Blog
Enhancing the Professional Learning Community Process: A Series of Tweaks
Are teams getting their desired results? This question resonates with most teachers and principals each week as they work within their collaborative teams. All too often when asked about the PLC . . . Read more
Finding Meaning in Texts
While reading over fall break, I kept finding ideas about collaboration and success when I wasn’t really looking for them. I dog-eared a few pages in a few books to save the places because . . . Read more
The Law of the Vital Few
When Robert J. Marzano conducted a review of the average state or provincial curriculum, he confirmed what teachers already knew: it is not possible to teach all curricular outcomes to every child . . . Read more
Finding Time for Interventions
How do I find the time to do interventions? When will I do this and also keep up with the pacing of the curriculum? One thing all teachers can agree on is that time is a limited commodity, . . . Read more
GPS: Destination Known
Last month, our family decided to take a trip to New York City for a three-day visit. Needless to say, we did not have all the time needed to explore everything the city had to offer, so we had to . . . Read more
Want the Right Kind of Thinking About RTI? Ask the Right Questions!
(This blog is a crosspost from the Solution Tree Blog) A few years ago, we wrote an article that appeared in Educational Leadership called “The Why Behind RTI.” In this article, we . . . Read more
Peers Helping Peers: An Update
In my previous post, I described a new program that I and others are working on to improve the performance of students who struggled last year as freshmen, and I said I would report back when we . . . Read more
Using Protocols to Support Collaborative Teams
Over the course of the past summer I’ve had a number of opportunities to travel across our country speaking with school divisions, site leadership, and teacher teams about the tenets of . . . Read more
A Case of Being Curious: How Do You Know?
“It always annoyed me how in the old fashioned detective story, the detective always seemed to get at his results either by some sort of lucky chance or fluke or else it was quite . . . Read more
How Can My Child Get the Good Teacher?
What parent doesn’t want to sigh in relief as they read their son’s or daughter’s new class assignment and see that their child got the “good teacher”? But not every . . . Read more
What Does It Mean to Be a Viking?
Dave Wedlock's "What Does It Mean to Be a Viking? Collaboration and the Commitment to Continous Improvement as Core Values" is reposted here with permission from the author. In a . . . Read more
Success Looks Different in a PLC
Josslyn arrived as a new student in our second grade, ready to learn, and sporting a pink streak in her dark brown hair. The file showed her previous school had given her extra support as she . . . Read more
The Time and the Commitment to Collaborate at the Elementary Level
At the elementary level, the structure of collaboration—that is, the designated time during the school day and the creation of meaningful teams—can be a struggle to achieve. Some . . . Read more
Tips for Avoiding Mistakes Via Assessment Rigor
Team-developed common formative assessments are the instrument utilized to make sure our students arrive at the destination they should. Formative assessments help us identify by the student, by . . . Read more
High Levels of Learning for All
Invent a low-cost incubator to reduce infant mortality in India, create a documentary about starring in a West End production, or design and market a product that will revolutionize . . . Read more