Small changes to instructional practices can drive big growth. Two diverse schools that succeeded along this path throughout the pandemic have proven that personalized learning can jibe with state standards when teachers make the most of instructional time, according to a just-released study by the nonprofit testing organization NWEA.
“One of the big takeaways is the way these schools balance meeting students where they are AND providing access to grade-level content they need to succeed,” says Chase Nordengren, author of the study and the principal research lead for effective instructional strategies at NWEA.
To identify the 10 instructional strategies that capitalize on small teaching changes to drive growth, Nordengren observed classrooms and interviewed educators at an elementary school and a middle school in Schiller Park Schools outside Chicago. Some 55% of students in Schiller Park are non-white, 62% receive free or reduced-price lunches and a quarter are identified as English learners. The district’s per-pupil spending in 2021 was below the state average.
The pivotal instruction practices fall into three categories: optimizing instructional time, exposing students to more content and empowering students. Here is a bit more detail from Nordengren’s visits to the two Schiller Park schools:
Optimizing instructional time
1. Provide supplemental learning time for targeted retrieval practice: Elementary students focus on specific reading skills during an hour of “reading room” intervention each day. That’s in addition to standard literacy instruction in grade-level curriculum. The middle school provides reading and math intervention periods twice a week to supplement core instruction.
2. Mix whole group, small group and individual activities: One third-grade classroom began ELA periods with whole-group instruction focused on reading assignments, vocabulary and peer conversation. The class was then divided into two groups for guided reading with the teacher and independent work with a language arts skills app.
3. Adjust student groups in real-time: A first-grade teacher that uses a similar approach constantly looks for evidence to support student proficiency—such as participation—throughout the whole-group lesson. These formative assessments play a significant and ongoing role in where students are grouped
4. Share students and strategies within a grade level: The elementary’s two third-grade teachers communicate regularly, both before and during the school year, to make sure they are setting the same expectations and using the same resources so students can be regrouped if necessary.
Exposing students to more content
5. Differentiate tasks within a unit: Seventh-graders are grouped into double-length humanities sections based on MAP Growth scores. Students engage with the same texts in both sections, with one section focused on addressing skills one-by-one and the other revisiting skills for practice.
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6. Provide targeted practice for foundational skills: A third-grade teacher introduces a new skill each week and repeated it in daily warmup activities. Repeated exposure builds both the degree of challenge and student independence. In sixth-grade math, identifying missing skills is a critical and ongoing part of day-to-day instruction.
7. Teach from multiple standards at once: Acknowledging that some students will progress much faster in self-directing learning, teachers use intervention time and technology-based practice to introduce topics that were slated for later in the curricular year. These teachers are effectively “operating the curriculum front-to-back and presenting alternative practice opportunities back-to-front.”
Empowering students
8. Create opportunities for self-directed learning: At the beginning of each sixth-grade math unit, students receive a list of tasks that combine online learning platforms, reflection questions, and standard worksheets or whiteboard problems. They work on these tasks while the teacher observes student work and provides one-on-one support to students as needed. The self-directed model promotes flexibility, such as students working in table groups where they can help each other.
9. Use student discourse as formative assessment: Student discourse is an important activity for high-growth teachers in all grade levels and subjects. Listening to this discourse—a form of formative assessment—is a key way teachers can determine which supports each student needs.
10. Explicitly teach academic vocabulary: In sixth-grade math, teachers use academic vocabulary to introduce more complex forms of mathematical thinking while a third-grader teacher introduces new vocabulary along with new genres of text to help students make connections in what they read.
