Classroom Methods Help to Engage Students in the Material “How do you have so much control in your classroom?” “How do you get 100% student participation?” “How do you activate the whole brain when teaching students?” These are some questions that can be answered by Whole Brain Teaching. Whole Brain Teaching is a high energy, highly […]
Tag: Assessment
Fostering Academic Accountability in High School Students While Improving Communication with Parents and Teachers
Weekly Plan Implemented to Help Keep Students Accountable For Their Academic Commitments This Best Practice was implemented to help students improve failing or low grades from the mid-term grading period to the end of the semester. A Grade Improvement Plan (GIP) template was designed to aid students and teachers in tailoring strategies for improvement to […]
The Egg Drop Project
Hands-On Activity Helps Students Integrate STEM Concepts with Content Writing 7th grade science, math, and English honors teachers at Southside Middle School developed a cross-curricular egg drop project to integrate STEM concepts with content writing. Student were challenged to design, create, test, and analyze a BESS (Better Egg Shipping System) that would protect a dropped […]
Let’s Get Visual
Visual Cue Cards Enhance Classroom Management This summer, I attended a conference on appealing to special needs students. There were many strategies presented about adding more visual elements to your classroom. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to appeal to the visual learners in my classroom. This year, I have tried out visual cue […]
Student Led Conferences
Student Led Parent-Teacher Conferences Increase Student Confidence Student Led Conferences facilitate student articulation of learning, student-engaged assessment through review and reflection, and parent engagement. As parent-teacher conferences transition to parent-teacher-student conferences, students become a part of the conversation and become involved in the process of reflecting on their progress. After parents and students understand that both […]
Classroom Engagement
Professional Development Session Helps Teachers to Improve Student Engagement After thoroughly reading Dr. Robert Marzano’s “The Art and Science of Teaching,” Storer staff members conducted a professional development session where we analyzed each chapter and provided each other with examples on how we can use this information throughout the school building. After this session, each staff […]
Placement
Placement Testing We test new students with a 32-question placement test. This is combined with the student’s mathematics SAT score and adjusted based on the courses the student has already taken to determine the placement in junior-year mathematics courses. Developing the placement process included determining the weights for each input (placement test, SAT and previous […]
Responsive Instruction Plan
Changing School Diversity Creates a Need for Change At Orchard Park Elementary School in Carmel, Indiana, we are seeing increasing diversity in our school population. As the population changes, we are seeing more need for student services that help with academics, behavioral issues, social skills, and other areas related to issues of poverty, English as a […]
Data Drive Instruction
Data Team Summaries Drive Educational Instruction Grade level teams meet weekly to discuss both formative and summative data. For example, upper grades use daily math work to form small intervention groups at the end of each day. Primary grade levels often look at the depth of knowledge about a newly introduced concept. Decisions are made […]
In-class Work Time
Mastery of School Material is Enhanced by In-class Work Time In order to ensure student mastery of the material, we provide our students with time in class after the lesson to help solidify the targeted skill set listed in the objectives for the day. Issues this Best Practice Addresses: Students can become confused when they […]
Literacy Framework: Focus on LLI
Workshop Models Help Benefit LLI The Project School Literacy Model is based on the systematic coordination of curriculum and instruction best practices that we have researched and selected to work together in order to ensure the success of all readers and writers. At The Project School, the majority of the teaching of reading and writing occurs […]
Exhibition Night
Student Presentations Enhance Learning Experience Inspire Academy increases parental involvement each semester with a school-wide celebration of learning called “Exhibition Night.” The event features the culmination of a semester of student work a they unveil their final products. Students present their learning to a broader audience by giving informational speeches and substantive question and answer […]
Success in Effectively Scheduling Success Periods
Remediation Period Helps Students Who Are Potentially Falling Behind The Success period is a significantly important component of the 8-Step Process designed to increase student achievement. This best practice represents our third iteration—and we believe the most effective—of how to conceptualize and implement ways in which to effectively schedule the Success period for all students […]
Success
Remediation, Maintenance, and Enrichment Period Helps Students Achieve Success We offer a Success period at the beginning of each day. Our periods are tiered into three levels for both math and ELA. We have remediation, maintenance, and enrichment. Our enrichment period is project and community-based learning with the current math and ELA standards wrapped into […]
Streamlined Fitness Infusion Heart Rate Technology PE Program
Instruction Used to Increase Heart Rate We developed a streamlined pattern skill development curriculum in order to improve our heart rate time on task with our heart rate technology in our daily physical education classes. With refined instruction we are able to provide students with 60-75% or In Zone or Above heart rate during our […]
Skillstreaming: Pro-social Skills Instruction
Pro-social Behaviors and Skills Taught to Teachers to Decrease Problem Behaviors in the Classroom The Burris Counseling Center implemented an intervention of social skills training, called Skillstreaming, in the elementary grades (K-5). SkillStreaming consists of sixty different pro-social behaviors/skills for students. To establish which skills to choose, a needs assessment was administered to all elementary […]
Mini-assessments for High School Biology
Assessments Help Teachers Improve Students Biology Knowledge Starting in the summer of 2013 the biology teachers at Anderson High School in an effort to get ahead of the day when biology may become a graduation requirement. As coordinator leader of this project to the the goal was to be simple: a. Develop a common calendar […]
Digital 8-step TEAM Data Wall
Google Spreadsheet Helps Teachers to Analyze Students Standard-Based Data The 8-Step Process steps 1 & 4 require a school to do “test score disaggregation & assessment”. After being in our third year of implementation we have developed an efficient tool to meet that requirement. Our digital “8-step TEAM data wall” is LIVE with Google Docs. […]