Whether working with students or colleagues, providing immediate, structured feedback is an effective method of making connections and facilitating growth and reflection. Consider using the TAG Strategy when providing feedback to others.
T: Tell something you like
A: Ask a question
G: Give a suggestion

The Jigsaw Strategy gives students the opportunity to become “experts” on a section within a topic of study. After mastering their specified topic, students share their material with another group. This continues until a collective, complete understanding is created. This strategy empowers students to take ownership while learning new information and developing collaboration skills.

Using a variety of instructional strategies is an important avenue to reaching all learners. Whether it is a tried and true method, or a newer technique, share your favorite instructional strategy that you use with your learners.

State standards are an integral part of the curriculum, but do not serve as a curriculum on their own. Developing a local curriculum allows the district to include additional skills and content beyond the rigor of state standards that are locally important, as well as organize content into teachable units that are aligned vertically across grade levels.

Performance and Product Assessments provide students the opportunity to connect concepts they have learned, think about them more deeply, and apply them in a meaningful, engaging way such as through projects, presentations, or demonstrations. Students utilize higher-order thinking skills and are empowered with a voice that provides them with a platform to communicate what they have learned.

Connecting content across curricular areas allows for deeper, authentic learning opportunities. Students are able to apply skills they learn in meaningful, relevant ways and in real-world contexts. These connections also allow for increased engagement and speaks to a variety of learning styles.

One way to grow your practice is discovering new educational insights through books. What books have you read that inspire you in education?

Begin class discussions with an ice breaker activity that connects to the content of your lesson. Allowing students to practice targeted skills prior to explicit instruction empowers them to demonstrate their background knowledge while the teacher formatively pre-assesses content knowledge.

Creating proficiency scales prior to designing assessments allows you to identify instructional priorities. This encourages those learning targets to be both explicitly taught and assessed while creating more intentional assessment items.

Use the district mission statement as an anchor that connects the different pieces of the curriculum together. As subject mission statements, course purposes, and outcomes and components are created, find how they support the district mission to create a local curriculum that is aligned and connected.

Read-Alouds are a strong support structure in all content areas. They can serve as an engagement piece to inspire student thinking about a concept, a tool for making connections to new ideas that are introduced, and a bridge that links literacy in all subject areas

When students have not yet reached mastery or proficiency when assessed on a learning target, a pivotal component of the reassessment path is reteaching. Reteaching comes in many forms and allows the student to receive additional opportunities for further instruction as needed to prepare them for success when they are reassessed.

Education has many different components; what do you love most about it? What is your “why?” Share what you love most about education and what you are most passionate about in this field.

Include specific, measurable verbs in curriculum that describe what students will know and be able to do. Strong verbs provide focus to the curriculum and learning outcomes, increase the rigor of the curriculum, and help in defining assessment methods of how students will demonstrate mastery of the content.

Begin your lesson with an intriguing story that emphasizes the relevance of what students are learning. Stories increase lesson engagement and connections to the real-world, promoting student achievement and authenticity of learning.

Assessment does not always have to be teacher-directed. Facilitating opportunities for students to reflect on mastery of learning outcomes is a great tool for authentic self-assessment and empowers students to take ownership of their learning.