Instructional Playbook

Opportunities to Respond

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Maximizing the opportunities students have to respond (OTRs) during instruction increases student engagement. When learners are W riting, I nquiring, S peaking & listening, and R eading & viewing, they are interacting with the content, peers, and the teacher in order to construct meaning and develop their critical thinking skills (Walqui & van Lier, 2010). Effective, OTRs can: Activate Participation: OTRs encourage active participation, moving beyond passive listening to active involvement in the learning process. When every learner is actively engaged they are more likely to retain information and develop a deeper understanding of the content. Increase Motivation: When every learner feels their contributions are valued and acknowledged, they are more likely to feel motivated to engage in the learning and excel academically. Provide for Formative Assessment: By observing learner responses, teachers can assess comprehension, identify misconceptions, and adjust instruction in the moment accordingly to meet learners’ needs. Develop Communication Skills: All learners need to develop essential communication skills, such as expressing ideas clearly, listening actively to others, and engaging in respectful dialogue. Promote Rigor: When all learners are engaged in answering rigorous questions or solving problems, they must apply their knowledge, make connections and draw conclusions, promoting deeper learning. Build Classroom Community: Collaborative learning fosters positive relationships among peers and between learners and teachers, creating an engaged, supportive, and inclusive learning environment. Increase Retention: Through repeated practice and reinforcement, learners solidify their understanding of key concepts and skills, leading to long-term retention and mastery.

Increase Your Impact Maximize

Providing processing time and whole class OTRs vs. raised hands, to ensure that ALL learners can respond Pre-planning appropriate resources and OTRs that support all learners such as sentence stems, word banks, graphic organizers, or partner talk Establishing routines and procedures for students to respond using the resources provided Circulating and listening to student interactions during OTRs to assess learning Cold calling without preparing students or providing opportunities to process and practice Lowering response expectations for specific students or groups of students

Minimize

When planning for OTRs, appropriate target rates of OTRs change as learners move through an instructional sequence of acquisition, automaticity, and application. For instance, when learners are acquiring new knowledge, OTR rates should be high, with lower rigor. As teachers move into the automaticity and application stages of instruction, OTR rates may decrease while the rigor level of the OTRs increases to deepen learning.

OTR Routines to Increase Engagement

Writing

Inquiry

Speaking & Listening Signals and Cues Choral Response Think Pair Share Sentence Frames

Reading & Viewing

Cornell Notes Graphic Organizer Sentence Stems/Word Banks Quick Writes White Board Response Summarizing

QSSSA (Question, Signal, Share, Stem, Assess) Essential Questions KWL Anticipatory Set Novel Ideas

Dyad Reading Close Reading Choral Reading Cloze Reading Tasks for each Reading Segment

Novel Ideas Cold Calling

Effect Size: 0.60