"Eighth-grade students in Rich Richardson's class at the Expeditionary Learning Middle School in Syracuse, NY, offer feedback to their peers in preparation for revising their writing. The praise, question, suggestion protocol helps students see the strengths of their work and consider questions and suggestions that will lead to revision and improvement."
"a simple and fun way for all students to get a chance to move, think, talk, and learn from others. The teacher first has students model: stand back-to-back with a partner, listen to the question and think, turn face-to-face, taking turns speaking and listening, then turning back-to-back"
a posted visible support for just-in-time learning that includes only the essential information about strategies, procedures, and
concepts that students can access at any time.
"Science talks allow all students to do exactly what scientists do: think about, wonder about, and talk about how things work, the origins of phenomena, and the essence of things."
"A word wall in the classroom is a powerful instructional tool to strengthen content vocabulary or concepts. A word wall can be an organized collection of words (and sometimes phrases) displayed on a wall or other space in the classroom."
"This protocol is inclusive of all students and promotes collaboration and shared understanding as students either guess or share important words or concepts with their classmates in an interactive way."
"In a jigsaw protocol small groups of students become experts in one section or text and hear oral summaries of the others. The protocol allows students to synthesize across texts and gain new understandings from their classmates about the topic as a whole."
"At the end of class, students write on note cards or slips of paper an important idea they learned, a question they have, a prediction about what will come next, or a thought about the lesson for the day. Alternatively, students could turn-in such a response at the start of the next day-either based on the learning from the day before or the previous night's homework. These quick writes can be used to assess students' knowledge or to make decisions about next teaching steps or points that need clarifying. This reflection helps students to focus as they enter the classroom or solidifies learning before they leave."
This page from EL Education offers a list of student-centered protocols and strategies, including detailed guides for each on how to use them with students.
This video describes how to effectively re-engage a disruptive student without shaming them--which could escalate the situation or lead the class off-task.
This website is a collection of many science and social studies related math problems. Users connect math to issues like sports, natural disasters, and ancient civilizations, and "hunt" for math answers among various resources. There are lots of opportunities for language-development in the process, too, and its accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
Videos: EL Education provides a variety of educational resources for teachers across the world. This bookmarked section includes videos of teachers and students engaged in a variety of strategies for learning. One or more of these videos could be helpful as a strategy to include in your data action plan.
I first read about this in an excerpt from a book by Greg Toppo. http://hechingerreport.org/video-games-that-work-better-than-school/
This app teaches concepts related to solving algebraic equations in a fun, game environment. Learners are drawn into the game and don't realize they are learning algebra until level 12 when animal cards used in the game begin to be replaced by algebraic symbols.
This app does cost $5 but I could see it used in learning stations and for enrichment activities. Appropriate for ages 5 and up.
This KQED blog post provides information on current and past research that indicates how important movement and the use of our bodies are to learning. This research is called "embodied learning". The discussion on highly decorated classrooms is worth further exploration.
This would be another great article for a text-based discussion in a PLC. The math and physics examples can be adapted for other content areas for use as instructional strategies.