Common Planning Continued 

In this episode, podcast co-hosts Kerri Harding Dias & Christine Gray introduce themselves. Each co-host shares a little of what brought them into teaching, their experiences in and outside of the middle school classroom and more! If you're looking for more information, please visit the  About Us page. 

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Routines are essential to a smoothly running classroom, but it's important to move beyond the behavioral or classroom management-focused routines and think about instructional routines that provide students structures for thinking deeply and discussing content with peers. We'll discuss how we both embrace routines we can adhere to and how we explicitly practice such routines. 

LISTEN HERE  (all other episodes available on Spotify)

Referenced in the Episode:

• "The Importance of Routines in Learning" by Elif Buber, Novak Education

• Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach. Susanne Croasdaile, CAST Publishing, 2023

• Project Zero's Thinking Routines  Harvard Graduate School of Educaiton  

• The Thinking Classroom: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl, Cult of Pedagogy 

Routines do not just happen. Educators need a well-thought out plan for which routines they want to introduce to their students, when and how they will introduce and practice these routines, and how to monitor students' success with these routines. We'll follow Susanne Croasdaile's 8 Step Approach to planning for routines to discuss how to incorporate a Micro Routine into the first 20 day's of Kerri's 8th Grade ELA Classroom. 

LISTEN HERE  or find us on Spotify

Referenced in the Episode:

• Project Zero's Thinking Routines  Harvard Graduate School of Education 

• New Visions for Public Schools 

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach. Susanne Croasdaile, CAST Publishing, 2023

Co-teaching is a common inclusive practice to support students with specific needs. This instructional practice often involves having two (or more) teachers in classroom. The idea of having two experts teaching together appears to be obviously beneficial, but forming high functioning co-teaching relationships that result in positive outcomes for student learning is not without challenge! We'll discuss positive & struggling co-teaching experiences, components of strong co-teaching relationships, and the adult work we can do to maximize the potential of all adults in the room and ultimately impact our students' learning.

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify 

Referenced in the Episode:

• 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success ByJohn Hattie, Klaus Zierer  

• "6 Models of Co-teaching" by Amanda Morin 

• Elevating Co-teaching through UDL  by Elizabeth Stein

• "Unpacking the Co in Co-teaching" by Jacqui Stolzer

• "One Teach and One Observe as a Powerful Tool" by Jacqui Stolzer

• Center for Professional Education of Teachers

Every day teachers make decisions about how students will spend time in their classroom. But how do we know what works? Continuing our discussion of co-teaching we look to the research for which  instructional moves have the biggest impact on student learning. Research shows Co-teaching or Team teaching has a .19 impact on student learning. We discuss some reasons co-teaching can have such a small impact on student learning and think about instructional practices that have far greater impact. Effective co-teaching requires a great deal of collaboration, prior planning, and a structure that draws on both co-teachers’ expertise. In this episode we discuss three instructional moves shown to have significant impact on students’ learning–teacher clarity(.75), feedback (.75), and response to intervention(1.07) (Fisher, Frey & Hattie, 2016). We share our ideas for focusing on these three high impact instructional moves as a way to increase the relatively low impact of co-teaching on student learning.

*Use our Co-Teacher Common Plan Guide as a resource to support your next common planning session. Please let us know if you find this resource helpful by emailing us at CommonPlanningcont@gmail.com 

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify 

Referenced in the Episode:

• Visible Learning for Literacy: Implementing the Practices that Work Best to Accelerate Student Learning (by Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2016)

Success with a routine requires reflection and reevaluation of the process and the product. We are over a month into school and we follow up on Kerri’s implementation of the Unlock Routine. Our discussion focuses on step 5 - 8 from Croasdaile’s steps for implementing and adjusting routines. Kerri reflects on what has been successful and next steps to ensure this routine is sustainable and meaningful for her students. 

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify 

Referenced in the Episode:

• New Visions for Public Schools 

• Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach. Susanne Croasdaile, CAST Publishing, 2023 

In this episode we discuss Peter Johntson's Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning and our own classroom experiences. We share some ideas for how Instructional Coaches and teachers can collaborate to reflect on our use of language in the classroom and ultimately work towards the goal of developing our students' sense of agency, identity, and more.  

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify

*Resource:*The Language of Learning Graphic developed from Johnston's Choice Words.

Referenced in this Episode:

• Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning by Peter Johnston

• Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

• Everyday Instructional Coaching: Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness (Instructional Leadership and Coaching Strategies for Teacher Support) by Nathan Lang

• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gwande

In this episode, we sit down with Casey Woods and discuss Deeper Learning. Casey is currently a K-12 Deeper Learning Consulting Teacher in our district and she works with teachers at all grades and from all subjects to incorporate the elements of Deeper Learning into their practices. In our conversation with Casey, she helps us define Deeper Learning, dispel some common misconceptions about Deeper Learning and shares ideas for getting started with Deeper Learning. 

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify

Referenced in this Episode:

• In Search of Deeper Learning by Sarah Fine & Jal Mehta

• Building Thinking Classrooms in Math by  Peter Liljedahl

• High Tech High

In this episode, we reflect on our previous conversation with Casey Woods and explore the questions we still have about Deeper Learning (DL). We look to our both our state and district's Deeper Learning tools to help define key terms related to DL.  In our conversation, we continue discussing what this can look like in practice, challenges some teachers may face in incorporating DL and also share a tool we've used in Professional Growth Time to support our implementation of DL practices. 

LISTEN HERE or find us on Spotify

Referenced in this Episode:

• The Deeper Learning Guidance Tool, Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education 

• Deeper Learning in the Revere Public Schools

• 7 C's Deeper Learning Analysis Protocol