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Building Empathy: Developing empathy in educators and in learners is an iterative process that requires taking the time to understand and honor others' perspectives. Educators can cultivate empathy for all students through active listening, empathy interviews, or shadowing a student to understand their day-to-day experiences. These methods help educators reflect on their own implicit bias and build trusting relationships with their students.

Building Trusting Relationships: Building positive and trusting relationships with learners allows them to feel safe; a Sense of Belonging; and that their academic, cognitive, and social and emotional needs are supported. These supportive student-teacher relationships are the foundation for fostering classroom learning as well as student engagement and Motivation.

Check-ins: Checking in with learners, or taking the time to talk with individual learners about their experiences or goals, is important for fostering a positive classroom environment. Check-ins allow educators to understand learners' experiences more deeply and build trusting relationships that can support students' Emotions and Learner Mindset.

Developing Your Cultural Awareness: Developing cultural awareness as an educator is an ongoing process that includes building empathy for the full diversity of students, intentionally recognizing how one's own identity intersects with students' identities, and creating an awareness of how the learning environment can impact students' Sense of Belonging. 

Dim or Natural Lighting: Exposure to natural light is beneficial to the students' health and can increase their alertness and Attention. Dim or natural lighting can result in a more calm environment for learning. Light can also have a major impact on students' Emotion and mood, especially during winter.

Discussing Race with Students: Discussing race with students can range from celebrating the importance of diversity to understanding the impact of racism from the perspective of those who have been historically marginalized. Educators should regularly practice using discussion norms that support active listening and respecting differences during class discussions and academic debates.

Empathy Interviews: A first step to supporting learners is truly understanding who they are. Empathy interviews are open-ended conversations in which an educator or practitioner asks questions and actively listens to learn about students' past experiences to best support learners. These conversations are typically structured with a predetermined protocol to help educators ask the right questions to achieve their goals.

Encourage Student Self-advocacy: Actively and authentically encouraging all students to seek support, ask questions, and advocate for what they believe in creates a safe space for risk-taking and skill development and supports a Sense of Belonging. Fostering an environment for self-advocacy helps students to develop autonomy for their own learning needs and fosters identity development.

Equitable Grading: Equitable grading systems and practices reimagine how to assess and communicate student progress through various methods that reduce subjectivity and increase opportunities to learn. Equitable grading practices typically focus on students' mastery of content and intrinsic Motivation through the use of formative assessments, rubrics, and protocols for analyzing student work and responding with constructive feedback.

Foster Growth Mindset: When students are aware that learning involves effort, mistakes, reflection, and refinement of strategies, they are more resilient when they struggle. Showing students that teachers, too, are learners who struggle and persist through challenging work also models the importance of continuous growth.

Goal Setting & Monitoring: Setting overall goals with actionable steps for achievement can help students feel more confident in their skills and abilities. Goal setting can also help students strengthen their self-efficacy and Motivation as they build their capacity to successfully tackle difficult challenges.

📄Self-Direction Toolkit (rubrics, self-assessments, goal setting, etc.)
Middle School Self-Direction Task
High School Self-Direction Task

Growth Mindset Feedback: Providing feedback that focuses on the process of developing skills conveys the importance of effort and motivates students to persist when learning. When students believe that their skills can be developed through dedication and hard work instead of innate abilities, they can develop a growth mindset. Research has shown that this type of feedback in combination with teacher modeling is particularly supportive of marginalized students.

Incorporate Students' Cultural Practices: Learning about students' cultures and connecting them to instructional practices helps foster a Sense of Belonging and mitigate Stereotype Threat. When educators integrate the linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge that learners bring, they help learners draw on their Background Knowledge to better understand and relate to the material, supporting Motivation and learning.

Journaling: Journaling allows students to reflect on their thinking and feelings, process their learning, and connect new information to what they know, supporting their identity development and Sense of Belonging. As a more informal form of expression, journals can be safe spaces for students to make their learning visible and to share their difficulties, questions, and emotions about a topic. Expressive writing tasks where students can affirm their identity and values can also help mitigate the negative effects of Stereotype Threat and bias.

Mindfulness Activities: Through short but regular mindfulness activities, students develop their awareness and ability to focus. Mindfulness activities enhance academic performance, support learners' Physical Well-being and mental health, and increase their Attention and mitigate the negative effects of media multitasking.

Mindfulness Breaks: Short breaks that include mindfulness quiet the brain to allow for improved thinking and emotional regulation. Research has shown that mindfulness can increase kindness, improve Sleep quality, reduce anxiety and stress, and even improve literacy scores.

Positive Self-talk: When students reframe negative thoughts and tell themselves kind self-statements, they practice positive self-talk. Positive self-talk or self-reinforcements can help students shift their focus to what they can do and approach even stressful situations with more coping strategies. 

Predictability: Environment & Structure: Maintaining consistent routines, structures, and supports ensures that students are able to trust and predict what will happen next. Predictability in the learning environment helps students feel secure because they know the expectations, freeing up their Working Memory so they can apply their cognitive skills to learning. Consistency and predictability are especially important for students who do not experience such stability outside of school.

Strengths-based Approach: A strengths-based approach is one where educators intentionally identify, communicate, and harness students' assets, across many aspects of the whole child, in order to empower them to flourish. 

Teaching strategies for MLLs are really just good strategies for ALL students. 

Acting/Role Play: Physically acting out a text or enacting major themes from texts enhances reading comprehension, particularly as texts become more complex. 

Brief Instruction Steps: Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory and ensure students are directing their Attention to the relevant information. Simple, sequential verbal instructions can be complemented with visual cues to further support Working Memory.

Chunking: Chunking involves breaking texts down into more manageable pieces to help learners focus their Attention while reading and to comprehend text more effectively.  Chunking can be particularly effective for supporting multilingual learners and for struggling readers, including those with dyslexia.

Communication Boards: Communication boards are displays of graphics (e.g., pictures, symbols, illustrations) and/or words where learners can gesture or point to the displays to extend their expressive language potential.

Creating Visuals: When students express information visually, they are activating more cognitive processes while problem solving and increasing their experience with alternate texts.

Daily Review: Daily review strengthens previous learning and can lead to fluent recall of information and application of skills. Reviewing previously learned content on a daily basis strengthens the neural connections over time that are necessary for developing expertise, supporting retention in Short-term and Long-term Memories.

Games: Games help students practice their literacy skills in a fun, applied context. By engaging student Attention, games motivate students to develop meaningful connections with content and can lead to positive memories of learning.

Graphic Organizer: Visualizing how ideas fit together helps students construct meaning and strengthens their recall. Graphic organizers outsource the memory demands of a task by mimicking the brain's mental schema, supporting students' cognitive development and, in turn, their literacy skills.

Multimodal Instruction: Instruction in multiple formats allows students to activate different cognitive skills and Background Knowledge that are necessary to remember procedural and content information. Instruction can be given using text, visuals, gestures, audio, and digital formats to facilitate retention in Short- and Long-term Memory.

Pictures & Visuals: Using visual aids, such as pictures, diagrams, and charts, allows for additional processing time and supports learners by breaking down content and skills into more manageable parts. Visual aids also serve an important role in maintaining student Attention and are a touchpoint for students to refer back to on their own, as external memory aids and individual practice.

Reciprocal Teaching: PALS: When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning. Through Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), learners alternate in performing a literacy activity and sharing their thoughts with a partner by taking on the roles of a coach and player. Students provide and receive immediate feedback from their peers, which can increase their Reading Fluency, Vocabulary development, and comprehension.

Story and Concept Maps: Providing a story or concept map prior to lessons or having students create their own maps during or after reading helps learners identify and organize key elements of a text. Visually organizing text can help students retain information and meaning in their Short- and Long-term Memories.

Translanguaging: Translanguaging is a flexible classroom practice enabling students to listen, speak, read, and write across their multiple languages or dialects, even if the teacher does not have formal knowledge of these additional languages.

Verbal Repetition: Having students verbally repeat information such as instructions ensures they have heard the information and supports remembering, particularly for those students who struggle with Attention. When teaching new information, including important Vocabulary, having students repeating and discussing the content can help them retain and store the information more efficiently.

Word Walls (interactive): Displaying academic Vocabulary on a word wall can reinforce key terms and concepts that students are learning. Encouraging the students to use the words on the word wall and planning activities around them builds engagement and higher retention in the Long-term Memory.

Student Choice: Giving students voice and choice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful and relevant to them, an important aspect of promoting Sense of Belonging. When students are able to choose how they demonstrate their learning, drive their own learning, and self-assess their work against a set of criteria, they are engaged in more deep thinking and intrinsically motivated to learn.

Project-based Learning: Project-based learning (PBL) actively engages learners in authentic tasks designed to create products that answer a given question or solve a problem. When educators act as facilitators and promote projects that are relevant to students as a part of the curriculum, students have agency over their learning, promoting self-efficacy and Motivation through this experiential learning. 

Multiple Methods of Assessment: Using multiple methods of assessment can help educators gain a comprehensive understanding of learner progress across a wide range of skills and content. Allowing learners to demonstrate their learning in multiple formats can be beneficial, particularly when learners are given autonomy in their assessment opportunities.

🔗Creating Choice Boards to Meet the Needs of Every Student

📄Creative Classroom Assessment Toolkit

Words and phrases to teach include words and phraseslikely to appear in future texts students will read, important to understanding the text, not a commonly known synonym for a concept or idea most students know, and/or that have different senses or meaning in different contexts. For example “cling” is far more than a synonym for “hold” and should be taught. “Blemish” is both a skin condition and a negative action or event in a person’s work history, so it is worth teaching explicitly. 

Words and phrases to define are also important tostudents’ ongoing language development, but they take less time to teach. These include words and phrases that are concrete, have a commonly known synonym, and/or can be easily explained in 2-3 words. For example, “accustomed” can be easily defined as “used to.”

General Protocol for Explicitly Teaching Vocabulary

1. Presentation: Present the word or phrase in context. 

2. Definition: Guide students to use context clues, wordparts (i.e., prefixes, root words, suffixes), or word relationships (e.g., synonyms, antonyms, etc.) to develop a student-friendly definition. 

3. Explanation: Ask students to explain the word or phraseorally or in writing with words and/or pictures. 

4. Connections: Help students make connections. 

For example: 

• Have students classify or compare the new word and phrase with other known words (e.g., identify synonyms or word families or write analogies). 

• Show a short video that illustrates a real-life context. 

• For English language learners, connect the word to the home language or identify cognates. 

5. Application: Direct students to use the word or phrasein new contexts.

  For example: 

• Ask students to answer questions about the text that require them to use the word or phrase. 

• Have students participate in wordplay or games with the word orphrase, such as acting out the meaning.

Engage students in understanding how words connect in the text to produce meaning.

📄Collaboration Toolkit (strategies, resources, rubrics)

The following steps help teachers to prepare for classroom conversations that are productive: 

STEP ONE: Ensure you have a deep understanding of the text or topic under discussion and anticipated student responses and misconceptions. 

Prior to engaging in the unit, read all the texts in the unit and review the assessment. Doing this will better equip you to focus on and pull out the big ideas of each text so that student conversations focus on what is most important for students to understand. Prior to engaging in a particular conversation, develop an exemplar response. Exemplar responses should be aligned to the grade-level standards and capture the knowledge students should be expressing during the conversation.

STEP TWO: Create an en ronment which supports all students in engaging in productive conversations. 

During the unit, prioritize classroom conversations. This means setting up an environment in which all student ideas are valued and heard and carving out time for classroom conversations. Students must feel safe both to share their ideas at the risk of being wrong and to revise their thinking based on the ideas of others. This also means that lessons might take longer than indicated. 

Be sure to structure student groups in different configurations purposefully throughout the units. There are many factors to consider when pairing/grouping students, such as content knowledge, social skill levels, and language proficiency. Student grouping needs to be varied and groups should sometimes be self-selected based on common interests.

Homogenous groups or same-ability groups work well for specific tasks like problem solving. For example, two students learning English as a new language might collaborate in their home language as they work on tasks to be completed in English. Heterogeneous groups or mixed-ability groups work well for cooperative learning experiences, as all students get the chance to develop their thinking and language abilities. For example, a cooperative learning experience might be one in which each team member is assigned a task based on his or her ability to accomplish and share with the rest of the team. When grouping students with different abilities, be sure that each student is held accountable for demonstrating understanding. For example, a student learning English as a new language can orally dictate a response while a student with higher English proficiency writes the response. Students can then swap roles for the next task. 

To form heterogeneous groups, start by identifying the task to be completed. Use that knowledge to determine which factor is most important for the success of the group work. For example, if the task is a debate, students’ social skill levels might be more important for the success of the group work than content knowledge. Create a continuum from high-to-low for the selected factor. For each class of students, place the names in order on the continuum. Then, number the names. Start grouping students so that the ability levels are more closely matched. For example, out of a class of 24 students, place student #1 with student number #13, student number #2 with student number #14, and so on.

Once all students have been matched, look at the groups and consider other factors. For example, placing an especially extroverted student with an especially introverted student may not be a very productive grouping even if they are more closely matched in content knowledge. If you have English language learners in your classroom, also consider students’ language proficiency when forming pairs and groups. Similar to the numbering system above, students with high language proficiency are best paired with students with intermediate language proficiency and students with low language proficiency also pair well with students with intermediate language proficiency. Balance any mismatched pairing/groups.

Here is an example of how to create a Culture and Climate for effective student conversations.

STEP THREE: Establish consistent norms and procedures for conversations. 

Part of establishing a safe environment for student conversations is establishing agreed-upon norms and procedures for classroom conversations at the beginning of the school year that will apply every time there is a conversation. These norms and procedures should be presented, discussed, and modeled with students to ensure there is agreement. These norms and procedures should also be posted in the classroom or provided to students. 

Sample norms and procedures: 

• I will be listening for both what you say (knowledge/content) and how you say it (skills/behaviors). 

• Each member in a pair/group is held accountable for contributing to the group (e.g., one student writes a response while another student revises and edits the response, or each group member completes and shares an individual task (assigned based on individual levels of language proficiency) with the team). 

• Every conversation will begin with setting a goal for the conversation and end with a reflection on our success in meeting that goal. 

As students engage in conversations throughout the year, provide feedback on the extent to which they uphold the norms and follow the procedures. As needed, provide explicit instruction on norms or procedures that need improvement. For example, if most students are having difficulty using academic language in their conversations, script what students say during a conversation and share the script with the class. Discuss ways to improve future conversations using the conversation stems or provide sentence frames/models of turn-taking to guide student conversations during group work.

STEP FOUR: Identify the purpose of and pro de guiding questions for each conversation. 

Prior to engaging in a conversation, identify the purpose of the conversation and its connection to the unit focus or the text under study. Identify the main conversation question as well as the prompting questions. Consider your students and adapt and/or add questions. During the conversation, explicitly state the purpose of the conversation for students and remind students of conversation norms.

STEP FIVE: Guide conversations with “talk moves” to determine student understandings and misconceptions. 

Engaging in productive classroom conversations can help students develop more complex thoughts and can reveal their misunderstandings. Use these conversations as an opportunity to keep track of and guide student learning. As students reveal their misunderstandings, it is important to help them revise their thinking. Having illogical conversations or conversations about inaccurate content could harm rather than support student learning. 

As students engage in conversations, be sure to monitor what they are saying and how they are saying it. If students are not discussing effectively, use “talk moves” to guide them to explain their reasoning, revise their responses, or think more deeply about the text or topic under discussion. Keep track of students’ progress in formal discussions.

Teacher Talk Moves 

Use these prompts during discussions to guide students in taking ownership of their thinking and meeting the following goals. 

Goal One: Students clearly express their ideas through writing or speaking. 

• Take 60 seconds to write your response or share your answer with a partner. 

• What do you think about ____? 

• How did you answer (the question)? 

• What is the most important idea you are communicating? 

• What is your main point? 

Goal Two: Students listen carefully and clearly understand others’ ideas presented in writing or speaking. 

• Let me see if I heard you correctly. You said ____. 

• I heard you say ____. Is that correct? 

• Put another way, you’re saying ____. 

• Say more about ____. 

• I’m confused when you say ____. Say more about that. 

• Give me an example. 

• Who can rephrase what ____ said or put it in their own words? 

Goal Three: Students provide  evidence and explanation to support their claims. 

• What in the text makes you think so? 

• How do you know? Why do you think that? 

• Explain how you came to your idea. 

Goal Four: Students establish new ways of thinking by elaborating on or challenging the thoughts of others. 

• Who can add to what X said? 

• Who agrees/disagrees with X? 

• Who wants to challenge what X said? Why? 

• How does that idea compare with X’s idea? 

• What do you think about X’s idea? 

• Whose thinking has changed as a result of this conversation? How and why has it changed? 

• Now that you’ve heard ____(summarize the conversation so far)____, what are you thinking? What are you still wondering about? 

Wait time is useful for meeting each conversation goal. Allow enough time after asking a question for students to think through their responses and before responding to student responses to encourage students to add more information.