Close reading is a popular term today in elementary literacy classrooms and a requirement in the Common Core ELA standards in order to ensure students are college- and career- ready. It enables students to independently comprehend increasingly challenging texts. Students need to develop the habits of mind and the skills necessary to unpack the deep, […]
Several years ago, I attended a four-day training on instructional coaching at the University of Kansas, led by Jim Knight, an expert in the field. During this training, Knight presented a comprehensive model that can easily be implemented as part of internal professional development in schools. As the academic year began at Columbia Grammar and […]
When a classroom is sweltering, nobody is productive. More and more teaching days are being lost to hot, humid weather even though there is a way to mitigate the problem: air conditioning. The challenge is justifying the cost of installation and maintenance at a time when competition for budget money is fierce. The place to […]
While blended learning has become a common topic of discussion and an increasingly common district-level strategy for driving student achievement, strategies for successfully making the transition to this new model of learning are often ignored. In this web seminar, originally broadcast on March 17, 2015, presenters explored best practices and lessons learned from blended learning […]
It's crucial for today's students to develop foundational technology skills that can be applied to their core subject learning. To accomplish this goal, districts need to coordinate the efforts of technology and academic staff to embed digital learning into the curriculum. In this web seminar, originally broadcast on March 10, 2015, a district technology leader […]
A homeless student in Delaware last year spent about three hours a day riding back and forth to school in taxi cabsÁ'at a cost to the Delmar School District of more than $10,000. The 2,000-student district did not support the arrangement, but it was settled on after school officials, the student and a social worker […]
When the District of Columbia Public Schools’ Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced in 2012 the launch of an ambitious plan to transform our schools, we were all very excited, albeit a little nervous. But the plan to invest in struggling schools, and focus significant resources and attention to raise proficiency rates across the district, made our […]
At the 19,700-student Newton County Public Schools in Georgia, administrators established a goal of improving the quality of teaching in the spring of 2012. According to Gary Shattuck, director of technology and media services, the best way to do that was to take inspiration from the sports world, where athletes watch video recordings of themselves […]
The Seattle School District is systematically updating play areas to include modern, fitness-inspired equipment that welcomes all comers, from the finicky adolescent to the student with special needs and even parents catching up after school hours. The concept of play area as community gathering space has long been part of the district's philosophy, explains Gretchen […]
Teacher quality is crucial to the success of schooling, yet the teacher-hiring process is sometimes rushed and ad hoc. A late-summer flurry of activity in which subjective factorsÁ'from where a candidate went to high school to how many resumes an exhausted principal has already reviewedÁ'can weigh as heavily as meaningful evidence of academic achievement or […]
