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Domain 2 standards identify key elements in establishing a productive learning environment and culture that provides the best opportunity for every student's academic and social/emotional growth.
As an expert in your craft, you will have many tricks and strategies that you may employ in your classroom that work best for you and for your students. Different ages, different class structures, and different groups of students will all require you to develop a system that works best in your context. What is expected is that you weave the key elements of the Domain 2 standards into your classroom culture and environment. This is accomplished by proactively setting expectations and addressing behaviors before they happen, setting a positive and respectful tone, supporting student connection through teamwork and collaboration, working to build student efficacy, being responsive to issues as they surface and to student’s individual needs, and by ensuring a culture of restorative practice.
2.1 Develop Norms and Procedures
2.1 Develop Norms and Procedures
Effective: The teacher regularly and appropriately reinforce norms and procedures for the school and classroom. As a result, most students have structure, follow the norms and procedures with some minor reminders, utilize the classroom space and materials for learning, and use instructional time well:
What does this look like?
Frequently, the question is asked, “Why should I have to teach kids to be good? They already know what they are supposed to do. Why can I not just expect good behavior? It’s common sense!” In the words of Dr. Phil, “How is that working for you?”
We know many of our students do not come pre-taught with positive social norms and behaviors because of their home environments or external influences; not because they are obstinate or defiant. They simply don’t know better or they do but it isn’t yet a habit. Common sense isn’t common until it is explicitly stated, modeled, and reinforced. For school appropriate behavior to become common sense it must be explicitly taught in a proactive manner. We need to teach our kiddos what we expect, and underpin those lessons by providing consistent feedback and reinforcement.
Strategies for Obtaining an Effective rating:
Teach your expectations and procedures. Reinforce these throughout the year as necessary. This will look differently at different grade levels and in different settings. Ex. In a kindergarten classroom, you may have call backs that you use to focus students or call for their attention. In a high school classroom, you may use a chime or a simple call to focus.
Establish key routines in your classroom. This could be how the students start every day or class, how they set up for homework, where they go on Google Classroom to get and submit independent work, how they access the agenda for each day or class... Having key routines that are familiar anchor students and allow them to be more productive in other areas.
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Highly Effective: The teacher and the students regularly and appropriately set and reinforce norms and procedures.
As a result, most students maintain structure, reinforce the norms and procedures, own the physical space and independently access materials for learning as appropriate, and maximize instructional time.
What does this look like?
Encourage your students to own the norms and procedures in the classroom. Ex. In a 1st grade classroom, when you call to transition from one small group activity to the next, students take ownership of this process and with little to no teacher direction, clean up, move, and/or reset for the next activity. In a middle school classroom, student enter the room and begin preparing for lessons or start board work with little to no teacher direction. In both cases the routines and procedures are well known and students are able to function independently of teacher direction when appropriate.
At times and when appropriate, students will remind each other of the norms and procedures in the classroom, supporting each other in keeping a productive learning environment.
Strategies for Obtaining a Highly Effective rating:
Create the opportunity for students to own the routines, norms, and procedures in the classroom. Ex. Once established, students function near independently when entering the classroom and starting the day/class. Students know where to place returned work, the expectations for peer interactions during this time, where to get/start seat work, how to access the day's agenda...
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Questions to Consider:
Have my routines, expectations, and procedures been taught explicitly enough and reinforced in a way that they are becoming habit within the classroom?
Are there areas where I can see behaviors that are detracting from the learning environment? What norms or procedures might need to be taught or reinforced to correct this situation?
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Suggested Reading and Other Resources:
P2R2: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fgdb74mmBdn0Y5221phWaScQxyfBl6PkL8J-DYBHSII/edit?usp=sharing
2.2 Develop a Culture of Respect
2.2 Develop a Culture of Respect
Effective: The teacher consistently fosters a culture of acceptance and respect through their words and actions. As a result, all students feel welcomed, safe, supported and respected by the teacher and their peers, and demonstrate respect for the larger community.
What does this look like?
The teacher and students have a positive, respectful relationship in the classroom.
Positive peer to peer relationships are supported by the teacher. This can come through methods such as: modeled interactions, required protocols for discussion, direct lessons during morning meetings, Crunch time, or other opportunities for social/emotional programming.
Teacher supports students in mediating conflict in a respectful manner.
Strategies for Obtaining an Effective rating:
The teacher takes the time to build rapport with the students that fosters and respectful relationships.
The teacher develops a pattern of modeling appropriate behavior and interactions that foster a culture of acceptance and respect. This may be built into lessons or be stand alone lessons or activities. Ex. The class is about to discuss a topic pertaining to a book that is currently being read. The class will be discussing the motivations of the main character and relating this to real world situations and/or their personal experiences. The teacher will model how students should interact by providing specific examples of how to comment or build upon each other’s ideas. This might include sentence starters “I like your idea, and it made me think…”. “I disagree with ______, because I see _____________.” Creating a pattern of behavior where students can share ideas and also respectfully disagree is important.
The teacher establishes and models expectations for how students can manage disagreements or conflict.
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Highly Effective: Students help drive the culture of acceptance and respect through their words and actions, with the teacher acting as support. As a result, all students feel valued, safe, supported and respected by me and each other, and extend their respect to the larger community
What does this look like?
Students show acceptance and respect for each other and staff in their interactions in the classroom. This occurs without ongoing modeling or reminders as it has been modeled and expected in ways that have built the expectations into the classroom structure over time.
It is important to note that a Highly Effective rating in this area will be build over time. It would be rare that students are able to show and model expectations during early observations without teacher support. Therefore, it should be expected that you may not have a Highly Effective rating early in the year but move towards that as the year progresses.
Strategies for Obtaining a Highly Effective rating:
Work to praise those efforts by students who meet expectations and/or use the types of strategies and methods that have been modeled for interactions and discourse within the classroom.
In younger grades you might create anchor charts that outline expectations and/or provide sentence starters and the like.
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Questions to Consider:
As this will look different in varying settings, consider what you want your classroom to look like at an optimal level of acceptance and respect. Knowing what you want this to look like, what skills might you have to teach to ensure your students can accomplish this vision? Not every student comes prepared to show the type of behaviors you want in your classroom. What we believe should be common sense isn’t always common.
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Suggested Reading and Other Resources:
The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher - Harry Wong
VOMP - https://www.selpractices.org/resource/how-to-mediate-conflict
2.3 Develop a Culture of Collaboration
2.3 Develop a Culture of Collaboration
Effective: Students are given opportunities to collaborate and support each other in the learning process.
What does this look like?
The teacher makes an effort to provide opportunities for students to collaborate in the classroom. The following some examples of most well-known types of collaborative learning:
Think-pair-share: Give students a discussion prompt, question, short problem, or issue to consider
Problem-based learning (or PBL)
Guided Design
Case Studies
Simulations
Peer Teaching
Small group discussion
Peer Editing
JigSawing
It is important to note that this will look very different depending on the age of students, subject area, specific lesson, and other factors. Collaboration may not always fit into every lesson or setting, but it can occur at any level or in every area at some time.
Strategies for Obtaining an Effective rating:
Ensure that you are incorporating collaborative opportunities within your lessons throughout the school year. Work to ensure this is appropriate for the lesson structure, and supports the intended learning objectives. Collaboration should be embedded as a strategy for supporting student achievement.
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Highly Effective: Students are invested in the academic success of their peers as evidenced, when appropriate, by unprompted (or with little teacher direction) collaboration and assistance.
What does this look like?
Interaction among students shows there is a shared responsibility for the success of all students in the classroom. This comes through unprompted collaboration and assistance among students. Ex. A student provides an incorrect answer. Another student offers assistance in a manner that supports the first student in understanding how the correct answer was derived.
Strategies for Obtaining a Highly Effective rating:
Create space in your lessons for students to support each other. Provide opportunities for unprompted collaboration by first modeling when and how this can happen. You can give cues that indicate an appropriate time without “prompting” specific support. Ex. An effective teacher uses wait time. After a student gives an incorrect response and you indicate it is incorrect, you might pause and use wait time as space for other students to support.
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Questions to Consider:
What can collaboration look like in your classroom?
When considering the opportunity for students to collaborate, how best will this support all student achievement? Does the activity allow for every student to participate and/or learn from each other or will the activity be too narrow allowing only certain students to participate? (Sometimes certain students dominate conversations or activities. A good collaborative activity ensures and/or encourages all students to participate.)
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Suggested Reading and Other Resources:
https://tltc.umd.edu/instructors/teaching-topics/collaborative-learning
https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-strategies-deepen-student-collaboration-mary-burns
2.4 Develop a Culture of Self-Efficacy
2.4 Develop a Culture of Self-Efficacy
Effective: The teacher fosters a culture of self-efficacy based on students’ strengths, revision, growth, risk-taking, grit, and accountability.
As a result, most students give a concerted effort toward the learning process, they demonstrate grit, are focused on developing strong habits for learning, use growth-focused language, and take some academic risks and responsibility for their decisions
What does this look like?
A growth mindset is a “belief system that suggests that one’s intelligence [and abilities] can be grown or developed with persistence, effort, and a focus on learning” (Ricci, 2013, p. 3). It is knowing that mistakes are a part of the learning process, that growth takes time, and that every student has the ability to learn, succeed, and grow from their mistakes. Again, this must be intentionally taught and cultivated in classrooms. Students should learn the language of a growth mindset and teachers should take time and effort to grow the efficacy levels of all of their students.
The teacher may ensure opportunities for productive struggle withing their lessons. Productive Struggle is when students grapple with new concepts, relying on their previous background knowledge and problem solving skills to learn content, accomplish tasks, and grow as learners. As teachers this means that we have to intentionally create opportunities for students to grapple with new concepts, where they aren’t immediately successful and aren’t rescued by adults. As teachers we must be careful that we explain to students what we are doing and why it is important to their development so they don’t doubt their abilities and develop a fixed mindset that they are “stupid” or a “bad student”. This can also lead to a decrease in their efficacy. Consistent experiences with productive struggle over time, including honest reflection on the process and their growth, will improve students’ efficacy resulting in increased grit, collaboration, problem solving abilities, and new knowledge. Accepting frustration and self-doubt as a temporary setback and learning the strategies to overcoming these will eventually lead to students’ long-term success.
Strategies for Obtaining an Effective rating:
We build Productive Struggle and a Growth Mindset by not immediately rescuing the students. We allow them to see each other’s mistakes and learn from them, taking time to reflect and revise and normalizing the natural learning process. As adults, we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to mistakes in front of the students so that they see that we too are a part of this process. We should allow our students the ability to grapple with complex thoughts and content in an effort to grow academic grit through both processes. Our students develop the necessary ability to intrinsically stimulate their own growth through consistent daily perseverance and self-efficacy.
Help students understand that everyone has problems, fears, failures, and self-doubt. Share stories about people like those who have overcome similar or even harsher circumstances.
Help learners attribute their success or lack of it to internal rather than external causes and show them how they have power over the results.
Treat students’ successes as though they are normal, not an isolated example or a fluke.
Help learners seek alternate paths to success when they encounter a roadblock or setback.
Help students learn the difference between hard work and strategic effort.
Continually reinforce the idea that the students can work on things within their control, like effort and choices, and they can always control those parts of her life.
Concentrate on improvement rather than on a finite goal. Give continual feedback on progress toward the goal.
Keep the learner operating in the zone of proximal development. Tasks that are too easy or too difficult will squash motivation.
Help students understand that intelligence and talent are not permanent entities. They can be incrementally improved in everyone.
Use feedback that is specific, constructive, and task specific.
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Highly Effective: Students, with teacher support, take the initiative to regularly foster a culture of self-efficacy based on their strengths, revision, growth, risk-taking, grit, and accountability through metacognition and reflection, with reinforcement from the teacher.
As a result, most students have high levels of self-efficacy; monitor their own effort, and learning habits; demonstrate grit in almost all situations, take academic risks, incorporate self-reflection and growth-focused language; and own their decisions and the consequences.
What does this look like?
Opportunities in the classroom for Productive Struggle and a Growth Mindset benefit students by creating an atmosphere where struggling and mistake-making is accepted and looked at as a way to grow. Students accept mistakes and are seen to use them as springboards to new thinking or motivation to dig deeper.
Students show they believe in their abilities to look at problems from multiple perspectives, think through varying possible solutions, ask questions and gather resources needed to learn or complete the task, and work to accomplish their goals.
Strategies for Obtaining a Highly Effective rating:
We have to help student be are self-aware to know when their frustration is starting to interfere with their ability to rationalize, and give them strategies to de- escalate frustration and persevere through problem solving. Through intentional and supported struggle, students are able to build these intrinsic life-skills that are essential to life-long success. In short, you will have to explicitly discuss this with your students and make struggle and mistakes an understood and natural part of learning.
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Questions to Consider:
As teachers, we must be careful and closely attuned to when kids need support
so that struggle doesn’t turn into frustration. Monitor and ask yourself throughout your lesson, is the struggle I am seeing allowing students to progress towards the expected outcome, or are they truly stuck and need assistance?
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Suggested Reading and Other Resources:
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning. Corwin Press.
2.5 Develop a Culture of Advocacy and Responsiveness
2.5 Develop a Culture of Advocacy and Responsiveness
Effective: The teacher is responsive to students’ ability and social/emotional needs and adjusts instruction and routines to support all students’ success, providing opportunities for students to advocate for needs they may have to be successful.
What does this look like?
The teacher has developed an understanding of his/her students needs both academically and socially/emotionally. That knowledge allows the teacher to support students through differentiated methods. The teacher understands that there cannot be a “one size fits all” approach to teaching and learning in a classroom. This will include how the teacher responds to behaviors and the emotional needs of his/her students.
Teacher believes in, recognizes, and values the contributions and talents of every student. All students are entitled to high expectations and challenging curriculum that lead to the same broad educational outcomes regardless of their race, class, culture, ability gender, language, perceived ability, or family circumstances.
The teacher uses different approaches and strategies (when appropriate) that personalize learning according to each student’s learning abilities, needs, styles, purposes, and preferences.
Strategies for Obtaining an Effective rating:
The teacher creates space for students to advocate for their needs. Questioning and asking for support are encouraged.
Resources are made available to students to use as supports.
The teacher uses a lots of ways to demonstrate that students learn and use their learning. Performance and alternative assessments, student-led conferences, student goal-setting, exhibitions, and other curriculum-based measurements are all innovative ways to document and share students’ learning accomplishments.
No one teacher can be skillful at teaching so many different students with so many different needs. Teachers should collaborate and seek support from their colleagues. When teachers with different areas of expertise and skill work together, they can individually tailor learning better for all their students.
Some other strategies:
Reduce whole-class, teacher-directed instruction
Provide less opportunity for student passivity by ensuring active participation. Reduce prizing and rewarding silence in the classroom.
Reduce your focus on competition of work and on grades. Promote growth and mastery over time.
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Highly Effective: Students are aware of and advocate for their needs, ask for additional help from their peers or teachers, and utilize additional resources in the classroom or through technology.
What does this look like?
Students can be observed advocating for their needs in appropriate ways, and those students needs are able to be met or the student is directed to the opportunity for support.
Strategies for Obtaining a Highly Effective rating:
The teacher encourages and is open about the need for students to advocate for their own needs. This is modeled and praised as it occurs ensuring self advocacy is a natural part of the classroom environment.
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Questions to Consider:
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Suggested Reading and Other Resources:
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