Teachers must take care to coordinate, adjust and reinforce instruction during a lesson in order to: 1) maintain coherence; 2) ensure that the lesson is responsive to students’ needs; 3) is standards-aligned; and 4) is time-efficient. This includes explicitly connecting parts of the lesson, managing transitions carefully, and making changes to the lesson in response to student progress. To do this, teachers believe that although there are important individual and cultural differences among students, there are also common patterns in the ways in which students think about and develop understanding and skills in relation to particular topics and problems. (Adapted from TeachingWorks High Leverage Practices)
RANDA Connections: 1A; 1C; IIB; IIC; IIIA, IIIB
Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation: An article that answers the question, "why should assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies be aligned?"
Reinforcing, Reminding, and Redirecting: The Responsive Classroom explores what it looks like to reinforce learning and redirect students
High Impact Strategies: Article that explores high impact strategies (see structuring lessons, explicit teaching, and setting goals)
In order to develop a teacher's capacity to Reinforce Content or Skill of Lesson, the coach will use the continuum above, as well as available data sources, to facilitate reflection and identify next steps. One approach may be to turn the continuum bullet points into questions.
The following resources align with the continuum:
Intentionally Reinforcing Content or Skill of a Lesson
Explaining and modeling content, practices, and strategies (TeachingWorks)
Planning Opportunities for Differentiated Practice
The indicator "Reinforce Content or Skill" supports teachers' ability to provide students with opportunites to practice the content or skill of a lesson. When utilizing discourse as an instructional move, it is imperative that teachers create structures for discourse that match the purpose or rigor of the lesson. They also need to hold students accountable for the content or skill that they are being taught. This ensures that students are being held accountable to the rigor of the standard and the discourse is leading to student learning. Additionally, teachers need to consider the diverse needs of their students in order to plan supports and ensure that all students can access and engage in the discourse.