-5 students who are learning at home. Included in this set are a collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to recognize science and improve their skills.

These resources cover a range of science-related topics, including:

• Biology
• Buoyancy
• Engineering
• Friction

Using minimal materials, you can use these resources to encourage play, problem-based learning, and creation as your students sharpen their science skills. You can also consider allowing older students to lead and teach those who are younger, or using the included ideas as a springboard for new ways to play and think about science.

A collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to improve their math skills.

The activities included in our Learning Through Living resources are designed to engage K-5 students who are learning at home. Included in this set are a collection of activities that allow young learners to use their everyday environment to recognize math and improve their skills.

These resources cover a range of math-related topics, including:

• Geometry
• Data
• Operations
• Measurement
• Fractions
• Number sense
• Decimals

Using minimal materials, you can use these resources to encourage play, problem-based learning, and creation as your students sharpen their math skills. You can also consider allowing older students to lead and teach those who are younger, or using the included ideas as a springboard for new ways to play and think about math.

Support students as they build essential social-emotional skills.  

Bringing low-tech self-reflection practices into your classroom can be a helpful way to address the social-emotional needs of your students. Developing social-emotional skills can help students of all ages better care for and advocate for themselves and others.

One way of incorporating at least a few minutes of self-reflection into lessons is by using social-emotional prompts. Our prompts are organized into several categories, drawn from the core social-emotional competencies identified by the educational research organization the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.

​Prompts fall into the following categories:

• Decision-making: Making choices by reflecting on how they will impact you and those around you; thinking about the realistic outcome of actions when making choices.

 

• Empathy (social awareness): Imagining perspectives outside of your own; recognizing the support and resources that exist in your community (family, school, neighborhood, etc.).

 

• Relationships: Building and maintaining supportive and fulfilling relationships; being reflective of your relationships.

 

• Self-awareness: Noticing and reflecting on your emotions and thoughts and what causes them to change; identifying how your emotions and thoughts affect how you act.

 

• Self-care: Taking time to reflect on how you are feeling and taking actions to support your overall well-being.

​Support students in identifying meaningful pieces of text and encourage them to make their thinking visible as they read. 

During reading, it’s important for students to engage thoughtfully with the authors’ words, considering the ways in which particular lines of text speak to them, make them think, or inspire them. 

Our Can I Get a Lifeline? resource invites students to identify and to reflect on lines of text using accessible sentence frames. This is a great classroom tool that provides students with clear ways to generate their own thinking and connections as they read any text.  

Engage in purposeful planning and identify short-term strategies to achieve your goals.

Learning has no limit, and as professionals, we are constantly growing. 

This resource is a framework of purposeful planning for professionals to critically reflect on their own growth and goals. Through critical reflection, this resource can serve as a tool for professionals to identify what steps and strategies would support them in their own learning & professional growth. 

Encourage students to identify their strengths and struggles, and set achievable goals to support their learning.

It’s always a valuable time for teachers and students to engage in conversations around goal setting. 

This resource offers educators a template for supporting students in setting personal goals, with a focus on those that are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.

Identifying goals can help increase student engagement by providing a sense of purpose to students as they learn, and can also help create a sense of accountability.