Quality Core Instruction

Providing a Quality Core Curriculum

The over referral of students to programs for students with special needs can best be averted by providing a core quality curriculum.  When a student is not experiencing success in a class or series of classes, first we must examine how well the curriculum provides the following:

Establishing Purpose

• • Content, language, and social goals are clearly stated 

  • Content goals represent grade-level standards and expectations

  • Language goals are focused on oral and written language students can explain the goals in their own words.

Teacher Modeling

• • The content is engaging and provokes thoughtful responses from students

  • The task to be modeled is directly related to later phases of the lesson and to the established purpose. 

  • Using "I" statement, the teacher models his or her thinking aloud while performing a task.

  • Teacher modeling examples are planned in advance.

  • Modeling includes errors in order to model problem solving strategies.

  • Students witness what occurs when problem-solving strategy does no work, including persistence and speculation about why it did not work.

  • Students participate in the modeling, especially through student-to-student interaction.

Productive Group Work

• • The task requires students to consolidate and extend their learning and not simply to copy what was modeled by the teacher.

  • The task is designed so that there is the opportunity for productive failure, allowing students to wrestle with the content and requiring them to listen and negotiate with one another.

  • The task is not easily subdivided among group members and then reassembled to complete the final task. 

  • Students interact with argumentation, not arguing.

  • Students maintain joint attention to the materials that make up task.

Guided Instruction

• • The teacher is present and participatory.

  • The lesson is directly related to the established purpose and the modeling phase of instruction.

  • The teacher uses prompts, cues, and questions as scaffolds to help students find solutions.

  • Prompts begin broadly (Look on p.7.  .  .  ") and become more specific as needed ("In this paragraph on p.7 you'll be able t find the answer you are looking for.  .  . ").

  • In small-group guided instruction, content, process, and/or product are differentiated to meet the learning goals of students.

Independent Learning 

• • The task is designed so that students draw extensively from previously learned material or skills. 

  • The task is controlled so that the new concepts students must apply are firmly established.