As students move through a lesson, some acquire information and skills more quickly than others. Some students will need additional support, scaffolds, feedback, or reteaching to understand key concepts and apply specific strategies, processes, or skills. We must collect formative assessment data in each lesson to understand our students’ progress and respond to their needs. Formative assessment is a process of gathering information about students’ understanding and their progress toward firm standards-aligned learning goals. Formative assessment helps teachers gauge how effective their inst ..read more

A teacher recently asked me whether students always need to attend every station in a rotation. The short answer is “no.” Our classrooms are composed of diverse groups of students with different skills, abilities, preferences, language proficiencies, and academic needs. Given that variability, it makes sense that not all students would need to spend time engaged in the same learning tasks or activities. So, teachers who love the station rotation model may want to experiment with a fun variation of the traditional design of a rotation. This twist on the station rotation model combines the strat ..read more

Choice boards are a fantastic tool for honoring learner variability and providing students with meaningful choices. Not every student enjoys the same task, so giving them options is critical to maximizing their motivation and focus in a lesson. Choice boards allow us to honor our students’ preferences, needs, and interests, making their learning experience more engaging and effective. By integrating choice boards, we put students in the driver’s seat, allowing them to control the pace and path of their learning experience. Simultaneously, choice boards free teachers to focus their time and at ..read more

Let’s start with a quick review of the playlist, or individual rotation, model for those who have not heard of it. A playlist is a sequence of learning activities designed to move students toward a desired result. Most playlists culminate in a performance task or artifact intended to demonstrate students’ ability to transfer or apply what they learned working through the playlist. I’ve trained many teachers who use choice boards and ask, “What’s the difference between a choice board and a playlist?” I wrote a blog about the difference, but here is a quick comparison that might help. A playlist ..read more

Written by Noelle Gutierrez Educators know the importance of academic vocabulary instruction. Student knowledge of academic words and phrases has a direct impact on their ability to acquire and comprehend information, which is why it should be a part of every subject area and class. As an instructional coach and administrator, I regularly observed teachers providing direct instruction using explicit vocabulary routines. Such routines include students saying the word aloud, clapping out syllables, looking up and writing down the definition, and finding examples and non-examples of vo ..read more

At a recent workshop, a teacher posed a compelling question about the effectiveness of small-group versus whole-group instruction. This inquiry always prompts me to reflect: How many educators gather pre-assessment data before crafting their lesson plans? Such preliminary insights, whether through pre-assessments, diagnostics, or activities aimed at accessing prior knowledge, can illuminate the diverse range of skills, abilities, and needs within a classroom. It’s common to discover that while some students possess a foundational understanding or the ability to apply specific skills, others mi ..read more

In my last blog post, Using the Station Rotation Model in Math, I wrote about the benefits of shifting from a whole group, teacher-led lesson design to small-group differentiated instructional sessions. I make the case that the whole group, teacher-led approach to instruction limits opportunities for individual exploration and deep engagement with mathematical concepts. It restricts students’ ability to learn at their own pace, explore topics in-depth, and engage in hands-on, practical problem-solving. Relying exclusively on a teacher-led, whole-group approach to instruction risks reducing mat ..read more

Math is a linear subject, with each concept building on the one before. Math teachers are also responsible for covering a large number of standards in a school year. Most math curricula are designed for a whole group teacher-led lesson where the teacher is expected to cover a new concept or process every day. This, combined with the reality that designing lessons with a new instructional model may feel scary or daunting, can make it challenging for math teachers to understand how to use the station rotation model. Math is also one of those subjects where there is typically a wide spectrum of s ..read more

In my last blog post titled “Part I: Maximize the Impact of Explicit Teaching with Blended Learning,” I explored the benefits of shifting from explicit teaching as a whole class experience to a differentiated small group experience. I wanted to highlight how teachers can use blended learning models, like the station rotation, to differentiate their instruction and modeling sessions better to meet the needs of small groups of learners. Instead of guiding a group of 30+ students through an explicit teaching session, teachers working with small groups can select problems, prompts, texts, and task ..read more

At this point in the school year, you have had time to establish classroom routines, nurture your relationships with students, and design and facilitate entire units of study. It’s the perfect time to ask your students for feedback. Employing a simple feedback strategy like “keep, start, stop” helps you quickly take the temperature of the class and make any necessary adjustments to ensure the rest of the year is as productive and positive as possible. The Keep, Start, Stop Feedback Strategy My friend, who manages a team of designers, described this strategy to me. He uses it when he meets with ..read more