The Learning Classroom: Pulling It All Together

This program discusses how schools can organize for powerful learning through a coherent, connected approach to teaching and learning that is reinforced and supported by structural features. This session features the staff and students of two schools: a public school in Michigan serving grades three through eight and a first-year charter school in California. Host Linda Darling-Hammond provides expert commentary.

Grey Matters: Teaching the Way the Brain Learns

The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model creates a framework that combines neuroscience research and best practices. The aim is to give teachers practical strategies that result in helping students connect to content in meaningful ways to achieve deeper learning and can be applied in any subject area. This course is an introduction to the model in action, seen through the eyes of students, educators, and Dr. Mariale Hardiman, author of The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools. 

The Writing Revolution

Although educators know the importance of being able to write well, many teachers admittedly feel ill-prepared to effectively teach this skill to their students. In this brief overview, participants will hear from Dr. Dina Zoleo and Dr. Toni-Ann Vroom, as they present an introduction to the Hochman Method, created by Judith Hochman, founder of The Writing Revolution (TWR). 

The Hochman Method consists of a series of explicitly taught, evidence-based strategies that can be used across grade levels and subject areas to help students produce clear, unified, and structured writing. While this overview does not teach the components of the Hochman Method, it does address the importance of having a solid plan for teaching the skill of writing. The Writing Revolution recommends that educators intending to implement the Hochman Method enroll in and complete an introductory course to learn the method in its entirety.

After viewing this introductory overview, those who are interested in participating in a full TWR training should visit the Arkansas & TWR page linked at the bottom of this course under "Instructional Resources." There, educators can find more information about enrolling in a TWR course. 

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part One: Coherent and Effective Local Assessment Systems

The purpose of this course is to build an understanding of local assessment systems and the key characteristics that make them coherent and effective. You will review the purpose and appropriate use of various assessment tools and practice, including those available through the ATLAS system, and explore how assessment and data literacy play a critical role in supporting student learning. 

Learning Goals

• develop an understanding of the purpose and appropriate use of different assessment tools and practices in a coherent and effective local assessment system, including assessments from the ATLAS system, 
• explore the characteristics of an assessment system that is coherent and effective, and
• gain an understanding of the role of assessment and data literacy in leveraging a coherent and effective assessment system to improve student learning outcomes. 

Success Criteria

• identify the purpose and use of different assessment tools and practices in your local assessment system, 
• reflect on strengths and opportunities for improvement in your local assessment system, and
• define assessment and data literacy for yourself and assess you own skills.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Two: Coherent and Effective Classroom Assessment Systems

In this course, you will explore different assessment types in your classroom and how to use what you learn from assessments to help students reach their learning goals throughout the school year. You will also reflect on your own classroom and make decisions about which assessment practices you can use that best support student learning.

Learning Goals

• examine the role of different assessment types in supporting student learning in the classroom, 
• explore how components of the ATLAS system support classroom-level decisions, and
• discover how teachers can create coherent and effective classroom assessment systems. 

Success Criteria

• develop a written vision for assessment in your classroom with actionable steps, 
• reflect on the current balance of assessment activities in your classroom and compare it to your vision for classroom assessment, and 
• identify next steps for improving your classroom assessment system to better reflect your vision.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Three: Designing and Selecting High-Quality Assessment Tools and Practices

Understanding what students know and can do is at the heart of good teaching, whether for next steps for individual students or for planning upcoming instruction for your class. But not all assessments are created equal. Too often, students spend valuable time on assessment activities that do not help teachers make better instructional decisions, either because the assessment is not well-designed or the right tool for the job.

Learning Goals

• develop an understanding of key assessment literacy concepts and terminology,
• understand the principle of how evidence-centered design can help you elicit meaningful evidence of student learning, and 
• explore the criteria that define high-quality assessment tools and practices. 

Success Criteria

• apply principles of evidence-centered design to your assessment practice, and
• use criteria to evaluate assessment tools and practices for your intended purposes.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Four: Interpreting and Using Assessment Data

Learning Goals

• explore different tools and strategies for evaluating student work and when to use them,
• explain how well-designed rubrics help you make sense of evidence of learning, and
• identify best practices for using data effectively to inform classroom decisions.

Success Criteria

• apply these ideas by identifying specific actions you can take in your own classroom to evaluate and respond to evidence of student learning more effectively, and
• plan a collaborative data review meeting with one or more colleagues.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Five: Introduction to Formative Assessment

This course is about formative assessment practice—what it is, why it matters, and how it can change the way you and your students work together in the classroom.

Learning Goals

• understand formative assessment as a process of using evidence to support learning—for both teachers and students, and
• see how the roles of teacher and student shift when formative assessment becomes part of everyday classroom life.

Success Criteria

• explain what formative assessment practice is—and what it is not, and
• describe how teachers and students take on new roles in formative assessment classrooms.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Six: Eliciting and Using Evidence During Learning

In this course, you learned that formative assessment is an ongoing process—one in which both teachers and students collect and use evidence to keep learning moving forward, minute by minute and day by day. You learned about the Ten Dimensions of Formative Assessment Practice.

In this course, you will take a closer look at the first five dimensions:

• learning goals,
• success criteria,
• tasks and activities that elicit evidence of student learning,
• using questions to elicit evidence, and
• using evidence in the moment to decide what to do next in instruction.

Learning Goals

• understand how to intentionally gather evidence of learning during lessons, 
• understand how to use everyday classroom routines to collect evidence during instruction, and
• explore ways to act on evidence in real time during a lesson.

Success Criteria

• plan ways to elicit evidence that gives every student a chance to show where they are in their learning, and
• describe how to bring new instructional routines into your lessons so you can interpret and respond to evidence of students learning while it is happening.

ATLAS Guided Professional Series for Educators, Part Seven: Students’ Use of Evidence

In earlier courses, you learned that formative assessment is an ongoing process—one in which teachers and students notice, recognize, and respond to evidence of learning during daily lessons, while learning is happening.

In this course, you will take a closer look at four of the Ten Dimensions of Formative Assessment practice that focus on how students use evidence of their own learning:

• extended thinking through discourse,
• descriptive teacher feedback,
• peer feedback, and
• self-assessment.

Learning Goals

• understand the daily formative assessment routines—academic discourse, peer feedback, and self-assessment—that help students use evidence of their own learning;
• explore what productive student discourse looks like;
• understand what makes feedback effective;
• explore how peer feedback and self-assessment build students’ metacognitive skills; and
• understand how to help students act on evidence during instruction.

Success Criteria

• identify strategies to help students engage in richer academic discourse in your classroom,
• plan lesson structures that give students meaningful opportunities for peer feedback,
• identify new instructional routines that increase the use of descriptive feedback during learning, and 
• plan a lesson that integrates one of the four instructional routines to help students use evidence to guide their learning.