Use High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIMs)

Often the instructional materials found online that seem rigorous and engaging are unvetted by educational professionals. Far too many of these materials circumvent the peer-review processes put in place to ensure the efficacy of teaching in the classroom. To avoid using unvetted materials teachers can:

• Advocate for HQIMs to be readily available;
• Use EdReports as a tool to evaluate the current curriculum, and or suggest future adoptions;
• Look for evidence that the instructional materials have been evaluated by a third party and their findings indicate that the instructional materials are high quality;
• View peer-reviewed online platforms for inspirational lesson plan and activities; and
• Find professional development opportunities to learn more about teaching with HQIMs.

Identify Prerequisite Skills   

Using pre-assessments to identify the proficiency or students’ prerequisite skills is a strategy which will protect student access to grade-level content. Prerequisite skills are the foundational skills necessary for students to understand more complex concepts. Understanding the prerequisite concepts and skills deemed by the New Jersey Department of Education as essential for mastering grade-level standards can help teachers discern where and when to weave lower-level skills into grade-level assignments. Taking time to identify these skills will better inform targeted interventions while deterring any unnecessary compromises of access to grade-level content.

Prioritize Time to Address Additional Areas for Growth   

Addressing the skills students need to strengthen does not need to occur during core instruction time. Giving students the opportunity to address, practice and promote academic recovery can be creatively cultivated and student led. If a school utilizes homework, at an agreed upon interval students can instead receive assignments that attend to their specific needs without sacrificing essential instructional time. Another option could be providing self-paced modules to students around topics in which they need intervention or enrichment and consider making these modules available to the students at any time. 

Confront Unconscious Biases   

Unconscious biases are the attitudes, preferences, and assumptions that people may hold toward another individual or group of people. These beliefs—centered around a wide range of characteristics from race and ethnicity to religion, speaking accent, or even physical ability—play a role in the perceptions of and interactions with others. Because these beliefs are unconscious, without a persons’ awareness, people often fail to recognize them and how these biases inform their actions. Further, the biases we hold also impact our students’ educational opportunities and experiences, both positively and negatively.

For example, the National Center for Educational Statistics found that “Black and Latino schoolchildren are less likely to be screened for gifted programs in public schools than white and Asian schoolchildren. The study suggests that the race of the teacher could be impacting the racial composition of students in gifted programs, mainly because teachers can identify students to be screened for the gifted program. For black schoolchildren, they are three times more likely to be assigned to gifted services if they have a black teacher.”

Instances such as those listed above can be remediated if we do work to confront our own biases to ensure they do not unintentionally impact students.   

To begin this work, consider the following suggestions:

• Incorporate low-stakes opportunities for practice and feedback;
• Avoid assignment prompts which may marginalize students;  
• Provide choice, creativity, and flexibility for assignments; 
• Make expectations clear to students;  
• Do not reward or penalize perspectives or opinions;
• Grade anonymously (Looks Like: folding the names down on an assignment before grading it, this limits implicit biases);
• Grade one question at a time rather than one student at a time; and  
• Provide flexibility in grading policies.

Engaging Families and Caregivers

Families are an essential support to ensuring students thrive. In protecting student access to grade-level content, ensuring their support systems are prepared to provide help is essential. Consider creating pamphlets, handouts, or digital modules for families which focus on providing helpful ways to support their students around any given area. In addition, these resources should be as accessible to families as possible, so be thoughtful about the needs of the school community when considering language, font-size and color, etc.

Evaluate Curriculum for Cultural Responsiveness

Curriculum can be embedded with social and cultural assumptions which can prevent some students from meeting the sought-after expectation or demonstrating comprehension. It is critical to further understand the ways curriculum may become skewed or not applicable to the students. Utilizing toolkits such as the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard, created by New York University, may help in determining if the curricula is culturally relevant and inclusive. Additionally, if curriculum is found to not to be inclusive or culturally responsive, it is in students’ best interest to advocate for an adoption of a curriculum that better fits the community.

Normalize Struggling

Learning can be uncomfortable, so it is important to encourage and remind students that struggling is productive and a natural part of the process. Productive struggle, which often occurs when students are completing tasks between their instructional and grade-levels, is necessary for students to grow and should be embraced. Neuroscience explains that glial cells will develop more myelin (responsible for making brain signals faster and stronger), the more the brain signal is “practiced.” By creating desirable difficulty through productive struggle, stronger neural connections can be made as activated glial cells increase myelin production. In other words, educators can deepen students' learning by employing strategies that promote productive struggle. Educators can consider the following:

• Retrieval Strategies
• Fill-in-the-blank or short answer rather than multiple choice
• Frequent practice tests to force retrieval, increasing making brain signals more permanent
• Interleaving:
• Ask students to use their long-term memory as much as possible
• Include a few questions from past lessons on current assignments, tests or quizzes, etc.
• Spacing:
• Employ frequent, shorter sessions or mini lessons
• Touch on important concepts multiple times a week in brief, regular sessions.
• Mindfulness:
• Provide regular opportunities for mindfulness, meditation and or rest, to allow the brain to recharge.

Activate Prior Knowledge

Continuing to seek out ways to activate students’ prior knowledge has been proven to play a key role in learning. “If learners know information about a topic, they connect with that previous knowledge and build on it in a process called elaboration.” Consider employing strategies such as the “Previously On” introduction and others to ensure students are making the necessary connections to build upon their knowledge. The “Previously On” introduction acts similar to a television show returning after a six-month hiatus. As part of the first episode, they provide a recap of all the pivotal moments most necessary for the viewer to rejoin the program more seamlessly. Applying this same strategy to lessons where unfinished learning has been identified can help ensure students have what they need to move forward, without taking significant time or taking the focus off of grade-level content for reteaching. This strategy activates students' prior knowledge and can be as simple as adding a PowerPoint slide, watching a clip from a documentary, or reading a related short story. 

Ensure Students Get Started 

Low Threshold High Ceiling (sometimes referred to as low-threshold, no-ceiling) (LTHC) is a strategy that involves selecting and/or creating tasks where:  

• Everyone can get started, and  
• Everyone can get stuck.

Tasks that utilize the LTHC strategy have a starting point which shelters a students’ initial effort by requiring little prior knowledge and is grounded in growth-mindset. Because of this, students find it rather easy to begin. In a classroom this looks like all students beginning their work immediately upon release, because they feel capable. As students progress, the questioning or tasks become increasingly more difficult and complex, where eventually all students will need some support. The purpose of this strategy is to foster a growth mindset learning environment where students:  

• Are not “giving up” right away,   
• Are building resilience,   
• Can explore deeper with virtually no end point, and   
• Complete grade-level tasks due to the scaffolded design.    

LTHC is most often applied to math but can be reimagined in interdisciplinary spaces.  

Implement Academic Teaming   

Academic teaming is a student-led instructional strategy that occurs daily to support students as they complete standards-based, grade-level tasks. In academic teaming students collaborate and take ownership of their learning. What makes academic teaming successful and unlike traditional student groups is the daily practice. This is predicated on the following four conditions:   

• A well-defined team,  
• Roles and clear norms of conduct,  
• Clear and compelling purpose, and   
• A supportive environment.  

Research shows through utilizing academic teaming, that both academic achievement and social-emotional learning simultaneously improve. This becomes evident in the closing of gaps between students of differing abilities, the preparation of students for college and the workplace, and promoting equity and access.