CTESS ebook

Standard 2: State Core Standards It is not only important how teachers instruct, it is also important what they teach. The state of Utah has issued standards for most content areas. These standards help align curriculum horizontally across content areas and vertically across years so that skills can build upon each other. Through such an organized and well-designed set of standards, students have a better chance of graduating from high school with important competencies that lead to success in post- secondary college and careers. John Hattie’s synthesis on meta -analyses of curriculum (2009), suggests that curricula in which skills are taught in a deliberate sequence (such as explicitly taught phonics, vocabulary, and social skills programs) are more effective than curricula in which learning happens more organically (such as Whole Language programs). Foundational knowledge is needed before it can be applied to more advanced knowledge. “One needs to know something before one can think about it” (Hattie, 2009). Furthermore, similar pacing to colleagues facilitates collaboration and meaningful support in Instructional Professional Learning Communities. Without similar pacing, lesson study, data discussions, and common district assessments are made more difficult and less effective. Practices that involve structured collaboration such as Microteaching (Hattie, 2009), Lesson Study (Cheung & Wong, 2014), and Professional Learning Communities (Lomos, Hofman, & Bosker, 2011) have significant potential to increase teacher effectiveness and student outcomes. Standard 3: Collaboration The most effective teachers learn from others and support others in their learning. The Meeting Participation Checklist clarifies expectations for collaboration, such as coming to meetings prepared, following group norms, using data for decision making, encouraging participation of others, offering support to others, and actively solving problems. All of the items on the Meeting Participation Checklist come from recommendations of educational researchers such as the Team Initiated Problem Solving model (Newton et al., 2012). Standard 4: Interdisciplinary Connections Ideas are not held in isolation but form networks of inter-connections. These interconnections are referred to by cognitive psychologists as schema. The interconnectedness of concepts and ideas help with long-term memory storage, memory retrieval, and ability to apply knowledge in novel circumstances (Chi, Fetovich, & Glaser, 1981; Glick & Holyoke, 1983; Willingham, 2009). Making interdisciplinary connections for students helps them to retain what they have learned and successfully apply that knowledge across contexts. In CTESS, teachers have a variety of options to document that they have been making cross- curricular connections in their classroom. These include lesson plans, PLC notes, student products, and culminating projects. This standard is most easily met when teachers from across disciplines collaborate and make plans to support each other. Standard 5: Student Engagement Student engagement is foundational to student learning. CTESS measures student engagement directly through observing student time-on-task (active plus passive engagement) and through how teachers structure student responses. Increased academic time-on-task leads to increased student learning. Engaged time is of critical importance to student outcomes. In an often-cited paper, educational researcher David Berliner (1990) indicates that time students are engaged in learning “has the same scientific status as the concept of homeostasis in biology, reinforcement in psychology, or gravity in psychics.” That student achievement is correlated with student time on task has been confirmed and reconfirmed since at least the 1940s. Gettinger (1984) found that time on task was as good as or better than measures of cognitive intelligence at predicting student achievement. Furthermore, student