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Cris Tovani: Using 6 T's to Deepen Learning

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Cris Tovani: Using 6 T's to Deepen Learning

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By Cris Tovani

Nervously, I stare at my computer screen, hoping that students on the other end will click the sticky note icon and add thinking to the Jamboard. To my relief, a few begin posting.

I read each one looking for patterns of confusion and understanding. But wait! What is that red, rogue pen doing making wild squiggly marks all over the screen? At the head of the squiggly line is a circle too small to see and no doubt frames the face of the culprit maneuvering the menacing red line around the stickies that more compliant students have added.

This is my first virtual Literacy Lab. Hired to model engagement strategies online with a seventh-grade geography class, I have to remember to focus on what matters most.

To Engage, We Have to CYA

Deeper learning can happen remotely, but in order for it to occur I have to CYA. I do it by using what I call structures. These structures correspond with the 6Ts for literacy learning I've developed (Tovani, 2021) from the 4Ts described by Ron Berger and his colleagues in Transformational Literacy (Berger, et al., 2014).

After the first day of the 7th grade demo, I go through my list of 6Ts, using it as a checklist to posit what students might need tomorrow to engage. Why didn't some kids read? Do they need a different text or way into the topic? Maybe the ones who didn't participate need a little tend ing because they don't yet trust that I care about what they have to say?

Was the learning target clear, and did I give them enough time to understand and own the purpose for reading? Maybe they need to see that the task is worthy of their time, so I'll share the responses of the few kids who wrote the previous day so they can see a model of what I want?

These are all daily shifts I can make, but I've learned over the years that even the best daily strategies won't work if students aren't engaged over time with a big idea that matters. So when I'm invited to do a demonstration lesson in another teacher's classroom, I don't just model some random literacy strategy. There has to be context and purpose.

Even though I might only demo in a classroom for one, two, or three days, I create a long-term unit plan like I would for my own students. If I don't believe that the work I ask students to do will make them more knowledgeable, skilled, and interested humans, why should they engage?

Cradling the Standards in a Compelling Topic

I'm working with the 7th grade class on its third day of studying Africa. So far, the teacher has taught about the Sahara Desert and the African Sahel. I'm told that I can teach about oases on the first day of my visit.

With only two fifty-minute class periods, how much could students know about the Sahara and the Sahel? Not being a social studies teacher, I don't know why learning this content matters and I know the seventh graders are probably are thinking the same thing.

I email the teacher and ask, "Why does knowing about the Sahara Desert, the African Sahel, and oases matter? Of all the things you could teach kids right now, why study this? Other than they might be in your standards, how does knowing a few geographical features of Africa prepare students for the world outside of school?"

Several hours later, I get a response in the form of a question, "Did you know that the Sahara is growing at an alarming rate?"

I email back, "So, why should seventh graders thousands of miles away care about that?"

Immediately, he responds: "All over the continent, drought and weather extremes are displacing millions of people, making them climate refugees. Fighting over land and water is causing violent uprisings and is destabilizing local control. We've learned from Covid that catastrophic events go beyond locales and affect people all over the world."

I email back, "Now, that's compelling! Thinking about how climate change effects people and animals makes me care about learning the information." We brainstorm a few provocative questions designed to give students more reasons to read, write, and discuss:

What can a seventh grader do to help climate refugees?

What should people know about Africa?

Is climate change really affecting how and where people live?

What happens to people and animals when there is a drought or flood?

I'm starting to get excited about digging in with the students and hearing their thoughts...

Targets Connect and Scaffold

After figuring out why a topic is compelling, we head to the standards to help us sift, sort, and prioritize key learnings. Below is the district's overview of what students should know and be able to do after the unit. Emboldened in black are the words that guide our planning (click to enlarge).

To hit the standards, the teacher and I need to design a few learning targets in student friendly language that will inspire, guide and scaffold learning. First, we write a few long-term unit targets. It will take several weeks of reading, writing, and discussing before students are able to reach them.
Unit Learning Targets:

I can describe what it means to be a global citizen.

I can describe the circumstances and conditions that force people from their homes.

I can explain why the world needs geographers.

After fleshing out the unit learning targets, we write a few supporting targets that represent key lessons to scaffold and support students' reading, writing, and researching as they develop the behaviors and habits of citizen-geographers in the world.

Tasks Give Students a Way to Demonstrate Understanding

If I want students to hit the targets, I have to give them a way to show me what they know and need. Below is the chart the teacher and I brainstormed of possible targets and long-term and daily tasks for the unit.

Identifying what I want students to know and be able to do over time helps me decide on a daily basis what students will read, write, and talk about. If I plan ahead and have a compelling topic with targets and tasks planned out, I can use the other 6Ts to make little adjustments day to day.

Time to Read, Write, and Discuss

If students are going to grow as readers and writers, they need lots of time to read and write. That means I have to plan for them to work for more minutes than I talk. Using my instructional coach Samantha Bennett's model for planning a daily workshop (Tovani, 2021, Bennett, 2007), I start my daily planning with student work time, then work backwards to think about what they'll need from me to work with more agency and ownership than they would if I just gave them the assignment.

The workshop planning wheel helps me figure out how to integrate my targets and tasks when I am with students. When I plan ahead what kids will do and anticipate some of the stumbling blocks, I free myself up to listen in on conversations, confer with students in break-out rooms, and actually do a bit of differentiation.

Mr. Red Rogue Pen Takes Off His Mask of Disengagement

The second day of the demonstration lesson goes better. I start the class by thanking students who left their thinking on the Jamboard and Google Doc. I invite them to read the comments I wrote in response. I throw out a call to others who didn't respond, letting them know that we need their thinking as well.

At the end of the day, Mr. Red Rogue Pen has identified himself as Kenny. Instead of scribbling all over the page, he writes comments on the Google.doc. inferring that, "Maybe people fight each other because they need farmland."

Sabina, another student who wrote nothing the first day, asks, "Why don't people just go to the rainforest to get materials so they can fix their house?"

Some kids return to the provocative questions from the day before. They add more thinking. Reid uses his background knowledge to help him infer. He writes, "Don't you remember last summer's wildfires that were so bad? People had to leave their houses really fast or they would have burned to death. Maybe that's why people in Africa have to leave their homes."

By the third day students have had a taste of African regions and have started labeling some of the consequences droughts and flooding have on people and animals. They are fired up that something needs to be done.

Tawny writes, "We can help increase people's awareness of what is happening. We can talk to people and see if they can donate or help in any way."

Mia adds, "A seventh grader can do a lot if they put their minds to it. They can help send supplies to people and donate food and money."

I kill the buzz when I write two questions in the chat box, "What will you put on your infographic or write in your open letter to create awareness? Where do we send supplies and money so the people who need it, get it?"

Most kids don't respond. It's a signal they need more information and models of others who have taken up the call to action.

Daniel calls my bluff, no doubt an expert at playing the game of school. He writes, "There are three different supply ports spread out over the desert. Villages can send a camel caravan to the port closest to the area of impact and pick-up supplies." I smile knowing he might be doing a little research and little line lifting. But that's ok, the next step for him is to model how to quote the thinking of others.

It's only been three days and students' curiosity has been sparked. They are ripe to read, write, and figure out what they can do as global citizens. When we plan to engage students using the 6Ts, deeper learning can happen-even online. Trusting kids to think, giving them something compelling to think about, and providing opportunities to read, write, and share with others helps to remove the masks of disengagement.

from Why Do I Have to Read This? Cris Tovani (Stenhouse 2021)
References
Bennett, S. (2007). That workshop book: Systems and structures for classrooms that read, write, and talk. Heinemann.

Berger, R., Woodfin, L., Plaut, S.N., Dobbertin, C.B. (2014) Transformational literacy: Making the common core shift with work that matters. Jossey-Bass.

Tovani, C. (2021). Why do I have to read this: Literacy strategies to engage our most reluctant students. Stenhouse.

Cris Tovani is an internationally known consultant who focuses on issues of disciplinary reading and writing instruction. She was awarded the 2017 Thought Leader Award from the International Literacy Association. Cris has been an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado and the University of Denver.

She is the author of five books, including the best-selling classic I Read It, but I Don't Get It, and most recently, Why Do I Have to Read This? Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students. (Stenhouse, 2021)

Cris has taught students from grades 1-12 and continues to study the "knowing-doing gap" by investigating how best practice research can be practically applied to a variety of instructional settings.

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Cris Tovani: Using 6Ts and Some CYA to Deepen Learning

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Cris Tovani guides us through 6Ts (Topic, Target, Task, Text, Time and Tending) as she tells the story of her 1st virtual literacy workshop - with 7th graders.

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Abstract

Can We Blame Them?

Seven Ways to Make School Worth Kids' Time

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Educators can bring school environments to life by mirroring children's innate curiosity and imagination.

Credit: Jorm Sangsorn / SHUTTERSTOCK

Abstract

Can We Blame Them?

Seven Ways to Make School Worth Kids' Time

If You Build It, Will They Come?

"Inquisitive." "Impulsive." "Pure energy." These are some of the words a group of Washington, D.C., teachers participating in the Inspired Teaching Institute listed when asked to describe characteristics of children. Children are natural learners who are eager to experiment, to manipulate their environment, to explore. Most children, when they are young, are not afraid of failure. Their days are filled with trial and error and new discoveries. Most children are messy, adventurous, and excitable.

In contrast, school tends to be a subdued place, where order, raised hands, and straight lines are rewarded. Oftentimes, little space is provided for youthful exuberance or student decision making. As learning expert Eric Jensen points out, "At a typical school, nearly every decision, from length of time on learning to whom to work with, is dictated and managed outside student control" (1998, p. 59).

The rift between healthy childhood behaviors and school expectations is especially vast for students living in vulnerable circumstances. In his most recent book, An End to Inequality, Jonathan Kozol notes Black and Brown students who live in low-income communities are far more likely than their white or wealthy peers to be subjected to a "severity agenda" designed to "keep them on a straight gray line of march to their next examination [including sitting] stiff and silent in the classroom, no impulsive and unscripted questions, many numbered lists of minor misbehaviors and the unpleasant penalties for each, [and] regimens of shaming for those who aren't 'performing up to expectations'" (2024, pp. 4-5).

Of course, all children should learn to be considerate, to listen to others, and to master academic subjects. The question is: Do they have to stop acting like children in order to make it through the school day?

Can We Blame Them?

While there are situations in which students are forced to miss school because they need to care for siblings at home or face other external barriers that make it difficult or impossible to attend, the primary reasons for student absenteeism, according to decades of research, are not these external situations that "pull" them out of school. Instead, students are "pushed" out by school-based factors that make school unpleasant (Doll et al., 2013).

How many children could attend school, but frankly, don't want to due to negative school environments or a lack of connection to their teachers and peers? A report from CASEL found that "more than 8 in 10 recent high school students say they felt bored at school at least some of the time" (DePaoli et al., 2018). Young people, like all people, don't want to go places where they don't feel engaged. If they find school to be a place where their thoughts, ideas, and interests are not particularly valued, can we blame them for not showing up?

Imagine if school fostered children's imaginations, curiosity, and communication skills, while increasing their knowledge of the world.

Keith Johnstone, former classroom teacher and renowned improvisational theater director, refers to adults as "atrophied children" in his book Impro (1979), claiming that we've lost the ability to imagine, to play, to communicate genuinely with one another. Imagine what it would be like if school fostered children's imaginations, curiosity, and communication skills, while increasing their knowledge of the world.

As teachers, school leaders, and education changemakers, we have a unique opportunity and, given the growing engagement crisis, an imperative to create school communities where students' full selves-their curiosity, their needs, their ideas-are welcome and valued.

Seven Ways to Make School Worth Kids' Time

Below are concrete strategies teachers and school leaders can use to increase engagement and connection and decrease boredom and disaffection, which just might make students more interested in coming to school:

1. Examine underlying assumptions.

Due to the day-to-day pressures of their job, educators can sometimes fall into patterns of thinking that fail to fully appreciate students' potential and interest in learning. Ask yourself: "Am I engaging with students and their families from a deficit-based stance? Might I be thinking, even unconsciously, 'How do I convince these kids and their parents that school is valuable, that learning is important?'"

Or are you engaging with them from an asset-based stance? Asset framing, a concept coined and popularized by social entrepreneur Trabian Shorters , means assuming students and their families are inherently curious people who want to learn (Shorters, n.d.). From an asset-based stance, ask yourself: "How can I ensure that school identifies, values, and builds on the aspirations and contributions of our students and their families?" and "How can I describe the school experience to students and their families in a way that lets them know we value our students and want them to thrive?"

2. Engage empathy.

Ask yourself: "Would I want to be a student at my school?" Picture what it feels like to come into a classroom for the first time where you are greeted with a list of rules and consequences for breaking them, versus one in which you're invited, for instance, to create a "profile page " about yourself and share with classmates your answers to questions like: What do I contribute to my learning environment? What do I like about where I live? What would I like to be doing five years from now? Imagine yourself as a student walking into both classrooms. Which classroom would make you feel more supported and valued?

3. Broaden the definition of success.

Borrowing from improvisational theater, embrace a " Yes! And . . ." approach. Yes! Students need to learn content and prepare for assessments. And students need interesting, meaningful work to do that engages their curiosity and engages them in authentic interactions with one another. Yes! Teachers are expected to deliver specific content to their students on a specific timeline and to ensure their students absorb that content and can prove they have done so on a test or other assessment. And while learning skills and content is important, education decision makers need to ask ourselves a critical question: "What price are we paying when we prioritize the delivery of content and skills over the needs, interests, and engagement of our students?"

A slightly less bleak version of that question is: "How can we spend our time with young people in schools so that they get to engage their curiosity, forge meaningful connections with peers and adults, and learn content in a way that is meaningful and relevant?" Content does not have to be learned at the expense of personal well-being. And personal curiosity and excitement do not have to be sacrificed for learning to happen. As educators, of course we know this. But when we are overwhelmed with the day-to-day demands of adjusting schedules, responding to administrative requests, documentation, meetings, catching up to curricular timelines, and more, we can lose sight of this core truth.

4. Connect the mind, heart, and body.

In most schools, a student's day is divided by subject area. This artificial separation often results in the belief that movement is for gym class, critical thought is for English lit, and mathematics is for algebra. Time is carved out to address students' social-emotional well-being, as if mental health is its own discrete subject.

What if, instead, the entire school day were a time for SEL and academic learning, and a time for students to engage their minds, hearts, and bodies? (Consider inviting students to journal about how they feel when they encounter an unfamiliar math problem; challenge chemistry students to use their bodies to demonstrate the difference between covalent and ionic bonding; or ask students to write persuasive essays arguing for changes to school policies to support well-being.)

5. Put kids in charge.

Give students something to do that's worth showing up for. This can be as small as inviting them to choose where they sit, decide which of two novels the class will read next, or grapple with a difficult mathematical equation instead of turning to the teacher for instructions on how to solve it.

It can be as big as tasking high school students with designing and implementing a schoolwide poll on whether their peers intend to register to vote once they turn 18 (and why or why not), or involving students in making age-appropriate decisions about how to allocate funds in the school's budget, as school leaders did recently at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., when they surveyed students about which vendor they preferred for school lunches.

Putting kids in charge might also look like asking a student why they broke a rule, rather than proceeding directly to the consequences for doing so-or, even better, engaging students in creating rules in the first place. The more opportunities students have to take the lead, the more ownership they feel over their learning experience, and the more likely they are to want to spend time in school.

If kids find school to be a place where their thoughts, ideas, and interests are not particularly valued, can we blame them for not showing up?

6. Embrace awe.

Much of our focus in the classroom is on imparting information and confirming our students have, indeed, learned the day's lesson so that we can move on to the next one. Surprise, wonder, and curiosity don't fit neatly into that delivery-reception paradigm. But research has shown that experiencing awe-defined by social psychologist Dacher Keltner (2024) as "the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world"-offers a host of benefits that increase our students' capacity to learn and their interest in doing so (Heshmat, 2023).

Simply asking students, "What are you curious about?" or "What do you wonder about?"-or incorporating this exercise into curriculum-based assignments-can infuse elements of awe into all aspects of the school day. So can spending time outside, incorporating music into the classroom experience, and inviting students to share stories about times they made a difference in someone else's life.

7. Change the narrative for families.

In addition to, or instead of, traditional parent-teacher conferences, create ways to let families know they are important to the school community. We know, for instance, how important it is to offer food at parent events, but what about hiring local parent-owned restaurants to provide the catering, as Pittsburgh schools participating in the Parents as Allies (PAA) project do (Rayworth, 2024)? And while you're at it, check out the PAA's empathy interviews , a fabulous tool for engaging families and gathering useful context about everyone in your school community (Kidsburgh, n.d.).

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Each year in the Inspired Teaching Institute, my colleagues and I ask participating teachers, "Why do children go to school?" The answers vary widely, but they always include some version of, "Because they have to/because it's the law." We can't simply require young people to go to school and expect them to show up. And ironically, the consequences put in place for truancy can serve as disincentives, by perpetuating the idea that school is a negative space where students are forced to go and a place where they will be punished for not complying.

Can children be themselves while also learning in school? They can if we rethink the school experience. Students shouldn't have to check their needs, wants, energy, and expertise at the school door. When teachers and school leaders engage with students from a place of genuine curiosity and respect, we won't have to threaten students in order to get them to go to school. They'll want to spend their days learning by our side.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ What's one way your school supports children's natural curiosity and wonder?

➛ This article outlines seven strategies to boost student engagement and connection. Which of these strategies seems most needed in your school, and why?

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Educators can bring school environments to life by mirroring children's innate curiosity and imagination.

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Three Strategies to Boost Students' Connection to School

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Three Strategies to Boost Students' Connection to School

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They know there is an adult at school who knows and cares about them.

They engage at least some of the time in activities they find meaningful and that help others.

They feel seen and welcome in school. (2023)

Over the past few years, many schools have implemented programs to promote student well-being, including increased access to counseling and new curriculum focused on supporting whole child development. But there are additional opportunities to build systems and structures that can help educators know their students more deeply, build stronger relationships, and make learning more relevant to students' lives-all of which can help to build stronger connections to school.

At the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), we partner with organizations to translate research on the science of learning and development into effective classroom practices and tools that help educators address day-to-day challenges. Today, this prominently includes addressing the gaps in connection and engagement that can lead to absenteeism. Just as we know that there is no single explanation for the rise in chronic absenteeism, we recognize that no single program or approach will create and sustain an environment of connection and belonging. But here are three innovative initiatives that show distinct promise and give schools new ways to deepen students' engagement with their education.

1. Seeing Students' Potential

When schools know more about the individual strengths and aspirations of their students, they can better support student success. Equal Opportunity Schools (EOS) works with schools nationwide to help them identify students from historically underrepresented backgrounds with the potential to succeed in advanced coursework (such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate), design outreach plans to engage them, and create support systems to ensure they succeed.

The EOS approach starts with the Student Insight Card, which provides 43 unique insights for each student with data from a survey developed to understand students' interests, aspirations, challenges, and barriers to enrolling in higher-level courses. The survey helps schools better understand their students and design ways to engage highly capable students in advanced coursework.

Enrolling more students with the interest and aptitude in advanced coursework expands opportunities for Black and Latino students to succeed in higher education and STEM fields. The work of EOS also demonstrates that schools can take a systematic approach that signals to students that educators care about their future and believe in their abilities, a key part of strengthening connection.

2. Expanding Graduation Pathways

In New Mexico, Future Focused Education (FFE) is part of a statewide effort to redesign graduation requirements and connections to the workplace to better prepare students for the future. The goal is to make learning more relevant and engaging by building new high school graduation pathways grounded in the unique needs of communities and the workforce.

FFE actively works with 47 local education agencies across New Mexico and expects that number to grow. As part of this collaboration, community members come together to create a graduate profile that defines the knowledge and skills that local educators, business, and community leaders believe are important as students transition to adulthood. The profile includes measures of academics and career readiness, as well as skills that honor students' cultural and linguistic identities.

Capstone projects allow high school seniors to demonstrate that they have mastered the skills in the graduate profile. During these months-long projects, students dive deep into topics that interest them, conduct research, and present their findings in public exhibitions of learning to school, family, and community.

These practices give students greater agency over their education, allowing them to connect school to their interests, identities, and communities. When students are engaged in their learning, they are more motivated to tackle challenges that stand in the way of their goals.

3. Building Teacher-Student Relationships

Yet teachers face challenges in building trusting relationships with all of their students, especially in middle and high school where each teacher may see more than 100 students per day. In collaboration with Gradient Learning, CZI brought together learning scientists, educators, students, and community partners to develop Along, a digital communications platform that supports relationship building between teachers and students. The tool gives teachers a meaningful and easy-to-use way to check in with each student and collect feedback that can shape their instruction. Along is grounded in research that shows that when students have positive relationships with their teachers, they are more likely to feel motivated and engaged in school, develop positive social and emotional competencies, and perform better academically.

With Along, teachers can connect with students by asking them research-informed questions designed to find out how they think and experience the classroom. For example, teachers might ask how students like to be recognized for their hard work. These insights can shape how teachers interact with students, and the feedback loop signals to students that their perspectives and voices are valued.

Creating Lasting Change

Connection can play a part in drawing students to school and combating chronic absenteeism-but it must be consistently woven into the fabric of the school day. By supporting conditions in schools where students see adults as partners in their learning, respecting their interests, and creating meaningful experiences both in and out of school, students are more engaged and excited about their learning.

Educators also need help to make these shifts. Tools like Along and resources from organizations like Equal Opportunity Schools and Future Focused Education can provide teachers and school leaders with the necessary support to address the needs of their students. Working with partners like these has reinforced our belief at CZI that with the right supports, educators can cultivate authentic, unique connections with students that are a critical part of addressing the absenteeism crisis.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ What steps have you taken in your school or classroom to increase students' sense of connection and belonging? Where do you think there is room for improvement?

➛ In your view, how are opportunities for advanced coursework and student engagement related? How is your school or district supporting such opportunities?

➛ What specific strategies do teachers in your school or district use to build strong developmental relationships with students? What supports do they need?

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3 Strategies to Boost Students' Connection to School

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New tools and resources can help educators deepen student engagement and belonging.

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CHALLENGE: Students are less focused and engaged in the classroom.

Teachers, leaders, families, and policymakers have noted with alarm that student engagement has plummeted since schools returned to in-person learning. Many educators perceive that students' attention is constantly diverted by digital distractions, making sustained focus nearly impossible. In fact, a recent poll of 1,400 teachers across grades 4-12 found that 80 percent expressed concerns about students' engagement with classroom learning (Gradient Learning, 2023).

But we know schooling wasn't perfect in 2019; the pandemic and its consequences have highlighted problems that were hiding in plain sight. As practicing K-12 educators who've long written about various aspects of engagement, we believe a significant problem in discussing student engagement lies in how it's measured. Too often, measuring behavioral engagement, like physical signals of attentiveness, compliance in task completion, and the number of clicks on a digital learning platform, takes precedence. Cognitive engagement is routinely overlooked.

Real engagement isn't just engagement of students (signs of attentiveness and fulfilling requirements); it's also engagement by students, evidence that they are interacting with what they learn. Measuring "engagement by" means asking things like, How often do students pose questions about the content (not just task clarification)? Or make connections between ideas and concepts during discussions? Or act upon teacher feedback? Drawing on our experiences as educators and a book two of us coauthored on student engagement (Reeves, Fisher, & Frey, 2023), we offer four C's behind teaching practice that fosters engagement by students, and ways to put these four C's into practice.

1. Connections: Build the Foundation

Students thrive in classrooms filled with positive human connections. Healthy teacher-student relationships have strong potential to accelerate student learning (Hattie, 2023). But it's the student who gauges the quality of the relationship, so their perception matters. Students also feel connected to the learning itself when they perceive it as meaningful. Again, perception is key. We know why the content we're teaching is important, but do students? Two strategies can aid each kind of connection.

We know why the content we're teaching is important, but do students?

First, "campaign" for relationships. Fostering real teacher-student relationships, like most worthwhile efforts, requires frequency, duration, and intensity. So, identify a hard-to-reach student in your class and seek to establish (or rebuild) a relationship with them. Every day, for 10 days in a row, engage in a two-minute conversation with that student-in the hallway, during lunch, or in the bus line. Follow one rule: don't talk about school (Wlodkowski, 1983). Find out about their interests and let them learn a bit about you. Then identify the next student in need of connection and repeat the cycle. Doing this strategically throughout the year helps you continually reinvest in relationships.

The second strategy is baking in relevance. Relevance in learning can play a key role in student engagement-but relevance is mediated by the student's perception of the curriculum's value. At the lowest end of the scale of relevance posited by Stacy Priniski and her colleagues (2018) is personal association. For instance, a science teacher providing instruction about oceans may ask who has been to a beach before. While well-intentioned, the effect is short-lived. Personal usefulness is more sustained; the student sees how they can use what is being taught. That same science teacher might demonstrate how concepts about ocean temperature and wind speed will be used as variables in an upcoming lab experiment on hurricanes. At the highest level of Priniski's continuum is personal identification, in which learners link content to building their present and future identities. Sharing information on the high demand for data scientists and meteorologists could help students connect this content to possible future career identities.

Make relevance an intentional part of your daily practice by telling students why their learning is important. Why are we learning about word spacing in writing? Spaces help our readers read what we've written. Why are we learning about the product property of exponents? Mathematicians use this as a tool to make very large calculations simpler. When possible, link relevance to students' personal interests. Taylor, you're a skateboarder. Check out how lift and thrust make it possible for you to do those big ollies.

2. Conditions: Cultivate a High-Expectations Atmosphere

Students are incredibly sensitive to the expectations of their teacher. In one study, two groups of students in grades 2-7 who had similar levels of reading achievement at the beginning of the year showed markedly different achievement at the year's end (Rubie-Davies et al., 2020). The variable was the teacher's expectations: Students with teachers who overestimated their ability outperformed those whose teachers underestimated their ability.

High-expectations teachers set challenging learning intentions and success criteria, develop academic goals with their students, and rely on heterogeneous grouping. In contrast, low-expectations teachers ask more close-ended, low-level questions, group by ability, spend more time repeating directions, and reserve praise for correct answers (Rubie-Davies et al., 2015). To support high expectations, it's key to pair challenging learning goals with regular feedback so students can monitor their learning. Especially at the beginning of teaching content, assess formatively, using the learning intentions and success criteria in each lesson. Provide students with frequent opportunities to gauge their progress.

Research on teacher expectations reveals that even when low-expectations teachers try to differentiate lessons according to students' learning profiles, they ignore a central principle of differentiation: that the learning students ultimately achieve should remain constant while the paths to get there vary (Tomlinson, 2017). We telegraph low expectations when we accept a lower standard of work from a student in a misguided attempt to be kind. Instead, if a student struggles with the learning intention, scaffold and support their learning. Using heterogeneous groups-with academic diversity in each group-is one way to provide support, especially if a teacher designs group tasks such that collaboration is essential for success success. For instance, a math teacher we work with hosts a 15-minute Mastery Monday each week. Each learning group selects one math problem from last week's challenge set that gave at least some kids in that group difficulty, and the group makes another attempt to solve it together.

A warm classroom climate also supports high-expectations teaching by giving students an emotionally safe space to learn. Pair student feedback with high expectations and warmth: I'm giving you this feedback because I have high expectations for you and I know you can reach them. Use digital voice feedback extensions like Mote so students can hear your supportive tone of voice, not just read your words. And deliberately foster an emotionally supportive peer climate. Students must understand that help-seeking is an essential dimension of learning at high levels. Teachers can create posters with sentence frames for offering and accepting help or create a "help wanted" area in the classroom in which students can post requests. Peers can be taught phrases to say to each other as emotional scaffolds (such as "We can do hard things. Let's keep going") and students can be encouraged to ask themselves: Have I offered help today-and accepted help? Have I asked for help today? Have I politely declined help because I wanted to keep trying?

3. Challenge: Choose Policies that Encourage Persistence

The failure in how educators talk about failure is that while we claim it's essential for learning, grading policies tell students otherwise (Reeves et al., 2023). Teachers tell students a growth mindset is important, but then grade them on every attempt to learn. Students sometimes find themselves so far behind that within a matter of weeks, they realize they can't overcome the point deficit no matter what. Engagement plummets: the hoodie goes up and the head goes down.

Grades are often perceived as a mechanism for motivating disengaged students-but they rarely are. The field knows a lot about what does motivate kids to challenge themselves, including:

Feeling competent at what one is doing.

Understanding the significance of what one is learning.

Receiving actionable feedback about next steps in learning.

Having opportunities to make decisions (Reeves et al., 2023).

Two overall practices help educators revise their grading policies to maximize these research-proven motivators. First, separate product and process. Grades should be used to report academic progress compared to the standards being taught. But in many cases, a single number or letter is used to also convey a stew of non achievement factors, including behavior, attendance, and effort. This practice demotivates many learners.

The solution: Separately grade product criteria (which capture students' academic performance toward goals and reflect how they demonstrated learning) and process criteria (which reflect non achievement data that impact learning, like citizenship, peer relationships, and persistence). A more nuanced grading system makes it possible to report, for instance, that a skilled learner has problematic habits when it comes to collaborating with others-or to acknowledge a student who is not yet achieving at expected levels for his resilience (Guskey, 2020).

Another way to make grading serve motivation is to reconsider what goes in the gradebook. Practice work throughout the unit, such as in-class assignments and homework, should be collected and returned with feedback. However, this is practice, not the game; performance on it shouldn't contribute to the overall points earned. Reserve points for end-of-unit assessments of learning. We've successfully used such competency-based grading practices for 15 years at the school where we work. We also allow students who don't initially earn a passing score to retake another version of the exam after they've completed the unit's homework and attended tutorials (which cultivates persistence, resilience, and help-seeking). Students' motivation is reset because they've received actionable feedback, made a choice about whether to get help, and (hopefully) feel competent.

4. Control: Give It to Students!

Where does control of learning truly reside? Here's the news: it's not with us. Educators can create conditions and use evidence-based teaching practices, but it's the student who's in the driver's seat when it comes to learning. This doesn't mean we should fall back to the "I taught them, but they didn't learn" excuse; it means we should intentionally change instructional practices so that students drive their own learning.

Educators can create conditions and use evidence-based teaching practices, but it's the student who's in the driver's seat when it comes to learning.

Sharing control involves teaching self-regulation. When students have habituated to an external locus of control, they look to us for what to do next; this reduces the teacher to a supervisor of tasks. Strengthening students' internal locus of control requires boosting their self-regulation skills, especially their ability to do six things:

Know their current level of understanding.

Know where they need to go next in learning.

Select tools to guide their learning.

Seek feedback and recognize errors as opportunities to learn.

Monitor their progress and adjust their learning.

Recognize their understanding and teach others (Fisher et al., 2023).

These learning skills accelerate achievement because they cultivate active learning-and give students confidence to take on challenges.

Talk with students individually about their results from initial assessments and learning intentions you've set, to help them understand where they are in their learning and where they are headed. Create more opportunities for students to exercise choice and decision making, and regularly schedule events through which students actively seek feedback. For instance, at a designated time each week, have students leave a piece of work on their desks for their peers to provide feedback. All members of the class rotate from one desk to the next, leaving signed sticky notes offering tips and advice.

A second strategy that helps students control their learning is empowering them to set their own goals. As students develop self-regulatory dispositions, they'll be better equipped to set goals and monitor progress toward them. In conferences, help students, especially disengaged students, formulate self-referenced, "personal best" goals. For example, reluctant readers aren't necessarily going to be motivated by a grade-level Lexile goal that seems too distant. Better to set incremental goals that let them gauge progress, not just mastery ( Your reading gains this last month went from a 240 Lexile to a 280! That's your personal best. What's next?) Equip learners with the means to monitor their own progress, such as tracking how many pages they have read or how many math problems they have completed.

Tuning Them in to Learning

Getting students tuned in to learning requires more than getting them to pay attention and fulfill schoolwork requirements. It means seeing to it that students are enthusiastically engaging with content and fellow learners. Let's set up conditions to encourage such active participation. By thinking beyond the "grades-as-rewards" box in terms of motivation and focusing on the four C's discussed here, we'll increase the odds that students will focus on their learning, no matter the distractions.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ Have you found your students were more easily distracted the last year or so than they were before most schools went all-remote? Why do you think that is?

➛ What steps could you take to help students see greater relevance in their learning? Or to create a "warm" classroom or school climate of high expectations?

Better Learning Through Structured Teaching

An instructional framework any teacher can use to help students to be more successful and self-directed learners.

What to Try When Students Can't Focus

His book acknowledges that getting students to focus can seem like the Holy Grail. Lang shares approaches-from research and his observations of many classrooms-for garnering that attention. Chapters explore five key aspects of learning that compel students' attention: Community (the "least distracted class" Lang observed was one where the teacher regularly drew out all voices and connected students); curiosity; assessment; structure; and novelty (artists of all kind use these last two). Including assessment may seem odd, but many kids do focus when tested. Lang explains how to "take advantage of the attitude-focusing power of graded assessment without the collateral damage grades can cause."

Just as teachers hope to do for students, Lang (director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University in Massachusetts) hopes to draw educators' focus away from "distractions" toward engaging kids:

We've been sidetracked in recent years by assertive voices who lay the entire blame for our distractible natures at the feet of our laptops and phones ... [but] teachers have always wrestled with capturing and sustaining students' attention. We need to turn our heads away from distraction and toward attention. Our challenge is not to wall off distractions, [but] to cultivate attention and help students use it in service of meaningful learning.

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To increase student engagement, think of engage as an active verb-and students as the ones doing the actions.

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Accompanies Ron Ritchhart's book about the 8 cultural forces.

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Sample Whole School Zoom Workshop W Facilitattor

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Planning for Opportunity, Engagement, and Understanding

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Planning for Opportunity, Engagement, and Understanding

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Cris Tovani podcast

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Planning for Opportunity, Engagement & Understanding with Cris Tovani - PEBC

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In this episode, Cris Tovani and Michelle Jones explore the opportunity gap and the intricacies of remote learning as we discuss how the elements of the PEBC Teaching Framework support student…

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Planning Learning Experiences That are Worthy of Students' Time and Attention

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Planning Learning Experiences That are Worthy of Students' Time and Attention

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If we want to create learning experiences that are worthy of students' time and attention, we must be planful! PEBC Lab Host and 6th grade Advisor at Jefferson County Open School, Gabrielle Hovinen, joins Michelle Morris Jones on PEBC's Phenomenal Teaching Podcast to share her process for cultivating a community of reflective, self-directed, and inquisitive students. Student centered, life-worthy and responsive planning promotes student empowerment and fosters the confidence, skills, and drive to engage in difficult work. Gabrielle pairs content standards with carefully scaffolded inquiry based learning experiences which helps her students not only gain critical literacy skills but also make connections between school and the world around them. Her process includes; chunking the year into manageable bits, starting small with shorter units and texts, building discourse skills, increasing the complexity of the tasks and length of units, and increasing the amount of choice. Ultimately, we must "check the landing" by providing lessons that will guide students as they take on new personal, social, and intellectual risks as they climb the metaphorical tree of learning.

This conversation connects to the "Plan" strand of the PEBC Teaching Framework. From an intermediate school in the inner loop of a major American city to an elementary school school resting over 8,000 feet above sea level. From a pre-K-12 grade international school near the Dnieper River to where she first attended school as a kindergartener, Gabrielle has been teaching and adapting to different learning structures for over twenty years. She loves learning and the process of learning and, this month, she is learning how to work with polymer clay, learning how to make a birdhouse, learning how to teach her cats to stay, and learning how to speak Spanish.

The Phenomenal Teaching Podcast is brought to you by Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC) and is intended to elevate the strands of the PEBC Teaching Framework which is illustrated in Wendy Ward Hoffer's book, Phenomenal Teaching. Thank you for joining us this season as we strive to share the stories of educators who are making schools and classrooms more phenomenal than ever before by implementing community, planning, workshop, thinking strategies, discourse, and assessment strategies that promote agency, equity, and understanding.

PEBC is a nonprofit organization that is proud to provide free quality content to educators. If you would like to support our work by sponsoring this podcast, please contact Michelle Jones at mmorrisjones@pebc.org.

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Planning learning experiences for students - PEBC

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To create learning experiences that are worthy of students' time and attention, we must be planful!

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Cris Tovani podcast

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Every teacher dreads the question, "Why do I have to read this?" Listen in as Cris Tovani shares her CYA ~ Curriculum You Anticipate ~ planning structure. When planning for student engagement we must consider how Topic, Tasks, Time, Targets, Texts, and Tending all come together to create authentic learning experiences for students and teachers. Cris shares her insights into the importance of connecting standards and objectives to relevant topics and texts so that our targets and tasks are engaging and meaningful for all students. She also shares how we must tend to students' needs and consider how we structure our time for daily instruction and units of study. Most importantly Cris bolsters our awareness of how to remove the masks of disengagement that so many students wear in our classrooms. Michelle and Cris also make connections to the Planning strand of the PEBC Teaching Framework as they synthesis how the CYA Structures help teachers plan with purpose, people, and process in mind.

Cris Tovani taught first grade to seniors for 31 years. Her entire career has been spent trying to figure out the "knowing-doing" gap. Researchers tell teachers what they should be doing but actually doing it with 125+ students is a whole new ball game. Throughout her career, Cris has tried to take reading and writing research and apply it to all levels of learners. She loves sharing her success and failures with colleagues around the world so they too, can better serve students. Cris is a founder of PEBC and an internationally known consultant focusing on issues of reading, content comprehension and assessment in secondary classrooms. She has been an adjunct professor and is the author of four books: I Read It, But I Don't Get It, Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, So, What Do They Really Know? and No More Telling as Teaching: Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning.

PEBC is a nonprofit organization that is proud to provide free quality content to educators. If you would like to support our work by sponsoring this podcast, please contact Michelle Jones at mmorrisjones@pebc.org.

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Removing the Masks of Disengagement - PEBC

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Every teacher dreads the question, "Why do I have to read this?" Listen in as Cris Tovani shares her CYA ~ Curriculum You Anticipate ~ planning structure. When planning for student engagement we must...

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Planning for Agency and Understanding with Lori Conrad

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Planning for Agency and Understanding with Lori Conrad

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Planning for Agency and Understanding with Lori Conrad - PEBC

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In this episode Lori Conrad paints a vivid picture of how we might plan for student agency and understanding. We discuss the relationship between beliefs and planning, the importance of planning...

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Exploring the Connection Between Agency and Community

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Exploring the Connection Between Agency and Community

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Exploring the Connection Between Agency & Community with Stevi Quate - PEBC

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In this episode Stevi shares how her definition of agency has evolved and the connection between agency and community. In addition, we discuss what positive classroom community looks like and sounds...