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Differentiated supervision is an approach to supervision that provides teachers with options about the kinds of supervisory and evaluative services they receive. The differentiated model provides intensive development to nontenured teachers and to tenured teachers with serious problems. The rest of the faculty receive options for fostering their professional development, working in collaborative teams or opting for a self-directed approach. This book describes a model of differentiated supervision and offers suggestions for its implementation. Chapter 1 presents a rationale for differentiated supervision and briefly describes its components. Chapter 2 explains the foundation elements needed by all teachers to make the model work effectively. The third chapter describes processes for fostering the learning-centered classroom, with a focus on learning outcomes. Chapters 4 through 6 explain how each of the following developmental options works: providing intensive development; fostering cooperative professional development; and facilitating self-directed development. The seventh chapter focuses on the evaluative options in a differentiated system, which distinguishes between two types of evaluation--intensive evaluation and standard evaluation. The final chapter offers suggestions for developing local models appropriate to an individual district's needs and resources. Contains 11 figures and an appendix listing schools using the differentiated model. References accompany each chapter. (LMI)
"I applaud Gupton's focus on the learner. This is the most important tenet for a school administrator's decision making. Each chapter describes a portion of school leadership that the successful principal needs to master."-Sharon Madsen Redfern, PrincipalHighland Park Elementary School, Lewistown, MTUse these powerful leadership tools to build teamwork and improve instruction!Every school leader needs a toolbox of strategies for improving teaching and learning schoolwide. In this second edition of The Instructional Leadership Toolbox, Sandra Lee Gupton examines the role of principals in leading instruction and provides practical ways for leaders to reflect on and improve their practice. Emphasizing a democratic approach that involves stakeholders in instructional leadership, this resource offers a compendium of helpful skills and strategies drawn from current research and theory in school administration. The book provides:Updated standards from NAESP and ISLLCNew research that shows how a principal's actions can affect student achievementQuestions for reflective practiceQuotes and examples of instructional leadership strategies by practicing principals and veteran educatorsAdditional resources such as Web sites, workbooks, books, and articlesThis valuable guide provides a blueprint that demonstrates how school leaders can focus on student learning, while using specific tools to empower others and build teams for a common goal: increased student achievement.
What type of questioning invigorates and sustains productive discussions? That’s what Jackie Acree Walsh and Beth Dankert Sattes ask as they begin a passionate exploration of questioning as the beating heart of thoughtful discussions. Questioning and discussion are important components of classroom instruction that work in tandem to push learning forward and move students from passive participants to active meaning-makers. Walsh and Sattes argue that the skills students develop through questioning and discussion are critical to academic achievement, career success, and active citizenship in a democratic society. They also have great potential to engage students at the highest levels of thinking and learning. The extent to which this potential is realized, of course, depends on individual teachers who embrace these practices, make them their own, and realize that this process requires a true partnership with students. With that in mind, Questioning for Classroom Discussion presents and analyzes the DNA of productive discussions—teacher-guided, small-group, and student-driven.
In this important book, education expert Kim Marshall shows how to break away from the typical and often ineffective evaluation approaches in which principals use infrequent classroom visits or rely on standardized test scores to assess a teacher's performance. Marshall proposes a broader framework for supervision and evaluation that enlists teachers in improving the performance of all students. Emphasizing trust-building and teamwork, Marshall's innovative, four-part framework shifts the focus from periodically evaluating teaching to continuously analyzing learning. This book offers school principals a guide for implementing Marshall's framework and shows how to make frequent, informal classroom visits followed by candid feedback to each teacher; work with teacher teams to plan thoughtful curriculum units rather than focusing on individual lessons; get teachers as teams involved in low-stakes analysis of interim assessment results to fine-tune their teaching and help struggling students; and use compact rubrics for summative teacher evaluation. This vital resource also includes extensive tools and advice for managing time as well as ideas for using supervision and evaluation practices to foster teacher professional development.
The authors show how school leaders can use "power tools" to coordinate essential school improvement processes, improve student achievement, and create more effective schools.
Offers a definition of differentiated instruction, and provides principles and strategies designed to help teachers create learning environments that address the different learning styles, interests, and readiness levels found in a typical mixed-ability classroom.
Although much has changed in schools in recent years, the power of differentiated instruction remains the same—and the need for it has only increased. Today's classroom is more diverse, more inclusive, and more plugged into technology than ever before. And it's led by teachers under enormous pressure to help decidedly unstandardized students meet an expanding set of rigorous, standardized learning targets. In this updated second edition of her best-selling classic work, Carol Ann Tomlinson offers these teachers a powerful and practical way to meet a challenge that is both very modern and completely timeless: how to divide their time, resources, and efforts to effectively instruct so many students of various backgrounds, readiness and skill levels, and interests. With a perspective informed by advances in research and deepened by more than 15 years of implementation feedback in all types of schools, Tomlinson explains the theoretical basis of differentiated instruction, explores the variables of curriculum and learning environment, shares dozens of instructional strategies, and then goes inside elementary and secondary classrooms in nearly all subject areas to illustrate how real teachers are applying differentiation principles and strategies to respond to the needs of all learners. This book's insightful guidance on what to differentiate, how to differentiate, and why lays the groundwork for bringing differentiated instruction into your own classroom or refining the work you already do to help each of your wonderfully unique learners move toward greater knowledge, more advanced skills, and expanded understanding. Today more than ever, The Differentiated Classroom is a must-have staple for every teacher's shelf and every school's professional development collection.
Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tonya R. Moon take an in-depth look at assessment and show how differentiation can improve the process in all grade levels and subject areas. After discussing differentiation in general, the authors focus on how differentiation applies to various forms of assessment--pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment--and to grading and report cards. Readers learn how differentiation can --Capture student interest and increase motivation --Clarify teachers' understanding about what is most important to teach --Enhance students' and teachers' belief in student learning capacity; and --Help teachers understand their students' individual similarities and differences so they can reach more students, more effectively Throughout, Tomlinson and Moon emphasize the importance of maintaining a consistent focus on the essential knowledge, understandings, and skills that all students must acquire, no matter what their starting point. Detailed scenarios illustrate how assessment differentiation can occur in three realms (student readiness, interest, and learning style or preference) and how it can improve assessment validity and reliability and decrease errors and teacher bias. Grounded in research and the authors' teaching experience, Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom outlines a common-sense approach that is both thoughtful and practical, and that empowers teachers and students to discover, strive for, and achieve their true potential. This is PDF Format E-book: ISBN 978-1-4166-1773-0
Making sure that all students read well is a top priority for schools, and literacy coaches are playing an increasingly important role in the effort. Their challenge? To deliver the kind of instruction and support best suited to the teachers they work with and most likely to help those teachers improve the literacy of their students. In Differentiated Literacy Coaching, Mary Catherine Moran presents a solution for meeting the diverse needs of literacy coaches and their charges. The heart of the book is an exploration of the Literacy Coaching Continuum, a series of professional learning formats that coaches can use singularly or in combination to design and deliver the most effective, most appropriate support: * Collaborative Resource Management * Literacy Content Presentations * Focused Classroom Visits * Coplanning * Study Groups * Demonstration Lessons * Peer Coaching * Coteaching Moran reviews the key considerations school leaders and literacy coaches must keep in mind when determining program focus and scope; describes the roles, responsibilities, and procedures involved in each coaching format; and offers guidelines based on research findings, exemplary coaching programs, and insights from her nearly 30 years as an educator. Readers will also find more than a dozen modules for coaches' professional development, including recommended materials and step-by-step procedures to help both new and experienced coaches expand their expertise. An extensive collection of print and online resources further enhances the book's usefulness for anyone interested in learning more about establishing—or improving—a literacy coaching program.
