Three years ago, our student achievement level was average, and it wasn’t sitting well with me or my team. At that time, I was unable to find any classroom practice in the district that was consistent from room to room, subject to subject, or building to building. For my team (which includes curriculum facilitators in the four core areas), it was imperative for us to determine which practices were most critical to support student learning in all high school classrooms.
Though our district has a nationally recognized teacher induction program (TIPS) that we’ve been implementing for the past 15 years, there was still room for growth with respect to preparing new teachers. The high school support team set out to focus on teachers in the second and third years of their careers by transforming our induction model to be more of an ongoing support system for teachers new to our district, as well as new to the practice. Here are three components of our model that are making it a success in our district.
1) Designing Effective Lessons
When we decided to make the transformation, we moved our focus away from issues such as classroom management and more toward intentional lesson design. I believe that if teachers build great lessons from start to finish, all other classroom practices fall into place. If today’s lesson connects with tomorrow’s and next week’s lesson, then teachers are building a larger, effective conceptual framework to engage students and move learning forward.
Intentional design requires teachers to plan lessons that are contextually relevant to students in the room and recognize the value of what they bring into the learning experience. In coaching teachers to this ideal, we are asking teachers to reflect on the following questions:
· How do you know students are learning and retaining your lessons?
· How are you assessing their learning on a daily basis, and aligning it to your lesson or unit design?
· How are you responding to what that information is telling you?
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