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Must Reads for Instructional Leaders
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Essential readings about teaching and learning
Curated by
Mel Riddile
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Professor Daniel Willingham looks at multi-tasking and concludes that even though kids today may like to multi-task, there's no reason to think that they are different than previous generations; they don't *need* to multi-task to be engaged and, like everyone else, kids today can't do two things at once as well as they can do one. 
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It's time to end classroom boredom, says educator Barbara Blackburn, who offers 5 rules for student engagement with examples from her own teaching & consulting.
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If we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. The First 3 Assessment Forms
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Resources By Topic:
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What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wed
Mel Riddile's insight:
Chunk size is critical to student learning and retention. In most classrooms the chunk size is much too large. We need smaller, digestible lesson segments with frequent checks for understanding and formative assessments.
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Making every minute count doesn't preclude student empowerment; it promotes it.
Mel Riddile's curator insight,
May 5, 2014 9:54 AM
"With everything kids went through to make it to school, it was imperative that I make it worth their while. Bell to bell wasn't an option to me; it was an obligation."
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Curricula and assessment aren’t designed with memory in mind We’ve all had the experience of cramming for an exam and forgetting most of what we learned within a few weeks or days.
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New teachers have an opportunity to create a classroom where students feel secure, valued & successful. Veteran Cheryl Mizerny shares ideas that work for her. "As teachers begin this school year, their thoughts undoubtedly turn to the classroom climate they want to establish and maintain. One question that I am often asked (especially by newer teachers) is what kind of classroom management program I use. My answer is that I don’t.
Mel Riddile's insight:
Mel Riddile's curator insight,
December 2, 2014 2:43 PM
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Learning to focus on one task while tuning out the many distractions vying for attention is a crucial life skill that some students are missing.
Mel Riddile's curator insight,
August 25, 2014 3:54 PM
Note to school leaders: Teachers in most schools are exerting far too much effort focusing students instead of creating the conditions that build self-control and help students learn to focus. This is a school wide issue that cannot be corrected by individual teachers, but through the focused leadership of a strong instructional leader.
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Just because a question comes from a higher grade level doesn’t make it rigorous. And rigor is surely not an absolute but relative criterion, referring to the intersection of the learner’s prior learning and the demands of the question. (This will make mass testing very difficult, of course). To me, rigor has (at least) 3 other aspects when testing:
The novel (or novel-seeming) aspect to the challenge typically means that there is some new context, look and feel, changed constraint, or other superficial oddness than what happened in prior instruction and testing. (i.e. what Bloom said had to be true of any “application” task in the Taxonomy).
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I'm particularly struck by what Dan Ariely calls "The Ikea Effect" - people value something more because of the labor they invested into creating it. This idea was reinforced by a study published last month that showed that students tended to be less interested in learning new things if they felt that their teacher told them everything they needed to know.
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Professor Daniel Willingham describes why content knowledge is essential to reading with comprehension, and why teaching reading strategies alone is not sufficient that students read with good comprehension.
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How teachers arrange the furniture in classrooms gives a peek into how teachers teach. Do such photos of classroom furniture give observers a glimpse of how teachers teach? Yes, they do, but only a hint.
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A recently released longitudinal study reveals that "an engaged student from a low socio-economic background will have better opportunities in life than a disengaged child from a more privileged background."
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What keeps students motivated to learn? Relevance, connections, and their teachers' emotional investment, among just a few criteria.
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On a recent school visit, I was discussing student engagement with a group of school leaders when a member of the group offered the following observation: "I think teachers are reluctant to turn the class over to a guided activity because they are concerned about classroom management." My Response Teachers cannot teach if they cannot manage classroom behavior. They know that and we know that. Unless we build teacher capacity to engage students in guided group activities, they will be reluctant to "stop talking" because they are afraid they will lose control. In other words, teachers must be taught what to do when they stop talking and students are working. Remember, the brain that does the work does the learning. If we expect to dramatically increase the amount of student work and simultaneously decrease the amount of teacher talk, we must build the capacity of teachers to check for understanding and facilitate group processes while keeping all the students on-task. Most teachers make the big mistake of spending too much time with a few individuals and while they are "fixing" those few students, the rest of the class gets off-task. It does not take long for teachers to figure out that this is not working and they revert back to their comfort zone and a teacher-centered style of instruction. Furthermore, the natural tendency to "fix" struggling students actually has the unintended consequence of creating "dependent" students, who quickly learn that, if they wait until the teacher stops talking to raise their hand, the teacher will come over and do their work for them. So, not only are were losing control of the class, but we are creating dependent learners who will not even attempt to complete the assignment because they know the teacher will bail them out. Years of implementing a school wide instructional framework taught me that our teachers had to have a strategy for keeping students on-task and engaged while they circulated through the room. Fred Jones’s Praise, Prompt, and Leave (PPL) strategy is one that we found particularly useful for strengthening student engagement. Keys to Implementation of PPL We asked teachers to:
Follow a simple three step process:
For a more detailed explanation of Praise, Prompt, and Leave, follow this link: http://info.marygrove.edu/matblog/a-simple-and-effective-student-engagement-strategy-praise-prompt-and-leave
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Test how well you know some of these counterintuitive study tips.
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A practical and engaging guide to smart studying tips.
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By Justin Tarte - More times than not homework adds little value when it comes to student learning...
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Homework is independent practice. By definition, students should have guided practice in the classroom before being assigned independent practice.