This new ASCD resource provides non ELL specialist teachers with ready-made tools they can use to engage English learners in lessons, build their literacy skills, and maintain an inclusive classroom. Classroom solutions include 175 tools for:

• Time-honored scaffolds for helping English learners access the curriculum and make meaning of new content
• Research-based literacy strategies for language acquisition and development
• Cooperative learning, differentiation, and co-teaching strategies for facilitating content learning

Balanced Assessment: Enhancing Learning With Evidence-Centered Teaching

ASCD Professional Inquiry Kit   

Teachers know that test scores alone don’t reflect what students know and which instructional approaches are most effective at raising achievement. This kit helps get a more complete picture of learning and teaching using balanced assessment. The kit explores the basic principles of balanced assessment, including

• 3 main types of assessment and the strengths and weaknesses of each
• 4 steps to implementing an approach to teaching that is centered on evidence of student learning
• A 5-phase learning cycle that supports evidence-centered teaching.

Time For Non-Fiction with Tony Stead (Scholastic)

This 4 video set focuses on making nonfiction come alive in the reading/writing classroom.    Based on Tony Stead’s work with two classroom teachers over the course of a school year, the videotapes document how nonfiction was integrated into the classroom to become a living component of children’s learning.  A Viewing Guide is part of the kit providing suggestions for viewing and reflection and conversation amongst the viewers.

• Video 1:  Setting Up the Nonfiction Classroom
• Video 2:  Helping Readers Select Texts:  Mini-Lessons and Conferences
• Video 3:  Whole Class Mini-Lessons
• Video 4:  Completing the Jigsaw:  Read Alouds, Visual Literacy and Responses

Includes books:  Is That A Fact?  Teaching Nonfiction Writing K-3 and Reality Checks:  Teaching Reading Comprehension with NonFiction K-5 by Tony Stead

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Positive Discipline in the Classroom is a program that prepares children for responsible citizenship.  It is an excellent character education program in which students are involved in the creation of safe and caring communities.  Class meetings are used to teach essential skills and empower students with a positive attitude for success in all areas of their lives.  Students learn social skills, such as listening, taking turns, hearing different points of view, negotiating, communicating, helping one another and taking responsibility for their own behaviour.

This resource kit provides a Teacher’s Guide and two text books with a step-by-step approach to bring positive discipline to the classroom and to help teachers at all grade levels implement classroom meetings.

Problem-based Learning

This kit offers participants the opportunity to learn and apply new ideas on problem-based learning and gives teachers a thorough understanding of how to use open-ended problems to enhance learning in any subject. Topics include:

• Introducing Problem-Based Learning
• The Anatomy of Real-World Problem Solving
• How Can Ill-Structured Problems Lead to Meaningful Learning?
• Creating an Ill-Structured Problem to Fit Your Curriculum
• Coaching the Self-Directed Learner
• Assessing the Outcomes of Problem-Based Learning
• Extending Your Learning

Gain a thorough understanding of how to use open-ended problems to enhance learning in any subject. Learn how problem-based learning encourages students to explore and apply knowledge.
Examine problems for specific disciplines and interdisciplinary settings. Understand student assessment methods and the teacher's role in the problem-solving process.

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Promoting Learning Through Student Data

Looks at using learning data such as test scores and evaluations to plan better programs and practices. Included are materials for exploring:

• Methods for identifying and analyzing possible problem areas
• Tools and techniques for collecting and interpreting data
• Tips to help you design tasks that ensure students learn required learner outcomes
• Strategies for recording, charting, and reporting student progress.

The Human Brain

This inquiry kit takes one through the basic principles of designing more brain friendly classrooms:

• Brain Anatomy Basics
• The affects of sleep, nutrition, and emotion on learning
• Ways to get students’ attention and improve their memory and understanding

The kit is filled with teaching tips and strategies:

• How to help students store information, understand it, and recall it
• Why accurate and timely feedback is critical to learning
• When and how to introduce students to new skills and concepts.

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Differentiating Instruction for Mixed-Ability Classrooms

An active approach to learning about differentiated instruction. The kit provides video clips, learning activities, readings, and other resources to help:

• Adapt curriculum and instruction to students’ interests and learning profiles
• Provide opportunities to think about effective ways to differentiate curriculum content, student products and learning activities
• Create a differentiated unit, with hands-on activities and learning objectives

Hands-on activities and material for sharing make this the ideal resource for school study teams that are exploring differentiated instruction in depth.

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Learning Styles

Looks at giving students a chance to participate in learning and develop their abilities by using a learning styles approach. Hands-on activities, videotape examples, problems, and articles help you and your colleagues explore all the principles and applications of learning styles.

• Recognize the diverse ways that people approach learning
• Identify your own learning processes
• Help students understand how they learn and stretch their learning styles to learning things that would not ordinarily be easy for them
• See a classroom lesson that demonstrates a learning styles approach in action

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Grading and Reporting Student Learning

Looks at new thinking about grading and reporting student learning and ensuring all staff members agree on the purpose and principles of quality assessment. Included are key systems and processes for:

• Gathering evidence for grades
• Understanding quantitative referencing systems
• Balancing academic and nonacademic factors in grading
• Creating a comprehensive reporting system

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Teaching for Understanding

Videotaped teaching episodes show how to introduce students to new concepts and help them explore concepts and help them explore topics. Sample assignments provide teachers with ways to spark student engagement. And hands-on activities give the users practice in using models to promote understanding.

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Constructivism

Learn how to create classrooms where students think, explore, and develop understanding through constructivist approaches, i.e. students build knowledge through searching for patterns and solving problems. This resource includes:

• Questions that help explore the nature of learning
• Ample lessons and classroom tasks that encourage problem solving
• Pose thought-provoking problems and questions
• Use primary resources and manipulatives
• Encourage discussion and elaboration rather than yes and no answers
• Learning activities that help you think about teachers as facilitators and coaches of student learning rather than dispensers of facts.

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Assessing Student Performance

This kit includes resources such as journal articles, book chapters, actual student work, case studies, and videoclips that study groups can use to explore the topic of assessment, especially school-based or district-based study groups, school improvement teams, or any group interested in studying performance-based assessment together.

The basic principles and applications of performance-based assessments in this kit include:

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The Facilitator’s Guide to Classroom Assessment K-12

This Facilitator’s Guide to Classroom Assessment K-12, developed by Anne Davies, is a multimedia kit for introducing classroom assessment into schools.   The kit contains:

• An interactive CD with resource files including actual student samples, ready-to-use handouts, and overhead charts and diagrams
• A copy of the best-selling book, Making Classroom Assessment Work
• Eight video clips totalling more than 26 minutes of footage
• An overview booklet filled with practical steps, suggestions, and samples of:
  • Actual student samples
  • Pages of blackline handouts for staff and students
  • Individual worksheets relating to the different conversations and exercises
  • Overhead transparency masters for facilitators
  • Reprint articles to communicate key assessment ideas

 Using these tools, a skilled facilitator will be able to successfully lead professional development sessions in classroom assessment.

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