# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nell Duke - Needs Based Small Group Presentation - Coaching Intensive October 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Intro to Literacy Essentials K-3 Michelle's Master

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When her students asked about tornadoes during a unit on weather, this teacher saw clearly how student engagement enhances learning.

EVGENY LASHCHENOV / Alamy Stock Photo

When I asked my third-grade students what they wanted to learn about weather, the overwhelming response was tornadoes. So I pivoted from my plan and designed a unit about tornadoes in order to capture my students' interests.

Paired with differentiating instruction, building on student interests in the classroom can be a successful technique for boosting engagement. Engagement can be thought of as the curiosity that students utilize to engage in learning. Choice, differentiation, and pivoting to meet student interest work to increase motivation and create a classroom of highly engaged learners.

Step 1: Choice

Choice is a powerful and effective strategy that can increase student engagement. At the beginning of our weather unit, I engaged the class in creating a know/want-to-know chart, where they wrote or drew what they knew and wanted to learn. Their responses guided the lessons over the coming weeks, kept them engaged, and helped shape future lessons to their interests. As the unit progressed, students were provided with options to further build curiosity.

Making choices can be overwhelming for some students. Providing clear, direct language about options helps to clarify instruction. For example, when my students were focusing on learning vocabulary related to weather, I gave them this choice: "You can write a weather report or create vocabulary flash cards." Both assignments would accomplish the goal of mastering unfamiliar vocabulary while allowing students to choose a task that suited their learning interests.

Another strategy is to provide students with choice boards that have an array of activities-I called the activities "weather stations" for this unit. The choice board included tasks to complete that connected to a learning outcome for the unit. Examples included creating their own vocabulary cards with definitions and pictures, writing a paragraph that predicted the weather and explaining why the prediction was correct, and writing a story or poem about a destructive force of nature and its impact on themselves or their community.

By the end of the unit, students needed to have completed three activities. Each activity had specific components that needed to be met to be considered complete. For example, paragraphs needed to include three vocabulary words related to weather, and weather reports had to make a prediction and explain the outcome.

The choice board served as a checklist for students to ensure that they had completed every step of the project. This was particularly useful for students used to rushing through assignments. Learners were deciding for themselves how to connect with classroom content through choosing their own activities. This added a layer of accountability as students were being asked to review their work.

When engaging in final products, students could choose an assignment that best matched their interests. Some composed stories or poems about destructive weather, while others acted out a scenario in front of the class.

Step 2: Differentiation

Students learn differently and arrive at school with varied skill sets. One method to create an accessible curriculum is through differentiation. In this strategy, teachers develop flexibility in classroom content, process (engagement), and demonstration of learning. When my students were learning about weather, I provided content in multiple formats to increase their understanding. This included short news clips about "wild weather" so that students could see the destructive forces of tornadoes in real time, as well as various print sources that used tornadoes as a hook.

I also gave them access to books, nonfiction texts, and leveled articles that included first-person accounts of surviving destructive weather. After they had cultivated an understanding of tornadoes, we moved into discussing hurricanes, floods, and wildfires as forces of nature.

During classroom instruction, I created leveled sentence stems as an option for students to engage in academic discourse after reading an academic text. For example, when searching for the main idea of an article on drought and fire danger, students could choose which prompt to answer. These were some potential responses:

The main idea of the text is that drought increases fire danger.

After I read the article "Drought and Fire," the main idea is that drought increases fire danger.

Based on the evidence that less rain causes timber to become dry, the main idea of the article "Drought and Fire" is that drought increases fire danger.

Using sentence stems widens the scope of who students interact with and increases rigor by building academic language. While using content-specific vocabulary and sentence structure supports all students, it is even more critical for the development of English language learners, who often have stronger interpersonal communication skills (everyday language) but struggle with higher-level academic language.

Step 3: Pivoting to Meet Student Interest

Throughout the unit, students gravitated toward wanting to learn more about extreme weather. As I was teaching this unit, wildfires were racing through the next town and recess was canceled because of smoke. My class wanted to know more about wildfires, and I made a quick pivot at this point to take advantage of what was on their minds. Learning became tangible as students were making real-world connections between what they were reading and the extreme weather patterns in their backyard.

This pivot worked because it fit within the scope of the unit. Admittedly, it was tricky to find instructional materials so quickly. I began with local news sources and then looked to Scholastic News and Cal Fire for resources such as videos and news articles. Newsela was also helpful in finding leveled nonfiction texts about wildfire. We also read about hotshots-the firefighters who tackle the trickiest part of the blaze. The buzz of excited chatter filled the room, letting me know I had captured student interest by following their lead.

As educators, it is easy to get wrapped up in carefully prepared lesson plans. Yet being flexible can have positive outcomes. When students see their lived experience represented in the classroom, they are more likely to become engaged, as content carries more meaning and relevance. Changes can occur on a small scale, like incorporating new vocabulary in a do-now activity or using an article for a close read. Teachers can then save these activities and utilize them the next time a lesson takes an unexpected but riveting turn.

As students dove into learning about tornadoes and wildfires, their engagement was displayed in the high quality of work they were producing. Because they had chosen to learn about these topics, their inquiry went deeper, and it showed in the final product.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Giving Students Choice in the Classroom Increases Engagement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When her students asked about tornadoes during a unit on weather, this teacher saw clearly how student engagement enhances learning. EVGENY LASHCHENOV / Alamy Stock Photo When I asked my third-grade students what they wanted to learn about weather, the overwhelming response was tornadoes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Duke  Schutz List of Prompts Intro Page FINAL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There’s an art—and science—to providing prompts for young readers when they struggle.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Planning for Interactive Read Aloud with a Vocabulary Focus 2018.docx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #3 District Coaches Institute 2017 Duke HANDOUT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Professional Resource Review Tool Using Michigan K-3 Literacy Essentials

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nell Duke - Needs Based Small Group Presentation - Coaching Intensive October 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This module outlines the benefits of implementing PALS for Grades 2-6, a peer tutoring strategy in which students work in pairs to strengthen their reading skills. Also included are step-by-step instructions for each of the three PALS activities as well as printable PALS materials (est. completion time: 1 hour).

Work through the sections of this module in the order presented in the STAR graphic above.

Related to this module

Copyright 2022 Vanderbilt University. All rights reserved.

The IRIS Center Peabody College Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37203 iris@vanderbilt.edu. The IRIS Center is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Grant #H325E170001. The contents of this Website do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Sarah Allen.

Copyright 2022 Vanderbilt University. All rights reserved.

* For refund and privacy policy information visit our Help & Support page.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This module outlines the benefits of implementing PALS for Grades 2-6, a peer tutoring strategy in which students work in pairs to strengthen their reading skills. Also included are step-by-step instructions for each of the three PALS activities as well as printable PALS materials (est. completion time: 1 hour).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facilitator Guide Updates from MAISA 12.8.21.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Background Information

The Early Literacy Professional Learning Grant was awarded to MAISA in September 2016. The grant is designed to work with Coaches across Michigan at the ISD/LEA/RESA level to study the essential practices to get Michigan students reading at a proficient level. It is our goal to meet with these Coaches and allow them opportunities to hear from content experts from the field, as well as, network, learn and grow with other ISD Early Literacy Coaches.

The grant is a collaborative effort between the Michigan Department of Education, MAISA, and Gogebic-Ontonagon ISD.

Looking for more information?

Check out LiteracyEssentials.org for all things regarding the Essential documents (below). There you will find YouTube videos, coaching modules, instructional modules, and more!

You can find Professional Learning Events here

Order Booklets and Materials

A compilation of all Early Literacy Essential Practices in one book (does not include 6th-12th Gr. Essentials). These booklets can be purchased by districts from International Minute Press at (517) 323-7777. Request the "B-5th Grade Essentials Booklet". Books with no tabs are $7.11 per book. Books with tabs are $9.59 per book.

*Feel free to download the document and print in house.

Early Literacy Essentials

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Early Literacy Professional Learning Grant

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Early Literacy Professional Learning Grant was awarded to MAISA in September 2016. The grant is designed to work with Coaches across Michigan at the ISD/LEA/RESA level to study the essential practices to get Michigan students reading at a proficient level.

# data[].attributes.headline
Essential Practices Disciplinary in Secondary Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Essential Practices Disciplinary in Secondary Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Morphology Part I Coaches Network 2021  -  Read-Only.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Listening to Reading-WWW Protocol | nellkduke.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Observation of Writing Instruction and Activities - Chart

# data[].attributes.headline
A Lot of resources, links, resources from KENT ISD

# data[].attributes.subject
A Lot of resources, links, resources from KENT ISD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
K-3 Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy Resources

# data[].attributes.body
How to get into MI virtual

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential Instructional  Practices in Early Literacy

# data[].attributes.body
Reading Engagement and Motivation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to this post as a podcast:

When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas.

For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers.

So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:

1. Students are more motivated academically when they have a positive relationship with their teacher.

2. Choice is a powerful motivator in most educational contexts.

3. For complex tasks that require creativity and persistence, extrinsic rewards and consequences actually hamper motivation.

4. To stay motivated to persist at any task, students must believe they can improve in that task.

Stopping the Buck: The Teacher's Role in Student Motivation

The research on motivation wasn't hard to find; it seems as if any teacher with an Internet connection and an hour or two should be able to learn everything they need to know about the topic.

So where's the disconnect? If we as a collective group of educators already know what works to motivate students, why are so many students still unmotivated? When I talk with teachers about the problem, I don't hear much about the research.

Instead, we blame technology: "Students are so distracted by their phones."

Or we blame the parents: "Parents just don't want to be bothered" or "They don't want their kids to fail/experience setbacks/take responsibility."

Or we make sweeping generalizations: "Kids today just aren't like they used to be. They act so entitled."

Are we passing the buck? Maybe. It's certainly easier to blame outside forces than it is to make big changes in the way we teach. Unfortunately, even if ALL of the above statements are true, we can't do anything about those things. The only piece we really have control over is what goes on in our own classrooms.

So let's look at our own practice. When we set aside all the outside factors and just focus in on our time with students, how are we doing? How much alignment is there between our own instructional moves and the research on student motivation?

I have put together a list of five questions we can ask ourselves to see if we really are doing everything we could to boost student motivation. To keep me from getting too preachy, I'll do the exercise with you, reflecting on the years when I was a classroom teacher with middle school students.

Okay, let's go.

The Questions

1. How is your relationship with your students, really?

Multiple studies have shown a significant connection between student motivation and the quality of the teacher-student relationship. A good teacher-student relationship provides students with a sense of stability and safety, which sets the stage for more academic risk-taking. So what kind of relationship do you have with your least motivated students? How well do you really know them? Do you have conversations with them about the things they care about? Or have you more or less given up on them?

My response:
At first, I'm thinking I did pretty well in this area. I taught English language arts and my students kept journals, so I got to know them well. But when I think about my less-motivated kids, I'm not so sure I can say the same. The connection I had to Andre, one of my seventh-graders, consisted entirely of me getting him to make up missed work. It was all we talked about: the missing work, why he wasn't turning it in, how important this stuff was for his future. When Andre saw me coming, he probably just saw a looming cloud of nag. We never really talked about the stuff that mattered to him.

How we can do better:
Just becoming more aware of the value of relationships is the most important step. From there, consider one of these resources:

Jim Sturtevant's book, You've Gotta Connect, is full of specific strategies for building stronger bonds with your students. (Episode 9)

Smokey and Elaine Daniels' The Best-Kept Teaching Secret describes how dialogue journals can help us get to know our students better personally and academically.

If you want something faster, take a look at the 2 x 10 strategy, shared by Angela Watson, which has teachers spend two minutes a day for ten days casually chatting with underperforming students.

Remember that relationships between students matter, too. A well-chosen classroom icebreaker can begin building a sense of community in your room.

2. How much choice do your students actually have?

Study after study points to choice as a major factor in motivation. Most of us have probably heard this, but we may not have fully embraced it. After all, providing choice can be messy, with students completing different tasks at different rates, making it hard to be consistent with grading. It can also mean a lot more prep work: If you're going to give students three different options for an assignment, that means you have to prepare all three options ahead of time. Or do you? Isn't that kind of prep work more in line with worksheet-oriented teaching, where students are doing low-level work that was largely prepared by the teacher? If students are engaged in more long-term, authentic, creative projects, it's much easier to provide them with choices, because we aren't constantly trying to provide them with new busywork every day.

My response:
I was pretty good about letting students choose topics for writing assignments, but I also required a lot of seat work as well. I wanted students to do their work at about the same pace, and I knew next to nothing about differentiation. Now I'm thinking about Matt, another one of my unmotivated seventh graders, who was incredibly smart. He sat way low in his chair in the back of the Gifted & Talented language arts class he'd been assigned to, way cooler than all the others, and he gave minimal effort. I used the same nagging approach I'd used with Andre, with minimal success. Now that I know more about differentiation and choice, I realize I could have had a conversation with Matt about letting him work ahead on some things. I could have allowed him, and his classmates, more input on the larger assignments I gave them. If I had given Matt a more active role in his own learning, he might have been more engaged.

How we can do better:
There are lots of ways you can allow more choice in your classroom without having to completely overhaul your way of doing things. Even adding a small amount of choice to what students already have is an improvement. Consider letting them choose:

seating: Could students do some assignments on the floor? In the hall? Or just in different seats?

work groups: Some students thrive in groups, while others do better on their own.

intake mode: If you want a student to read a particular book, and an audio version is available, you could occasionally make that an option.

output mode: For some assignments, it may be possible to have students deliver their response in an audio or video recording, rather than in writing.

timing: If students don't absolutely have to do the same thing at the same time, why not let them choose the order of activities they do?

3. Are you relying heavily on carrots and sticks...or Jolly Ranchers?

Many, many teachers count on rewards ("carrots") and punishments ("sticks") to motivate students. And those who study motivation tell us that extrinsic reinforcement can be motivating if the task is something easy: If you're trying to get students to clean up the classroom quickly, for example, offering class points toward a party can get them to speed up. But for tasks that require creativity and complex thought, extrinsic rewards actually reduce motivation. In your class, how much of your motivational approach is extrinsic? How often do you use grades, treats, privileges or punishments to prod students into doing something they don't really want to do, something they have no real interest in? If extrinsic reinforcement is your primary approach, you may actually be killing off any natural motivation students might have otherwise had.

My response:
I score myself pretty low here. As a teacher, my classroom management was a mess until I learned how to control students with names on the board, extra credit, whole-class rewards for good behavior, and the ever-reliable bag of Jolly Ranchers. I did those things because they worked. But there's a difference between getting kids to do what you want and truly, deeply motivating them.

How we can do better:
Try to catch yourself the next time you're about to tie a challenging activity to a reward or consequence. When introducing a task, try focusing on its inherent interest or value, or how much students are going to learn, rather than on a separate reward or grade. Consider the difference in these two statements:

I'm going to give you a sheet of math problems. The first ten are required, the last two are for extra credit.

I'm going to give you a sheet of math problems. The first ten should be fairly easy, but I want to see how many of you can do the last two-those are the challenge problems. You guys have learned enough that I think you can solve at least one of them, maybe both.

If you have a tendency to go for the first option, you are going for the easy win, the extrinsic reinforcement. If you find that this doesn't do much to motivate your underperforming students, try moving more toward the second option and see if anything changes.

4. Do your words contribute to a growth mindset or a fixed mindset?

What could be wrong with saying "You're so smart"? It's nice, right? It boosts their confidence, no? Well, it's more complicated than that. Students are motivated to persist at a challenging task when they believe they can get better at it. That requires them to have a growth mindset, a belief that their intelligence and abilities can be developed with effort. Teachers can have an impact on this mindset with the things we say to students. So when we say "You're so smart," "You have natural math ability," or "You're a great writer," we are telling the student it's their natural ability that got them where they are. We're contributing to a fixed mindset. And that's not motivating.

My response:
When I was in the classroom, I knew nothing about growth mindset. I thought kids would feel great if I told them they were smart or talented. I can remember a conversation with Janae, a student who commanded the attention of her peers with ease but got into trouble a lot and did poorly in school. I remember pulling her aside and telling her that I thought she had strong leadership qualities, and that if she could just get her grades up, she had a bright future ahead of her. Yeah, that didn't work. If I wanted her to "get her grades up," I would have been better off noticing a well-constructed sentence or complimenting the way she got her group back on track during a cooperative learning activity, showing her exactly what kind of choices she should keep making to be successful.
How we can do better:

Instead of praising something innate and fixed about a student, focus on specific things students can actually control. So instead of telling a student she's a great student, notice the level of detail in her lab report. Marvel at the level of difficulty she was able to handle on that challenging math problem. Point out how much preparation she must have done for the presentation she gave. It's faster and easier to just tell them they're awesome, but taking the time to be specific and focus on effort will pay much larger dividends.

When you have constructive feedback to give, follow the same principle and make it specific. Rather than telling a student she "needs to work harder" on her assignments, tell her what to work on. Is neatness an issue? Does she need to read the questions more slowly? Is she doing the advanced math right, but messing up with the basic addition and subtraction? If a student knows what to work on, she will be far more motivated to do that work.

5. What are you doing to make your content relevant to students' lives?

I think this is another one of those principles that's been around for so long, we assume we're doing it more than we actually are. But showing students how the content relates to their lives really does make a difference. When students believe they are doing something authentic, something that will improve their lives or have some kind of impact, they are naturally motivated. So how are you doing in this area? Do you regularly provide opportunities for students to connect what they're learning to the world they currently live in?

My response:
I got pretty lazy about this. Just like crafting a good opening and closing for each day's learning, I often cut corners on making my material relevant. I was often much more focused on getting through content and tasks than I was on making it meaningful. I was pretty good about giving writing assignments on topics that mattered to them, but I don't know how clearly I connected what they were doing to how it could help them. For example, with something like argumentative writing-I was probably more focused on "this is how you get a good grade on this" rather than on "this is how you change someone's mind."
How we can do better:

Plan it, then say it: Making material more relevant can be as simple as occasionally stopping an activity to explain its relevance. When students are studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates, show parallels with the current presidential election. When you're studying bacteria, talk about all the places bacteria hang out in students' daily lives. Making these kinds of connections is a natural practice for many teachers, but if you're like me, you might forget to add these connections into a lesson. So just add them into your lesson plan; literally write down a few connections you plan to make some time during a class period, then check your plans before class is over to make sure you did it.

More reflection: Even asking students to think about how course material connects to their lives can make a difference. One study (see the Motivation Matters document in the collection) had teachers ask students to write weekly reflections on how the material they were learning related to their lives; lower-performing students in these classes did better compared to those where teachers didn't use this intervention. Researchers referred to these as "value interventions."

Design tasks that end with a public product: In one of the videos in the collection below, educator Kathleen Cushman describes the highly engaging work students do at High Tech High, a school whose curriculum focuses on project-based learning. Student projects have an authentic, public end product-a video, a live presentation, a community service project, a website-something that will ultimately be consumed by people outside of their own classroom. This naturally motivates students to work harder on a task. So look at your curriculum and see if you can find more ways to build assignments around real, public products.

Where to Go from Here

The purpose of this exercise is not to beat ourselves up. It's just a way of deeply diagnosing a problem most teachers struggle with. There's a very good chance that the technology, the parents, or the entitlement are playing a role in what we perceive to be reduced student motivation. But there's a very good chance that our instructional decisions play a role as well.

So pick one area and start there. Make a small adjustment this week and see what happens. Share in the comments where you think you could improve, then come back and tell us what changes made a difference. To solve a problem as complicated as student motivation, there is no magic bullet; instead we'll need a set of tools that we blend and refine over time. This is a process that will definitely be slower and more frustrating than a single, easy solution, but we're professionals. This is our craft. We can do this. ♦

Keep in touch.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Unmotivated Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If we know what works to motivate students, why are so many students still unmotivated? These five questions will help you determine if your practice is really in line with research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We hear about the achievement gap, or the word gap, and then we expect public schools to fix these situations. Solutions in the past have included extending the school day, increasing expectations through common standards, and holding schools and educators accountable for student learning through high-stakes tests.

However, these gaps were created before many students even took their first steps through the school doors. Teachers and school leaders become the scapegoats for these societal ills that really demand a larger and more complex conversation as a country. Yet being the people that educators are, they roll up their sleeves and quietly serve not only as teacher but also as counselor, parent, community outreach coordinator, and social worker.

Focusing on gaps creates problems. First, this work takes a deficit-based approach, where students lacking knowledge or skills can be viewed as less than capable than their higher-achieving peers. Subsequently, the students on the high end of the achievement spectrum receive less support and are not adequately challenged because of the shift in resources. Also, the gaps are related to the core academics - literacy and numeracy - which means that a school's focus becomes exclusively on these disciplines. All of these problems creates one big problem: Teachers have to teach to the core middle in the hope that "every child succeeds" based on expectations that outsiders deem as proficient.

In a recent commentary for Education Week, Dr. Kimberlee Everson, an assistant professor of education at Western Kentucky University, paints a different picture of what really is the problem in schools today with regard to gaps between minority student or students living in poverty and their more affluent peers. Titled "True Opportunity is About More than Access", Everson pushes for public educators to consider what students and their families really need today, tomorrow, and in their foreseeable future.

I propose that all children have the right to find and follow their passions; be inspired by creative, motivated teachers; and have sufficient time and opportunity for developing relationships.

Although the professor doesn't come right out and say it, what she is describing is engagement. Many thinkers in education have provided their definition of this abstract concept. Here's mine: Students are engaged when they are both highly interested in and committed to their learning pursuits. They have some level choice and voice in their school experiences and are motivated to persevere in the face of challenges that occur.

This definition applied to schools today would require some significant change to a majority of instruction in classrooms. Teachers would have to let go of some control. Principals would need to find better ways to assess student learning. Districts would be expected to provide more time for collaborative teacher planning and less time and funds on prescribed curriculum. In short, the learners would inherit the schools.

Everson asks some thought-provoking questions in relation to this different approach to education.

Are we certain that what the world needs is more than 50 million public school children who meet the same academic goals? Is it possible that true opportunity is the opportunity to develop specific expertise? Might the success of a nation, in the fact of a future that no one can predict perfectly, rest on the diversity in educational goals - in the same way that biodiversity ensures the success of a species?

We need to view education beyond the traditional mindset as a disseminator of knowledge and skills. Diversity in approaches can enhance the overall learning experience. Our students' needs and interests demand that we rethink school as more than just a source of information.

Easier said than done. Certain teachers are already doing this work but largely in isolation. They don't want to be called out by their colleagues and supervisors for veering too far off the predetermined script. This is why it is vital that school leaders support these innovative efforts using the tools and authority given to them. To start, instructional leadership teams can make a collective decision to allocate a certain part of the school day for allowing everyone in the schoolhouse - teachers and students - to explore their interests.

What if teachers had some room left over in their teaching day for sharing their own passions with the children? What if one teacher taught students chess, another taught watercolor painting or filmmaking, and another shared an interest in the mechanics of flight - and what if none of those subjects was part of the "core" curriculum? What would happen? Would the opportunity gap for children widen or would it narrow? Would teachers, and thereby, children by more excited about coming to school each day? Would general academic performance improve?

What are your first feelings when you read this passage? Excitement? Fear? Curiosity? This is what I felt as I read this part of the commentary. Everson does not offer specific recommendations for how this might happen in a school. And how could she: Everyone's passions and needs are different, and every building has a particular approach to how learning is facilitated based on their culture and community. In my next post, I will share how our school is addressing student engagement and trying to close the opportunity gap.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Student Engagement and Closing the Opportunity Gap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We hear about the achievement gap, or the word gap, and then we expect public schools to fix these situations. Solutions in the past have included extending the school day, increasing expectations through common standards, and holding schools and educators accountable for student learning through high-stakes tests.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Essentials from T Wright N Duke L Tortorelli G Troia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Roll out Communication 11.16.17 (Revised)

# data[].attributes.body
https://readingbyexample.com/tag/donalyn-miller/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resources for Essentials from T Wright N Duke L Tortorelli G Troia (1)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Education Week Webinar presentation slides

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essentials Information - How -Why- When it all came together

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#10 Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy endnotes documentation 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#8 Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy endnotes documentation Practice 8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#7 Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy endnotes documentation Practice 7

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential Instructional Practices 3 column Self- Analysis 1-10

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #6 District Coaches Institute 2017 DUKE HANDOUT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #1 District Coaches Institute 2017 HANDOUT Duke

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #9 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 Wright

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #8 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 Duke

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #6 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 TROIA (1)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential #4 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 Tortorelli

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential _1 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 Duke

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Essential _2 Coaching Literacy Institute 2016 Wright

# data[].attributes.body
https://newsela.com/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dr James Pellegrino - 21st Century Science Assessment- The Future is Now_FINAL-2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Assessment Literacy Network - Top 10 in 10 Years Strategic Goals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Copy of #9 Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy endnotes documentation Practice 9