How Federal Funds Can Support Well-Rounded Opportunities, a live presentation by Oregon Department of Education from October 2022.
Material Type: Lecture
"Models of Excellence is a curated, open-source collection of exemplary high-quality PreK-12 student work, along with resources to support the use of student work models to inspire and elevate teaching and learning. The purpose of this site is to catalyze the use of models to help build student skills and dispositions for success in college, careers and life."
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Case Study, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy
Culturally responsive practice considers how to engage students in the learning process, both cognitively and emotionally, through an understanding of how their identity and perspective is shaped by their culture and community experiences (Muñiz, 2019). Though culturally responsive practices often focus on aspects of racial identity, they should encompass many different aspects of a person’s identities including native language, gender, and able-bodiedness as well as aspects that may be less visible such as mental health and learning disabilities.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
The purpose of this Guide for Culturally Responsive Practice is to provide educators and educator teams with questions and protocols to guide and/or reflect on how to apply culturally responsive instruction practices as they address learner variability. Learner variability is a recognition that all students differ, and that learning sciences research guides us in understanding how these differences matter for learning. It embraces both students’ struggles and strengths. It considers the whole child—academic, social-emotional, and student background. When people understand learner variability, they see a design challenge, not a student problem.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
One in five students in the U.S. are estimated to have learning and attention issues. Specific learning disabilities can include dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, while attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) centers on an individual's challenge with focus. Learning and attention issues often co-occur. These brain-based differences are not the result of low intelligence, poor vision, or hearing. Although young people will not ‘grow out’ of their learning or attention challenge, the appropriate, evidence-based programs and strategies can support a learner to become successful in school, work, and life. It is particularly important that these interventions occur early on (ideally prior to third grade) to provide students the support they need at critical periods of learning and development. While learning and attention challenges affect all learners from every income level and across all races, genders, and ethnicities, students who are Indigenous, Black, Brown, living in poverty, or learning English are more often over- or under-identified with specific learning disability diagnoses.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for learning design. It is based on research in the learning sciences that each individual is unique in how they learn, and within that variability are patterns that are systematic and predictable based on three neural networks that govern the learning process in the brain (Meyer et al., 2014). Knowing the sources and ranges of this variability helps learning designers proactively design to address it. UDL reflects a paradigm shift from curriculum-centered classrooms to learner-centered classrooms that allow for flexibility in learning. The goal of UDL is for all students to have access to learning and for all students to have agency as learners.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Class meetings or morning meetings focus on supporting students to reinforce the positive behaviors of their peers, reflect on previous learning, and preview new tasks weekly, daily, or at the beginning or end of class. With established norms for the meeting, this strategy can be used with students in all grades and across content areas. To begin the class meeting, the teacher can ask students to share celebrations or praise for a peer or peers based on the work they most recently completed independently or in groups, and students respond with a celebratory clap. Shout-outs can be followed by updates, a problem or question for whole class discussion, and future plans. The organization of a class meeting can be modified based on the teacher's goals for the meeting.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Effective classroom management creates a welcoming learning environment that supports all learners, even when they experience challenges.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This strategy will support teachers to learn about the importance of making time to connect with families to form a partnership in support of their children. This approach can help teachers to form positive connections with students and their families, and maintain a holistic/asset-based perspective about each student.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Parents and/or caregivers are experts on their children, and should be engaged as key partners in supporting each student to excel. Connecting individually with your students' parents via phone calls or text messages shows respect and care for each student and their family, ensures the parent/caregiver has the necessary information about their child's progress, and allows teachers to gain invaluable feedback and information from parents. This strategy will help you prepare for a variety of types of parent/caregiver phone calls and give you tips to enlist all parents/caregivers as partners.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This strategy provides teachers with the opportunity to learn about and value the richness of their students' communities and support students as they identify ways to contribute to their communities. Spending meaningful time in students' neighborhoods and inviting community members into the classroom provides educators and school staff with the opportunity to learn from those they teach as well as those who care for their students and support their communities. In addition to experiencing an increase in student engagement, teachers will learn more about their students' caregivers and communities. This will create a stronger and more responsive school community.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
According to the Clover Model of Youth Development published by the PEAR institute, a sense of belonging is one of the four essential elements that people of all ages need in order to thrive, learn, and develop. It is also a fundamental part of establishing a welcoming and inclusive learning community. This strategy provides the support needed for teachers to create and sustain such an environment, not only for the students in their classrooms, but also to represent the diversity in society.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Designing a Family Partnership Plan helps teachers to explore the assets that families bring to the table and the qualities of ideal partnerships. Learning about what it takes to develop effective partnerships will provide you with the support you need to create your own partnership plan. Strong partnerships with students' families can help teachers to optimize student achievement. This strategy will help you to assess your level of family-school partnership and provide you with the opportunity to focus on asset-based narratives as you explore critical considerations when engaging with families. Recognizing that parent involvement is a key factor in student success and considering the perspectives of your students' families about their involvement will make you a more effective partner.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Designing and facilitating effective parent-teacher conferences is an important skill which requires intentional focus. This strategy provides you with guidance and resources regarding how to productively prepare for, engage in, and follow up on parent conferences. The parent-teacher conference can be an opportunity for you and families to co-develop goals for students. This strategy also provides you with an opportunity to explore the effectiveness and impact of goal-setting parent conferences where you value parents as partners and important contributors to their child's academic success.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This strategy provides teachers with the support needed to prepare for and facilitate the different phases of successful conversations about challenging and controversial issues with students and colleagues. It provides guidance about how to transition the conversation itself to being thoughtful about learning and norming activities that can take place prior to conversations. This will help students to have a framework and the mindset to be able to push each other's thinking in a constructive way. This strategy provides techniques to help teachers and students approach challenging conversations about issues of social justice more effectively.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
The I Wish My Teacher Knew strategy is a resource containing the tools teachers need to build a strong foundation for the classroom. It supports teachers to connect with their students on a personal level. When students feel known by their teachers, they are more likely to feel authentically connected to the learning community. Ideally, this strategy would be used in the beginning, middle and end of the school year to begin and maintain a meaningful connection with students.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
We encourage students to adopt a growth mindset about their own learning, and at the same time, in support of school accountability and standards-based instruction, we are also faced with identifying learning gaps and deficits. Unfortunately, once those gaps are identified, we tend to focus on what students are not capable of. This strategy will help you to truly value students by shifting the focus to their strengths and how those assets can help students to develop further. Modeling a growth mindset by identifying, highlighting, and building on students' strengths, and authentically celebrating their successes helps students to continually focus on what's possible as they set goals, and decide next steps as they pursue learning opportunities.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This strategy will support teachers as they incorporate elements of social justice into their instruction. Implementing the steps outlined in this strategy will help teachers develop lessons that allow students to explore bias and social justice. Teachers can use literature, activities, and discussions to engage students in the practice of accepting and appreciating diversity in the classroom and in the their communities.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
The transition into class can feel hectic and disorienting for students, especially if they are coming from an unstructured time like lunch or recess, if they struggle to stay organized during transitions, or if they're just having an off day. The thresholding strategy has teachers stand in the doorway of their classroom to greet students, build relationships, and provide consistency by reminding students of expectations and what they need to do to be ready for class. While each teacher should be themselves and authentic when interacting with students, this strategy will provide some tips for how to quickly connect with students and set them up for success at the start of class. This will help students feel recognized and message to them that their presence and participation in class is valued.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for newcomers (any recently arrived foreign-born student) is the very first step in establishing a supportive school culture for newcomers. This strategy is for both teachers and leaders who hope to create a welcoming environment for EL newcomers to their school. In this strategy, teachers and leaders can learn five actionable steps to take to create a supportive environment for all EL newcomers.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
