![Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory](/cover_679455.jpg "Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory")
questions and the role their answers play in efforts to promote the practices of good teaching.
What Do We Want Our Students to Learn?
Effective teaching begins with teacher teams collectively determining just what they want their students to learn. There is, perhaps, no greater obstacle to effective teaching than the overwhelmingly and inappropriately large number of standards that dictate what curriculum content students are to master in school. The elements of these mandatory curricula are so numerous, in fact, that teachers cannot even adequately cover them, let alone effectively teach them (Buffum et al., 2012).
The research supporting the need for teacher teams to collectively prioritize, analyze, and unpack the curriculum is conclusive. In their work on RTI, Buffum et al. (2012) refer to this process of analysis and prioritization as concentrated instruction: “a systematic process of identifying essential knowledge and skills that all students must master to learn at high levels, and determining the specific learning needs for each child to get there” (p. 10). Marzano (2003) describes this same process of instruction as offering a guaranteed, viable curriculum—one in which every student has access to the same essential learning targets and every student will receive instruction on those targets in a way that will enable him or her to master them within the allotted time.
Buffum et al. (2012) and Marzano (2003) aren’t alone in addressing the need for instructional processes that focus on an agreed-on set of essential learning standards. Douglas Reeves (2002) also describes the critical importance of teacher teams identifying essential learning outcomes in Making Standards Work, Larry Ainsworth (2003a, 2003b) details these efforts in Power Standards and “Unwrapping” the Standards, and Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005) powerfully and comprehensively outline this essential work in Understanding by Design. Proponents don’t claim that these essential standards represent everything the curriculum will cover in the year. Instead, the standards merely identify the most essential learning outcomes that all students must master for a higher likelihood of success in the next unit, course, or grade level. (In chapter 4, page 81, we examine more deeply the process of setting and applying these standards.) Any school dedicated to creating an effective core instructional program and a targeted system of interventions must have absolute clarity on exactly what all students must learn in each subject, course, and grade level.
Beyond just identifying essential standards, teacher teams must also understand what it looks and sounds like when students demonstrate mastery of each standard and collaboratively sequence these standards to represent a guaranteed and viable curriculum (Marzano, 2003). Finally, teachers must explicitly, clearly, and consistently model mastery. When teacher teams determine a limited number of rigorous essential learning outcomes that all students must master, and agree to how students will demonstrate mastery of each, the impact rate is 0.56—a rate much higher than the baseline of 0.40 for highly effective teaching (Hattie, 2009).
How Will We Know If Our Students Are Learning?
While the strategies for teaching a specific learning target might vary from teacher to teacher, each teacher team must commit to collectively assessing student learning at predetermined times during core instruction. This method of gauging student mastery of essential outcomes, convergent assessment, is “an ongoing process of collectively analyzing targeted evidence to determine the specific learning needs of each child and the effectiveness of the instruction the child receives in meeting these needs” (Buffum et al., 2012, p. 10).
Convergent assessment leverages two extremely powerful instructional practices: common assessments and formative assessments. Common assessments are any assessment two or more instructors give with the intention of collaboratively examining the results to assess shared learning, to guide instructional planning for individual students, and to shape instructional modifications (Erkens & Twadell, 2012). When teachers give common assessments aligned to essential standards, they are able to compare results to determine which initial instructional practices are producing the best results. Formative assessments are classroom and curriculum evaluations teachers use to monitor student progress toward learning outcomes and to inform instructional decision making. Rather than considering these as assessments of learning, assessment expert Rick Stiggins (2007) calls them assessments for learning, because they inform both teachers and students. Teachers embed formative assessments in the current unit of instruction and use them to diagnose where students are in their learning.
It is important to note that not all formative assessments have to be given in common, and not all common assessments need to be formative. But when teachers combine these two powerful assessment processes, Hattie (2009) finds that common formative assessments have the astonishing impact rate of 0.90. (In chapter 6, page 147, we take a closer and more detailed look at the assessment process.) Any school committed to a highly effective core instructional program would ensure that teacher-created common formative assessments, designed to guide both teachers and students in their next steps, would be the foundation of assessment practices.
How Will We Respond When Students Don’t and Do Learn?
How do educators respond when students struggle to achieve their essential learning targets? Furthermore, how do they respond when students succeed in achieving those learning outcomes? The purpose of RTI is to answer these two questions. Tier 1 core instruction creates the instructional focus and ongoing assessment processes necessary to effectively respond when students need additional support.
Now, consider for a moment the prerequisite conditions necessary for a school to successfully provide supplemental and intensive interventions for students who require additional support and extended learning for those who are ready to master grade-level curriculum. Asking an individual teacher to meet all these needs in his or her classroom would be unrealistic. Educators who have formed the collaborative teams of a PLC can respond collectively when students need additional time for remediation or extended learning. Yet, teachers on the same team could not collectively provide these supports unless they first agreed on essential learning outcomes and the kind of ongoing common and formative assessment information necessary to identify both student needs and the effectiveness of initial instruction. Creating a guaranteed and viable curriculum and ongoing common formative assessment processes are the foundational building blocks of an effective Tier 1 core instructional program. They are also practices that drive and depend on frequent, job-embedded teacher collaboration. These practices do not reduce teachers to the role of instructional facilitators but instead empower teacher teams to make critical decisions regarding curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Equally important, these PLC practices don’t cripple an individual teacher’s ability to practice the art of teaching. They give educators the freedom to determine how they will initially teach essential standards.
Leveraging the Power of Student Collaboration
As important as teacher collaboration is to good instruction, teacher-to-student and student-to-student collaboration are equally essential to the learning process. As we discuss in chapter 2, the neuroscience of learning confirms that the brain seeks social interaction, relevance, and meaning. Students are best able to develop these attributes when they are engaged in the learning process, rather than being mere idle spectators in the classroom. Student engagement begins when teachers carefully create a classroom environment that provides safety and order but also promotes student participation in the instructional process. Equally important, teachers must provide students the opportunity to answer the four critical PLC questions from their own perspective. Then, those questions become:
1. What do I need to learn?
2. How will I know if I am learning
