CTESS ebook

*B3. Rigor is reflected in learning experiences in which every student is challenged, engaged, and develops ownership of their learning through increasingly complex levels of understanding. Rigor is demonstrated by using inquiry-based, collaborative strategies in order to challenge and engage students in the content. The level of rigor of the learning task can vary based on the skill or knowledge being taught and the stage of student learning: acquisition (acquiring new knowledge/skills), automaticity (building fluency with new knowledge/skills), generalization (applying learned knowledge/skills across settings), application (applying learned knowledge/skills to new and challenging tasks in the real world). Ensuring rigor in learning tasks requires the teacher to facilitate student learning by allowing students to drive their own learning through engagement in investigation and inquiry. The teacher provided learning opportunities that encouraged deeper learning and understanding by allowing students to (check all that apply): ●​ Engage in critical thinking tasks

●​ Justify or critique a position or response ●​ Analyze content to make a conclusion ●​ Apply knowledge in a new context or scenario ●​ Use criteria or rubrics to critique or judge something ●​ Explain relationships and rationale ●​ Compare and contrast two or more ideas/concepts ●​ Analyze cause and effects ●​ Synthesize information ●​ Engage in inquiry learning ●​ Problem solve collaboratively ●​ Actively seek answers to critical questions ●​ Use reasoning and evidence to support inferences ●​ Analyze multiple sources of information ●​ Construct opinions/arguments using reasons and evidence ●​ Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information ●​ Generate hypotheses ●​ Investigate real world problems and issues ●​ Create new or imagined experiences or designs ●​ Other: _________________________

●​ None of the above strategies were needed due to the nature of the learning task (early acquisition phase) ●​ None of the above strategies were used, but one or more could have been integrated into the learning task to deepen student learning. B4. The teacher strategically and effectively uses scaffolds (from the list of Common High Yielding Scaffolds) to increase student learning as students productively struggle with complex grade-level content during the observation. Scaffolding is the intentional practice of implementing a purposeful student support structure designed to maximize access and depth to grade-level concepts and tasks. Scaffolding helps students access the academic language of the content being taught so they can be successful on tasks that they cannot yet complete independently. Scaffolding should still allow students to engage in productive struggle, with the intent of gradually fading the scaffold as the student acquires and applies what they have learned. The list of Common High Yielding Scaffolds includes: 1)​ pre-teaching/front loading to prepare students for the lesson, such as building background knowledge; 2)​ purposeful structured partner or small group work with assigned roles and responsibilities to ensure all students are supported in their collaborative learning; 3)​ structured sentence starters and sentence frames to enable students to actively participate in classroom discussion or writing tasks at a higher level than they could produce on their own;

64