“Miss, you do know that one person does the homework and then passes it around the lunch table for everybody else to copy, right?”  — 9th grade student, circa 2005 Welcome to My “Why” I probably should have known. I vaguely remember the same practice from back when I was in high school. Homework counted 15%, maybe 30%, of our grade in some classes. So of course it needed to get “done.” But suddenly, it was one of my students saying it to me, the teacher. She wasn’t telling me this so that I would scold all of the students who sat around copying that one paper, or so that I would show up ..read more

From the lens of an Instructional Math Coach, influencing the culture begins by impacting one student, one class, one teacher at a time. Math Milestones provided me with an opportunity to engage with like-minded math minds from all over the country; it empowered me to recognize and appreciate student assets and identity to shape and shift my math mindset and philosophy around building the capacity of others. Discovering student assets helped me establish a culture and climate where each student’s thoughts are welcomed, appreciated, and respected.  Culture Builds Community What does your c ..read more

The walls of your classroom create the learning environment your students enter every day and communicate the classroom culture you hope to create. Even if you aren’t interested in making your classroom Pinterest-ready—you can probably picture one of those classrooms now—you can still create a space that sparks interest in content and investment in your classroom community.  These 5 strategies help you prioritize what goes on your classroom walls and ensure that everything you display has a purpose and a positive impact on the learning environment. 1. Community Agreements In many classroo ..read more

Within the teaching profession, there is a lot demanded on a daily basis to ensure best instructional practices are being followed and student learning is being maximized. In an effort to meet these demands, teachers focus their time on the grade level and students at hand. Furthermore, some teachers admit to even just grazing over strategies with students when they were too challenging or when teachers did not see the benefit. This hinders the understanding and beneficial discussions that should be taking place around the vertical progression of math learning. The Math Milestones tasks provid ..read more

These are the words my young granddaughter uses when she sees anything we have that is interesting that she wants to explore how to use. Recently, a colleague and I explored what happens when we allow students to request whatever tool they might want to help solve a problem.  Activating Student Agency  In a sixth-grade classroom, the teacher and I selected to use Math Milestones task 6:12 in order to activate and deepen student learning around graphing points on a coordinate plane, understanding signed numbers on the coordinate plane, and applying shape composition and decomposition ..read more

What thoughts come to mind when you look at this example of student work? What do you notice? What are you wondering? If you collected this student’s work and looked at it later in the week, or even later that day, what would you learn about the ways in which the student engaged with the concepts? As an English language supports specialist in an elementary school, I co-teach with classroom teachers to provide multilingual learners equitable access to grade-level content while advancing their social and academic English. Two questions I consistently ask myself when planning and facilitating le ..read more

As educators, it is easy to spend most of our day putting out little fires. We are constantly in need of more time. More time to plan, more time to research, more time to teach, more time to connect, more time to assess, and more time to engage. What if I told you I found it? I found time! I found time in structures. John Hattie found that the tipping point of a 0.4 effect size was the point at which student performance surpasses the expectation of one year’s growth in one year’s time. Planning and prediction have an effect size of 0.76. By implementing structures with fidelity to a classroom ..read more

Student Achievement Partners is excited to preview a new instructional practice framework. In this post, members of the design team behind the new e2 Instructional Practice Framework share why the framework was created, what it is designed to do, and how it can improve educational experiences and outcomes for K-12 students. The e2 Instructional Practice Framework pre-publication draft communicates an evidence-based definition of high-quality instruction that deepens and amplifies our commitment to Essential literacy and mathematics through the pursuit of Equitable instruction for all students ..read more

It’s time for our annual Summer Reading Challenge! If you’re looking for a quick way to add new resources and ideas to your teacher toolbox, this reading list is for you. Below you will find 15 articles filled with new ideas, inspiration, and information to prepare you for an excellent 2023-24 school year! Learn with Other Readers Excited by something you learned? Confused? Have something to add? Learning happens best when we do it together. Form a summer reading small group with colleagues in your school or join the conversation on Twitter and discuss these questions with educators across the ..read more

The importance of formative assessment has been well established. No one would argue that it is essential to know where students are at when designing instruction. The question often becomes: “What is the best way for me to gain an understanding of what my students know and are able to do?”  In my first blog post for Peers and Pedagogy, I outlined a two-day lesson using the Three Reads Protocol and a re-engagement. Here, I want to further explore the idea I alluded to of using this structure or a similar structure as a pre-assessment for a unit of instruction. Pre-Assessment It is a commo ..read more