Quality assessments can provide a map.
Kate Shanahan
Leaders at George Washington Carver STEM Elementary in Cleveland know that assessments can be as much a planning tool for teachers as they are a measure of student learning.
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As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, our primary concern is helping ensure equitable opportunity for all students.
Working alongside schools, we’ve learned that great teaching is grounded in standards, data, and insights shared among educators. We believe a blog can help us make a difference by spreading the ideas and effective practices of educators we work with.
We’re proud of the expertise our team has built over our ten years, and we'll be featuring contributions from ANetters across the org on topics in which they’ve immersed themselves.
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Filtering by Tag: Connect Standards to Instruction
Targeting aspects of rigor in math instruction
Kate Shanahan
Math teachers, spurred by new standards, are striving to increase the rigor of their instruction. But…what exactly is rigor?
Read MoreThe power of questions
Guest User
When someone asks you a question, the ball’s in your court. Your brain engages in a deeper, more active way than if information were being fed to you. Teachers take advantage of this phenomenon when they ask thoughtful questions.
Read MoreRich discussions, better readers and writers
Guest User
Discussion can act as a bridge between reading and writing for students. It can prompt them to articulate, refine, and build on their ideas; and listening to their peers can expand their thinking.
Read MoreText quality matters for higher level understanding
Guest User
If we want our students to be prepared for the reading, writing, and thinking they will do in the future, texts should be an essential component of what we think about when we sit down to create a lesson plan.
Read MoreZooming in on the vertical progression in writing
Guest User
You’d be hard-pressed to find a school that isn’t focused on improving student writing. And that’s not surprising—it takes a lot of practice to transfer thoughts into writing, and to do so in a clear, compelling way.
Read MoreLeveraging the vertical progressions in ELA
Guest User
By studying the progression of standards, educators can create a seamless flow of instruction from one grade to the next.
Read MoreText-based approach to planning close reading
Guest User
One of the most powerful lessons we’ve learned through our work with schools is the importance of doing the work we ask our students to do. Nothing helps us anticipate misunderstandings or understand the strategic support our students will need as much as stepping into their shoes, and doing the reading, writing, and thinking they will do as part of upcoming instruction.
Read MoreMoving from “unpacking” to “understanding” math standards
Guest User
While it can be helpful to “unpack” a math standard into the knowledge, skills, and understanding students need in order to demonstrate mastery, we’ve learned we can’t stop there. We also need to tease out the connections between all the parts of the standard we've unpacked to understand how they work together to deepen students’ understanding and skills.
Read MoreConnecting math concepts across grades
Guest User
Nothing students learn in math class is entirely new. Everything’s connected—the challenge is to make sure teachers and students experience math in that way, too.
To help you do that we’ve created guides for four domains within elementary and middle school mathematics. Because if teachers and leaders can see how the standards connect, our students are more likely to, as well.
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