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The SMART Goal I will be using: "By the end of the four week close reading intervention, 80% of students will be able to demonstrate improvement in their writing ability by composing a paragraph with less then 5 grammatical, spelling, and structural errors. Students will meet with the teacher three times a week for a 30 min session". Planning Protocol: I would evaluate this video as a Rigor and Relevance of 4 as each student has an opportunity to engage with the content through differentiated activities suited to their individual learning needs. I feel this particular video was very useful in demonstrating various strategies for differentiating the lesson content to make it accessible to learners of various levels of proficiency. These methods could be extremely helpful in differentiating the content of my SMART Goal to ensure that every student has a opportunity to improve their writing skills according their level of skill.

Planning Protocol: Impact on Learning would be a good reflection on this video because the instructor is differentiating the lesson based on the data she has to make sure each student has some type of impact on his or hers learning. I think differentiating the lesson will have a huge impact on each students learning. The SMART Goal that I will be using is "Students will be able to solve an on-grade level math task, that will require them to respond and defend their work to explain their reasoning 3 out of 5 times by the end of the 1st marking period." I think this video will be a great instructional tactic because the lesson is differentiated based on the student. With the data the instructor has, the student will be able to receive more help that will help them respond and defend their work on grade level. With students that need more help with sentences.... a sentence starter can be used to help support them.

From the Planning Protocol Rubric I choose to relate this video to the dimension "Rigor and Relevance": At the Highest level-Students think and work. All students in this video are being challenged in very different ways this leading them to think and work independently and collaboratively. This teacher does a phenomenal job at differentiating her material on all levels. All students are doing the same work on the reading assignment however the avenue in which they give there response are different. She is able to give each student the support they need ahead of time so that students don't feel singled out. By doing this the students often feel empowered to be able to complete the assignment because they know the supports they need will be available to them. This also allows the teacher to go directly to the students who need extra support because the higher students have the challenges they need as well to not become board with the lesson. The SMART Goal I am focusing on this is one of my team members "After three weeks of targeted instruction, students will increase their pre-assessment scores by 3 or more points, or 75 percent or higher on the post-assessment" Our team could defiantly translate the instructional tactic used in this video to the above SMART goal. The teacher in the video is targeting specific learning goals in her instruction by reaching students at their specific needs and helping guide them all in the same direction teaching the same topic just in different ways. The above SMART goal is all about targeting instruction for the PARCC assessment to improve students scores. All students will have to take the same assessment however the supports they need along the way will be different.

Caryn, I like that this article not only realistically talks about the historic and growing achievement gap, but that it also provides potential solutions. Not surprisingly, most of the solutions whether they be standards, curriculum, or teacher-based are all easily manageable. The only trick is to actually get some forward momentum on this decade's old issue. Victoria

Caryn, I'm reminded of the old educational psychology experiment where teachers were given false information about student abilities. Teachers who were told that a class was full of 'high performing' pupils ended up doing more high end assignments and pushing the students to do better while teachers were told their pupils were 'low achieving' did remedial assignments and barely pushed them to improve. I teach in a very diverse and low SES school, but I always do my best to assume that all of my students are able to do the high level work I assign in Physics. I also agree whole heartedly when then article claimed that teachers have to give extra help to students who are already at a disadvantage. My students do quite well when they apply themselves, but often that means they have to see me during lunch, after school, or even on Saturdays (when I work at a Saturday school program). Many students have jobs to help out their families or need to be home right after school to babysit siblings or to cook supper, etc. I find that the more time I can devote to being available to students, the better my classes perform. I must say however I would like to see an update to this. When it was talking about the lack of progress of students in the 1990s and then discussed 'data in the last 5 years..' I had to scroll up to the date of the article. Being that it is almost 15 years old, I was sad to see how many of the gaps still exist in our schools...

Combining standards, high standards for all learners and highly qualified teachers helps to close the learning gap.

I was very interested in this article because I teach at a title 1 school in MCPS. Majority of my students are minorities or low income students. Our FARMS percentage is extremely high. I do not mean to repeat what Caryn had posted earlier but I mean to piggyback on her comment "To increase the achievement levels of minority and low-income students, we need to focus on what really matters: high standards, a challenging curriculum, and good teachers." I know this to be true in my classroom. For my students I have to high expectations and structure. I have to present them with a challenging curriculum. I need to devote myself and give them all I can. But, progress has come to a halt, which happened around 1988, and since that time, the gaps have widened. To me that is frightening and it makes me want to act immediately. "Because if we don't get the numbers out on the table and talk about them, we're never going to close the gap once and for all." People need to not be afraid of talking about the data, addressing the data, conquering the data. But in order for none to take offense everyone needs to know the correct data. Before speaking, people need to be educated. There simply cannot be "downright wrong-notions about the whys beneath the achievement gap." This article is great and goes on to give us proper data. It informs us of what needs to happen in order to close the gap: standards are key, all students must have challenging curriculum, students need extra help, and teachers MATTER A LOT.

Looks into why the instructional gap has widened after 1988 after having been narrowed the previous 18 years.  Offers patterns and key concepts to look at when trying to understand how to close these gaps.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article as it relates to the student achievement gap. I currently teach at a Title 1 school in Prince George's County where majority of my students are working at a level below their perspective grade. This article does a great job breaking down the statistics and providing steps to move forward in solving this major issue. Lesson 1 spoke to me directly because the teaching and comprehension of standards are the building blocks of students growth. I reinforce the focus standard(s) of the week by way of intervention, homework, informal, and formal assessment. This article is very VALUABLE!!!

I love the lessons outlined in this resource. I especially like how Lesson 4 places a focus on the teachers and how they matter. In impoverished schools, many times the most qualified and effective teachers do not want to be there, therefore limiting the quality of teachers present. It is unfortunate that this happens but it is very common.

Helpful article on closing the gap with low income and minority students.

While this article came out too long ago to have up to date technological solutions, it still offers a brief, helpful framework for looking to improve classroom outcomes.

Excellent resource laying out the achievement gap problem (with data) and valuable solutions to close the gap.

This resource does an excellent job of breaking down and making sense of the achievement gap. When the numbers are presented in this way, it makes it clear just how wide that gap is and how worrying it is that the gap is once again increasing. The most interesting piece of the article was the stark contrast in the reasons for the gap between adult stakeholders and student stakeholders. The adults appear to place blame on factors beyond the classroom that are difficult to control, while the students highlight the growing concerns within the walls of the schools that are much more actionable.

The points in this article are personal to me as I teach adults at a Community College. In every cohort that I have 50% of my students have difficulty writing a cogent paragraph and 90% of them have never heard of an academic journal. While this is not part of my curriculum, I also teach these things. My students need to be sent into the workforce being able to participate in conversations in the workplace.

The article really breaks down what happens to students during high school where they fall behind to move forward in attending college. One thing they mention is test scores. To attend college students have to take and pass a standardized test that determines of they will get into college and what college they can get into. I believe community college is a great way to bridge the gap between high school and a university. There they can determine a major and may attend school part time while still working. This gives them the time to determine what they want to do in life while still being able to survive.

We should understand how race, poverty and the environment influences a child's potential in education before they even start Kindergarten. But like a disabilites or inequities there is diversity in the factors that cause these disparities and our solutions to remedies these gaps must offer a multifaceted approach. An approach that offers rigors instruction in the classrooms, access and guidance for continued learning at home and within our communities.