power of assessments in instructional planning and their role in helping both educators and students more clearly identify and understand learning challenges and opportunities. From creating student profiles to screening for prerequisites and conducting preassessment diagnostics, ongoing formative assessments, and summative assessments, this chapter reviews the kinds of student data educators gather. Because data are only valuable when teachers use them, the chapter also discusses a number of best practices and strategies for adjusting instructional approaches, such as scaffolding and extending learning tasks, to adapt to information revealed through assessment. The chapter also explores key elements of creating adjustable assignments, also known as tiered lessons.
Chapter 7, “Building Cognitive Rigor, Depth, and Complexity,” offers ideas educators can use to increase dynamic instructional effectiveness by increasing their instructional rigor. The chapter also explores a variety of best practices for helping students build their own cognitive rigor by developing higher-level thinking skills, cognitive depth, and complexity. Developing learners’ cognitive rigor demands that educators adjust what they teach and increase their expectations in order to ensure that each student has the opportunity to grow in ways he or she may not be able to imagine. This chapter, therefore, describes how models such as Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) offer educators solutions for making those adjustments in the most effective way possible. The chapter also offers a number of techniques educators can use to integrate 21st century skills into the core curriculum in ways that raise the bar for all learners.
The epilogue, “Embracing the Journey,” challenges teachers to work collaboratively within their collaborative teams and PLCs. The chapter explains why ongoing efforts to grow their knowledge base and skill sets are responsibilities that educators cannot ignore. It also offers suggestions for sharing information about differentiated instruction with parents in order to gain their support and assistance in efforts to provide students with the most effective educational experience possible.
Beyond a thorough discussion of the research and findings surrounding the role of differentiated instruction in improving student learning, each chapter offers specific tools and techniques for implementing the ideas and processes it describes. At the end of each chapter, therefore, we’ve included questions, reflections, and exercises. These sections—Taking the Discussion Further—enable educators and their teams to deepen their discussion and understanding of each chapter’s content.
Finally, before we begin this journey into Best Practices at Tier 1, we would like to offer educators a few words of preliminary advice. We have conducted presentations on this subject for thousands of educators around the world, and while the overall response has been extremely positive, we often hear a few specific concerns.
“I already know that.” Few of the ideas in this book represent new, groundbreaking research. Instead, most of the ideas we discuss here are based on common sense and well-established practices. For example, in chapter 2, we discuss the traits of a brain-friendly learning environment. The idea that brains learn best in a safe classroom environment is neither new nor earth-shattering. We dig deeply into the topic, however, to explain that a safe learning environment requires more than order; it also must offer students clear goals for learning outcomes, specific techniques for demonstrating mastery, and the freedom to try, make mistakes, and try again. Students sitting quietly in orderly rows rarely demonstrate the high level of engagement that promotes effective learning. Yet, we find many teachers who view a safe and orderly classroom as just that—a place where students demonstrate passive compliance. Knowing that a safe and orderly classroom is critical to effective core instruction is not the point of chapter 2. Rather, the more important question is, Are all the elements of this characteristic of good teaching present in your classroom? Even when you find they are, there is still benefit in the material—it will validate your teaching and build self-efficacy that you are on the right track.
“That’s a nice idea, but it won’t work for the students at my school.” This response is common, especially among educators who teach a majority of at-risk youth. We also hear numerous justifications, such as “My students can’t handle cooperative learning” or “My students lack the basic academic skills and self-control to do that.” However, that pessimism is unfounded. The research behind our recommendations demonstrates that the educational approach we outline in this book is proven to work for all students, regardless of ethnicity, economic status, home language, or gender. Schools of every demographic makeup are successfully implementing these methods. In the end, our experience also has demonstrated that students will become whatever teachers believe them to be. If educators believe students are immature, irresponsible, and incapable of demonstrating scholarly, responsible behavior, eventually they’ll be right. They will treat students as such and, as a result, create classroom rules and procedures to support their assumptions. But if educators believe students are capable of working collaboratively, demonstrating intellectual curiosity, making good choices, and self-directing their learning—and they apply the effective teaching methods necessary to promote such behaviors—they, again, will be right in their beliefs. Instead of questioning whether students are capable of achieving successful outcomes, therefore, the ideas we present in this book ask educators to consider another question: How can we help students get to those successful outcomes?
“These are great ideas, but I don’t have the time to implement them because I have too much content to cover.” This is the most common concern we hear. As we discuss in chapter 4, there is an impossible amount of yearly state curriculum. However, if a school is committed to effective teaching and student learning, there is no research to support the proposition that the more content a teacher covers, the more students learn. In reality the opposite is true—the less curriculum taught to mastery, the more students achieve. There is probably not a teacher in the United States who can honestly say that he or she is currently covering all mandated material within the time constraints of the school year. It is unacceptable to deny students effective teaching in a misguided attempt to maintain the illusion that the school is covering the entire required curriculum.
Keeping these important cautions in mind, we offer a book full of proven strategies—tools that can help teachers differentiate instruction, provide engaging ways for students to learn, increase the chances for success, and avoid the need for additional intervention. Join us on a journey of continuous teacher improvement. We hope educators will use these strategies to enhance their repertoire and provide more good teaching to more students more of the time!
Shifting to Collaborative Core Instruction
Teaching matters! At a time in which successfully navigating our K–12 system of education is a mandatory prerequisite to leading a successful adult life, the greatest contributor to student success is the quality of instruction students receive each school day. Almost four decades of research into the characteristics of effective schools, such as that from Ron Edmonds (1979) and Larry Lezotte (1991), has proven that virtually all students can learn when provided with effective teaching. In his seminal work What Works in Schools, Robert Marzano (2003) demonstrates that highly effective schools produce results that almost entirely overcome
![Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory](/cover_679455.jpg "Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory")
power of assessments in instructional planning and their role in helping both educators and students more clearly identify and understand learning challenges and opportunities. From creating student profiles to screening for prerequisites and conducting preassessment diagnostics, ongoing formative assessments, and summative assessments, this chapter reviews the kinds of student data educators gather. Because data are only valuable when teachers use them, the chapter also discusses a number of best practices and strategies for adjusting instructional approaches, such as scaffolding and extending learning tasks, to adapt to information revealed through assessment. The chapter also explores key elements of creating adjustable assignments, also known as tiered lessons.
