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Email: jenny@erinkentconsulting.com

Linked In: Jenny Killion

Twitter/X: @profesorajennyk

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ASDoha - HS ELA Feedback Systems - October 2023

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All ASD teachers have access!

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from Educational Leadership

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Brutal Honesty And Radical Candor: 6 Ways You’re Getting Radical Candor Wrong And 5 Ways To Get It Right | Radical Candor

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Radical Candor is not the same as brutal honesty or front-stabbing and it’s not a license to be a jerk. It means Caring Personally and Challenging Directly.

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Planning for Small Groups Across a Unit and 2 Weeks

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Planning for Small Groups Across a Unit and 2 Weeks

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ASDoha - HS ELA Feedback Systems - October 2023 (1)

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ASDoha - HS ELA Feedback Systems - October 2023 (2)

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ASDoha - HS ELA Feedback Systems - October 2023 (3)

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Chart Providing Class Feedback on Theme Paragraphs

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Chart Providing Class Feedback on Theme Paragraphs

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This is a quick way to review student work and provide the class with strengths and next steps. Students can then determine what they will try out based on this.

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Too many educators feel that their autonomy has been taken away by standards, scripted curriculum, and ultimately, standardized testing. It doesn't have to be this way. We need our systems designed to meet the needs of our students, not a test, and give our teachers back the independence to proactively design lessons that engage and support all students.
When we teach students to become expert learners who are purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgable, and strategic and goal-directed - the goals of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) - improved test results will come. Rigorous state-standards will be met. Students will be engaged, self-regulated, and more successful. Teachers will be more engaged and effective. Everyone wins.

UDL is an educational framework based on decades of neuroscience research and is endorsed by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This framework is being adopted by teachers, schools, and districts around the globe and is considered best practice for teaching ALL students in an inclusive learning environment. UDL empowers both teachers and students by putting students in charge of their own learning.

Yet, there continues to be many misunderstandings about what UDL is and is not. I've put together this infographic to help spread the word about UDL and provide some practical tips for implementing UDL. I'll be the first to say that UDL can't be learned by just looking at an infographic, but with your help, we can spread the word about this education framework that has the ability to shape the future success of all of our students.

What is UDL?

UDL is Universal Design for Learning, an education framework based on decades of research in neuroscience and endorsed by the Every Student Succeeds Act. UDL is considered best practice for teaching all students in an inclusive learning environment.

The goal of UDL is to create learners who are purposeful & motivated, resourceful & knowledgable, and strategic & goal oriented, in other words, expert learners.

Start by embracing learner variability. There is no such thing as an "average" student. Every student has different strengths and weaknesses.

With UDL, teachers transition their role to facilitator, removing barriers to learning by giving students options and choices that empower them to take control of their own learning and reach rigorous state-standards. To universally design lessons, teachers must provide multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression.

Are you ready to start learning more about UDL and integrating it into your daily practice? Enroll in one of our online courses.

Not sure where to start?
Editor's Note: This blog has been updated from its previous version first published in Dec. 2018.

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What is UDL? Infographic - Novak Educational Consulting

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This UDL infographic gives you a brief summary of what UDL is and why it is worth learning more about.

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by David Rock

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Naomi Eisenberger, a leading social neuroscience researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), wanted to understand what goes on in the brain when people feel rejected by others. She designed an experiment in which volunteers played a computer game called Cyberball while having their brains scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. Cyberball hearkens back to the nastiness of the school playground. "People thought they were playing a ball-tossing game over the Internet with two other people," Eisenberger explains. "They could see an avatar that represented themselves, and avatars [ostensibly] for two other people. Then, about halfway through this game of catch among the three of them, the subjects stopped receiving the ball and the two other supposed players threw the ball only to each other." Even after they learned that no other human players were involved, the game players spoke of feeling angry, snubbed, or judged, as if the other avatars excluded them because they didn't like something about them.

This reaction could be traced directly to the brain's responses. "When people felt excluded," says Eisenberger, "we saw activity in the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex - the neural region involved in the distressing component of pain, or what is sometimes referred to as the 'suffering' component of pain. Those people who felt the most rejected had the highest levels of activity in this region." In other words, the feeling of being excluded provoked the same sort of reaction in the brain that physical pain might cause. (See Exhibit 1.)

Eisenberger's fellow researcher Matthew Lieberman, also of UCLA, hypothesizes that human beings evolved this link between social connection and physical discomfort within the brain "because, to a mammal, being socially connected to caregivers is necessary for survival." This study and many others now emerging have made one thing clear: The human brain is a social organ. Its physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. Indeed, as Lieberman puts it, "Most processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest are involved in thinking about other people and yourself."

This presents enormous challenges to managers. Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. Like the experiment participants whose avatars were left out of the game, people who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work - for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut - experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head. Most people who work in companies learn to rationalize or temper their reactions; they "suck it up," as the common parlance puts it. But they also limit their commitment and engagement. They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company, because the social context stands in their way.

Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees' best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead.

Triggering the Threat Response

One critical thread of research on the social brain starts with the "threat and reward" response, a neurological mechanism that governs a great deal of human behavior. When you encounter something unexpected - a shadow seen from the corner of your eye or a new colleague moving into the office next door - the limbic system (a relatively primitive part of the brain, common to many animals) is aroused. Neuroscientist Evian Gordon refers to this as the "minimize danger, maximize reward" response; he calls it "the fundamental organizing principle of the brain." Neurons are activated and hormones are released as you seek to learn whether this new entity represents a chance for reward or a potential danger. If the perception is danger, then the response becomes a pure threat response - also known as the fight or flight response, the avoid response, and, in its extreme form, the amygdala hijack, named for a part of the limbic system that can be aroused rapidly and in an emotionally overwhelming way.

Recently, researchers have documented that the threat response is often triggered in social situations, and it tends to be more intense and longer-lasting than the reward response. Data gathered through measures of brain activity - by using fMRI and electroencephalograph (EEG) machines or by gauging hormonal secretions - suggests that the same neural responses that drive us toward food or away from predators are triggered by our perception of the way we are treated by other people. These findings are reframing the prevailing view of the role that social drivers play in influencing how humans behave. Matthew Lieberman notes that Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" theory may have been wrong in this respect. Maslow proposed that humans tend to satisfy their needs in sequence, starting with physical survival and moving up the ladder toward self-actualization at the top. In this hierarchy, social needs sit in the middle. But many studies now show that the brain equates social needs with survival; for example, being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses.

The threat response is both mentally taxing and deadly to the productivity of a person - or of an organization. Because this response uses up oxygen and glucose from the blood, they are diverted from other parts of the brain, including the working memory function, which processes new information and ideas. This impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving; in other words, just when people most need their sophisticated mental capabilities, the brain's internal resources are taken away from them.

The impact of this neural dynamic is often visible in organizations. For example, when leaders trigger a threat response, employees' brains become much less efficient. But when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people's efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. They feel intrinsically rewarded.

Understanding the threat and reward response can also help leaders who are trying to implement large-scale change. The track record of failed efforts to spark higher-perfomance behavior has led many managers to conclude that human nature is simply intractable: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Yet neuroscience has also discovered that the human brain is highly plastic. Neural connections can be reformed, new behaviors can be learned, and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified at any age. The brain will make these shifts only when it is engaged in mindful attention. This is the state of thought associated with observing one's own mental processes (or, in an organization, stepping back to observe the flow of a conversation as it is happening). Mindfulness requires both serenity and concentration; in a threatened state, people are much more likely to be "mindless." Their attention is diverted by the threat, and they cannot easily move to self-discovery.

In a previous article (" The Neuroscience of Leadership," s+b, Summer 2006), brain scientist Jeffrey Schwartz and I proposed that organizations could marshal mindful attention to create organizational change. They could do this over time by putting in place regular routines in which people would watch the patterns of their thoughts and feelings as they worked and thus develop greater self-awareness. We argued that this was the only way to change organizational behavior; that the "carrots and sticks" of incentives (and behavioral psychology) did not work, and that the counseling and empathy of much organizational development was not efficient enough to make a difference.

Research into the social nature of the brain suggests another piece of this puzzle. Five particular qualities enable employees and executives alike to minimize the threat response and instead enable the reward response. These five social qualities are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness: Because they can be expressed with the acronym SCARF, I sometimes think of them as a kind of headgear that an organization can wear to prevent exposure to dysfunction. To understand how the SCARF model works, let's look at each characteristic in turn.

Status and Its Discontents

As humans, we are constantly assessing how social encounters either enhance or diminish our status. Research published by Hidehiko Takahashi et al. in 2009 shows that when people realize that they might compare unfavorably to someone else, the threat response kicks in, releasing cortisol and other stress-related hormones. (Cortisol is an accurate biological marker of the threat response; within the brain, feelings of low status provoke the kind of cortisol elevation associated with sleep deprivation and chronic anxiety.)

Separately, researcher Michael Marmot, in his book The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity (Times Books, 2004), has shown that high status correlates with human longevity and health, even when factors like income and education are controlled for. In short, we are biologically programmed to care about status because it favors our survival.

As anyone who has lived in a modest house in a high-priced neighborhood knows, the feeling of status is always comparative. And an executive with a salary of US$500,000 may feel elevated...until he or she is assigned to work with an executive making $2.5 million. A study by Joan Chiao in 2003 found that the neural circuitry that assesses status is similar to that which processes numbers; the circuitry operates even when the stakes are meaningless, which is why winning a board game or being the first off the mark at a green light feels so satisfying. Competing against ourselves in games like solitaire triggers the same circuitry, which may help explain the phenomenal popularity of video games.

Understanding the role of status as a core concern can help leaders avoid organizational practices that stir counterproductive threat responses among employees. For example, performance reviews often provoke a threat response; people being reviewed feel that the exercise itself encroaches on their status. This makes 360-degree reviews, unless extremely participative and well-designed, ineffective at generating positive behavioral change. Another common status threat is the custom of offering feedback, a standard practice for both managers and coaches. The mere phrase "Can I give you some advice?" puts people on the defensive because they perceive the person offering advice as claiming superiority. It is the cortisol equivalent of hearing footsteps in the dark.

Organizations often assume that the only way to raise an employee's status is to award a promotion. Yet status can also be enhanced in less-costly ways. For example, the perception of status increases when people are given praise. Experiments conducted by Keise Izuma in 2008 show that a programmed status-related stimulus, in the form of a computer saying "good job," lights up the same reward regions of the brain as a financial windfall. The perception of status also increases when people master a new skill; paying employees more for the skills they have acquired, rather than for their seniority, is a status booster in itself.

Values have a strong impact on status. An organization that appears to value money and rank more than a basic sense of respect for all employees will stimulate threat responses among employees who aren't at the top of the heap. Similarly, organizations that try to pit people against one another on the theory that it will make them work harder reinforce the idea that there are only winners and losers, which undermines the standing of people below the top 10 percent.

A Craving for Certainty

When an individual encounters a familiar situation, his or her brain conserves its own energy by shifting into a kind of automatic pilot: it relies on long-established neural connections in the basal ganglia and motor cortex that have, in effect, hardwired this situation and the individual's response to it. This makes it easy to do what the person has done in the past, and it frees that person to do two things at once; for example, to talk while driving. But the minute the brain registers ambiguity or confusion - if, for example, the car ahead of the driver slams on its brakes - the brain flashes an error signal. With the threat response aroused and working memory diminished, the driver must stop talking and shift full attention to the road.

Uncertainty registers (in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex) as an error, gap, or tension: something that must be corrected before one can feel comfortable again. That is why people crave certainty. Not knowing what will happen next can be profoundly debilitating because it requires extra neural energy. This diminishes memory, undermines performance, and disengages people from the present.

Of course, uncertainty is not necessarily debilitating. Mild uncertainty attracts interest and attention: New and challenging situations create a mild threat response, increasing levels of adrenalin and dopamine just enough to spark curiosity and energize people to solve problems. Moreover, different people respond to uncertainty in the world around them in different ways, depending in part on their existing patterns of thought. For example, when that car ahead stops suddenly, the driver who thinks, "What should I do?" is likely to be ineffective, whereas the driver who frames the incident as manageable - "I need to swerve left now because there's a car on the right" - is well equipped to respond. All of life is uncertain; it is the perception of too much uncertainty that undercuts focus and performance. When perceived uncertainty gets out of hand, people panic and make bad decisions.

Leaders and managers must thus work to create a perception of certainty to build confident and dedicated teams. Sharing business plans, rationales for change, and accurate maps of an organization's structure promotes this perception. Giving specifics about organizational restructuring helps people feel more confident about a plan, and articulating how decisions are made increases trust. Transparent practices are the foundation on which the perception of certainty rests.

Breaking complex projects down into small steps can also help create the feeling of certainty. Although it's highly unlikely everything will go as planned, people function better because the project now seems less ambiguous. Like the driver on the road who has enough information to calculate his or her response, an employee focused on a single, manageable aspect of a task is unlikely to be overwhelmed by threat responses.

The Autonomy Factor

Studies by Steven Maier at the University of Boulder show that the degree of control available to an animal confronted by stressful situations determines whether or not that stressor undermines the ability to function. Similarly, in an organization, as long as people feel they can execute their own decisions without much oversight, stress remains under control. Because human brains evolved in response to stressors over thousands of years, they are constantly attuned, usually at a subconscious level, to the ways in which social encounters threaten or support the capacity for choice.

A perception of reduced autonomy - for example, because of being micromanaged - can easily generate a threat response. When an employee experiences a lack of control, or agency, his or her perception of uncertainty is also aroused, further raising stress levels. By contrast, the perception of greater autonomy increases the feeling of certainty and reduces stress.

Leaders who want to support their people's need for autonomy must give them latitude to make choices, especially when they are part of a team or working with a supervisor. Presenting people with options, or allowing them to organize their own work and set their own hours, provokes a much less stressed response than forcing them to follow rigid instructions and schedules. In 1977, a well-known study of nursing homes by Judith Rodin and Ellen Langer found that residents who were given more control over decision making lived longer and healthier lives than residents in a control group who had everything selected for them. The choices themselves were insignificant; it was the perception of autonomy that mattered.

Another study, this time of the franchise industry, identified work-life balance as the number one reason that people left corporations and moved into a franchise. Yet other data showed that franchise owners actually worked far longer hours (often for less money) than they had in corporate life. They nevertheless perceived themselves to have a better work-life balance because they had greater scope to make their own choices. Leaders who know how to satisfy the need for autonomy among their people can reap substantial benefits - without losing their best people to the entrepreneurial ranks.

Relating to Relatedness

Fruitful collaboration depends on healthy relationships, which require trust and empathy. But in the brain, the ability to feel trust and empathy about others is shaped by whether they are perceived to be part of the same social group. This pattern is visible in many domains: in sports ("I hate the other team"), in organizational silos ("the 'suits' are the problem"), and in communities ("those people on the other side of town always mess things up").

Each time a person meets someone new, the brain automatically makes quick friend-or-foe distinctions and then experiences the friends and foes in ways that are colored by those distinctions. When the new person is perceived as different, the information travels along neural pathways that are associated with uncomfortable feelings (different from the neural pathways triggered by people who are perceived as similar to oneself).

Leaders who understand this phenomenon will find many ways to apply it in business. For example, teams of diverse people cannot be thrown together. They must be deliberately put together in a way that minimizes the potential for threat responses. Trust cannot be assumed or mandated, nor can empathy or even goodwill be compelled. These qualities develop only when people's brains start to recognize former strangers as friends. This requires time and repeated social interaction.

Once people make a stronger social connection, their brains begin to secrete a hormone called oxytocin in one another's presence. This chemical, which has been linked with affection, maternal behavior, sexual arousal, and generosity, disarms the threat response and further activates the neural networks that permit us to perceive someone as "just like us." Research by Michael Kosfeld et al. in 2005 shows that a shot of oxytocin delivered by means of a nasal spray decreases threat arousal. But so may a handshake and a shared glance over something funny.

Conversely, the human threat response is aroused when people feel cut off from social interaction. Loneliness and isolation are profoundly stressful. John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick showed in 2008 that loneliness is itself a threat response to lack of social contact, activating the same neurochemicals that flood the system when one is subjected to physical pain. Leaders who strive for inclusion and minimize situations in which people feel rejected create an environment that supports maximum performance. This of course raises a challenge for organizations: How can they foster relatedness among people who are competing with one another or who may be laid off?

Playing for Fairness

The perception that an event has been unfair generates a strong response in the limbic system, stirring hostility and undermining trust. As with status, people perceive fairness in relative terms, feeling more satisfied with a fair exchange that offers a minimal reward than an unfair exchange in which the reward is substantial. Studies conducted by Matthew Lieberman and Golnaz Tabibnia found that people respond more positively to being given 50 cents from a dollar split between them and another person than to receiving $8 out of a total of $25. Another study found that the experience of fairness produces reward responses in the brain similar to those that occur from eating chocolate.

The cognitive need for fairness is so strong that some people are willing to fight and die for causes they believe are just - or commit themselves wholeheartedly to an organization they recognize as fair. An executive told me he had stayed with his company for 22 years simply because "they always did the right thing." People often engage in volunteer work for similar reasons: They perceive their actions as increasing the fairness quotient in the world.

In organizations, the perception of unfairness creates an environment in which trust and collaboration cannot flourish. Leaders who play favorites or who appear to reserve privileges for people who are like them arouse a threat response in employees who are outside their circle. The old boys' network provides an egregious example; those who are not a part of it always perceive their organizations as fundamentally unfair, no matter how many mentoring programs are put in place.

Like certainty, fairness is served by transparency. Leaders who share information in a timely manner can keep people engaged and motivated, even during staff reductions. Morale remains relatively high when people perceive that cutbacks are being handled fairly - that no one group is treated with preference and that there is a rationale for every cut.

Putting on the SCARF

If you are a leader, every action you take and every decision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness in your enterprise. In fact, this is why leading is so difficult. Your every word and glance is freighted with social meaning. Your sentences and gestures are noticed and interpreted, magnified and combed for meanings you may never have intended.

The SCARF model provides a means of bringing conscious awareness to all these potentially fraught interactions. It helps alert you to people's core concerns (which they may not even understand themselves) and shows you how to calibrate your words and actions to better effect.

Start by reducing the threats inherent in your company and in its leaders' behavior. Just as the animal brain is wired to respond to a predator before it can focus attention on the hunt for food, so is the social brain wired to respond to dangers that threaten its core concerns before it can perform other functions. Threat always trumps reward because the threat response is strong, immediate, and hard to ignore. Once aroused, it is hard to displace, which is why an unpleasant encounter in traffic on the morning drive to work can distract attention and impair performance all day. Humans cannot think creatively, work well with others, or make informed decisions when their threat responses are on high alert. Skilled leaders understand this and act accordingly.

A business reorganization provides a good example. Reorganizations generate massive amounts of uncertainty, which can paralyze people's ability to perform. A leader attuned to SCARF principles therefore makes reducing the threat of uncertainty the first order of business. For example, a leader might kick off the process by sharing as much information as possible about the reasons for the reorganization, painting a picture of the future company and explaining what the specific implications will be for the people who work there. Much will be unknown, but being clear about what is known and willing to acknowledge what is not goes a long way toward ameliorating uncertainty threats.

Reorganizations also stir up threats to autonomy, because people feel they lack control over their future. An astute leader will address these threats by giving people latitude to make as many of their own decisions as possible - for example, when the budget must be cut, involving the people closest to the work in deciding what must go. Because many reorganizations entail information technology upgrades that undermine people's perception of autonomy by foisting new systems on them without their consent, it is essential to provide continuous support and solicit employees' participation in the design of new systems.

Top-down strategic planning is often inimical to SCARF-related reactions. Having a few key leaders come up with a plan and then expecting people to buy into it is a recipe for failure, because it does not take the threat response into account. People rarely support initiatives they had no part in designing; doing so would undermine both autonomy and status. Proactively addressing these concerns by adopting an inclusive planning process can prevent the kind of unconscious sabotage that results when people feel they have played no part in a change that affects them every day.

Leaders often underestimate the importance of addressing threats to fairness. This is especially true when it comes to compensation. Although most people are not motivated primarily by money, they are profoundly de-motivated when they believe they are being unfairly paid or that others are overpaid by comparison. Leaders who recognize fairness as a core concern understand that disproportionately increasing compensation at the top makes it impossible to fully engage people at the middle or lower end of the pay scale. Declaring that a highly paid executive is "doing a great job" is counterproductive in this situation because those who are paid less will interpret it to mean that they are perceived to be poor performers.

For years, economists have argued that people will change their behavior if they have sufficient incentives. But these economists have defined incentives almost exclusively in economic terms. We now have reason to believe that economic incentives are effective only when people perceive them as supporting their social needs. Status can also be enhanced by giving an employee greater scope to plan his or her schedule or the chance to develop meaningful relationships with those at different levels in the organization. The SCARF model thus provides leaders with more nuanced and cost-effective ways to expand the definition of reward. In doing so, SCARF principles also provide a more granular understanding of the state of engagement, in which employees give their best performance. Engagement can be induced when people working toward objectives feel rewarded by their efforts, with a manageable level of threat: in short, when the brain is generating rewards in several SCARF-related dimensions.

Leaders themselves are not immune to the SCARF dynamic; like everyone else, they react when they feel their status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fair treatment are threatened. However, their reactions have more impact, because they are picked up and amplified by others throughout the company. (If a company's executive salaries are excessive, it may be because others are following the leader's intuitive emphasis, driven by subconscious cognition, on anything that adds status.)

If you are an executive leader, the more practiced you are at reading yourself, the more effective you will be. For example, if you understand that micromanaging threatens status and autonomy, you will resist your own impulse to gain certainty by dictating every detail. Instead, you'll seek to disarm people by giving them latitude to make their own mistakes. If you have felt the hairs on the back of your own neck rise when someone says, "Can I offer you some feedback?" you will know it's best to create opportunities for people to do the hard work of self-assessment rather than insisting they depend on performance reviews.

When a leader is self-aware, it gives others a feeling of safety even in uncertain environments. It makes it easier for employees to focus on their work, which leads to improved performance. The same principle is evident in other groups of mammals, where a skilled pack leader keeps members at peace so they can perform their functions. A self-aware leader modulates his or her behavior to alleviate organizational stress and creates an environment in which motivation and creativity flourish. One great advantage of neuroscience is that it provides hard data to vouch for the efficacy and value of so-called soft skills. It also shows the danger of being a hard-charging leader whose best efforts to move people along also set up a threat response that puts others on guard.

Similarly, many leaders try to repress their emotions in order to enhance their leadership presence, but this only confuses people and undermines morale. Experiments by Kevin Ochsner and James Gross show that when someone tries not to let other people see what he or she is feeling, the other party tends to experience a threat response. That's why being spontaneous is key to creating an authentic leadership presence. This approach is likely to minimize status threats, increase certainty, and create a sense of relatedness and fairness.

Finally, the SCARF model helps explain why intelligence, in itself, isn't sufficient for a good leader. Matthew Lieberman's research suggests that high intelligence often corresponds with low self-awareness. The neural networks involved in information holding, planning, and cognitive problem solving reside in the lateral, or outer, portions of the brain, whereas the middle regions support self-awareness, social skills, and empathy. These regions are inversely correlated. As Lieberman notes, "If you spend a lot of time in cognitive tasks, your ability to have empathy for people is reduced simply because that part of your circuitry doesn't get much use."

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing leaders of business or government is to create the kind of atmosphere that promotes status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. When historians look back, their judgment of this period in time may rise or fall on how organizations, and society as a whole, operated. Did they treat people fairly, draw people together to solve problems, promote entrepreneurship and autonomy, foster certainty wherever possible, and find ways to raise the perceived status of everyone? If so, the brains of the future will salute them.

Reprint No. 09306

Author profile:

David Rock is the founding president of the NeuroLeadership Institute. He is also the CEO of Results Coaching Systems, which helps global organizations grow their leadership teams, using brain research as a base for self-awareness and social awareness. He is the author of Your Brain at Work (HarperBusiness, 2009) and Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work (Collins, 2006).

Resources

1. John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (W.W. Norton, 2008): A scientific look at the causes and effects of emotional isolation.

2. Michael Marmot, The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity (Times Books, 2004): An epidemiologist shows that people live longer when they have status, autonomy, and relatedness, even if they lack money.

3. David Rock, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (HarperBusiness, 2009): Neuroscience explanations for workplace challenges and dilemmas, and strategies for managing them.

4. David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, "The Neuroscience of Leadership," s+b, Summer 2006: Applying breakthroughs in brain research, this article explains the value of neuroplasticity in organizational change.

5. David Rock, "SCARF: A Brain-based Model for Collaborating with and Influencing Others," NeuroLeadership Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, December 2008, 44: Overview of research on the five factors described in this article, and contains bibliographic references for research quoted in this article.

6. Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman, with K.D. Williams, "Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion," Science, vol. 302, no. 5643, October 2003, 290-292: Covers the Cyberball experiment.

7. Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman, "The Pains and Pleasures of Social Life," Science, vol. 323, no. 5916, February 2009, 890-891: Explication of social pain and social pleasure, and the impact of fairness, status, and autonomy on brain response.

8. NeuroLeadership Institute Web site: Institute bringing together research scientists and management experts to explore the transformation of organizational development and performance.

9. For more business thought leadership, sign up for s+b's RSS feed.

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Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace.

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from ASBarcelona students

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Checklist for Assessing Notes - Student Facing

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Checklist for Assessing Notes - Student Facing

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from TCRWP Essential Research Skills Unit

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from Essential Research Skills for Teens from TCRWP

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from Essential Research Skills for Teens from TCRWP

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Small Group Planning - Posing an Inquiry

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Possibilities for Challenging our Readers and Writers

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Possibilities for Challenging our Readers and Writers

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Winner of a silver medal from the Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Social Sciences and Education

"Is it possible to create a more inclusive and fairer education system? The Knowledge Gap shows the way." Daisy Christodoulou, tes.

"The Knowledge Gap is not just a scholarly work. It pulsates with vivid detail as it winds its way through the strange terrain of the Educational Upside Down. Anyone who seeks to understand the quixotic state of educational ideas in American schools and beyond should place it on the top of their summer reading list." Greg Ashman, Quillette

"The best book I have seen on improving elementary schools." Jay Mathews, Washington Post

"The Knowledge Gap makes a persuasive case for attending to the importance of rich content and high-quality curricula in elementary classrooms." Carnegie Corporation of New York

"This book serves as a reminder of our own potential knowledge gap and provides an opportunity for educators to be wiser consumers of information with the ability to 'distinguish between approaches that are likely to produce the outcomes we want and those that will only lead to a heartbreaking waste of precious time.'" Sheryl Ferlito, Perspectives on Language and Literacy

"Wexler ... has made a first-rate case for content. ... If you are among the uninitiated on the value of content knowledge for kids, buy a copy. If you're already among the true believers, buy two copies and put them in the hands of persuadable educators." Robert Pondiscio, Education Next

"In this compelling work, journalist Wexler pinpoints the underlying issues that plague the American public education system, provides context to recent educational reforms, and offers possible solutions." Library Journal (starred review)

"A compelling critique of American elementary schools" that "highlights pervasive problems." Kirkus Reviews

"Illuminating and thought-provoking." Publishers Weekly

THE KNOWLEDGE GAP focuses on a long-overlooked issue lying at the heart of what is known as the achievement gap: the failure of most elementary schools, and especially those serving low-income children, to systematically build knowledge of the world.

Every school day, elementary teachers spend hours drilling students on comprehension skills and strategies like "finding the main idea" or "making inferences," in an effort to boost their reading ability-and their scores on standardized reading tests. Subjects like history, science, and art have virtually disappeared from the curriculum in many schools.

In fact, these schools are doing the exact opposite of what can actually turn students into good readers. Comprehension strategies can be useful-when delivered in limited doses and connected to specific content. But cognitive science has shown that the primary factor in whether you're able to understand what you read is whether you possess relevant background knowledge and vocabulary.

The prevailing narrow, skills-focused approach to literacy instruction can hold any child back, but its effects fall hardest on those at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. Children from more educated families often absorb knowledge about the world at home. But those from less educated families have to rely on schools for the kind of knowledge that will equip them to do well on tests-not to mention in high school, college, and life. Every year they spend in school without getting that knowledge puts them farther behind their more affluent peers. By the time they get to middle or high school, it's often too late for them to catch up.

Through the stories of educators, students, and parents, The Knowledge Gap examines what elementary literacy instruction currently looks like, how it evolved to this point - and how it can be changed so that all students receive a meaningful, rigorous education.

Excerpts from the book have appeared in The Atlantic, Chalkbeat, MindShift, American Educator, and the blog of the Albert Shanker Institute.

Read or listen to interviews with Natalie and presentations about The Knowledge Gap:

TV:

Morning Joe, MSNBC

After Words With Natalie Wexler, C-SPAN

Good Morning Washington, WJLA

VIDEO:

Why Prior Knowledge Wins the Game (two-minute video from Edutopia)

Western NY Science of Reading Conference, November 2022

Iniciativa Educacao, Lisbon (in English)

Why Teaching Social Studies Is Teaching Reading, The OC for Social Studies Conference

RADIO:
Total Information AM South Dakota Public Broadcasting
The Pulse (WHYY/NPR) (episode on comprehension)

On Point (WBUR/NPR)

Leonard Lopate at Large, WBAI

All of It, WNYC

The Record, KUOW

St. Louis in Tune, KWRH

Nightside with Dan Rea, WBZ

PODCASTS:

Through the Educational Looking Glass with Don Sturm and Courtney Eddleson

Lars og pal with Lars Sandaker

Education Uncharted with Amanda Bratten (Propello)

Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast with Amy Nielson

TeachThought Podcast panel discussion with Emily Hanford and others

The Literacy View with Faith Borkowsky, Judy Boksner, and Mary McCool Berry

Building Knowledge with Kristen Rodriguez

Mr. Nico Summer Schoolin' with Nico Eaglin

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy (with Judith Hochman)

On the Scene with SST 13 with Mary Williams

The Inquiring Mind with Stanley Goldberg

After the Bell with Cassie Tabrizi
Talking to Teens
Alabama Literacy Network's Podcast with Shelley Vail-Smith

The Charles Love Show (second hour)

Catalysts for Change with Jill Shah

Rethinking Intervention with Emily Freitag

Tests and the Rest with Mike Bergin and Amy Seeley

Filling the Pail with Greg Ashman

Rethinking Intervention with Emily Freitag and Christina Gonzales

PodcastED with Doug Tuthill
EDVIEW 360 Podcast, Voyager Sopris: Righting the Wrongs of the Elementary Education System EWA Radio: Can Schools Close "The Knowledge Gap"?Just a Few Questions with Marc Sims
Education is Power with Chris Stewart (Facebook Live)

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy (second appearance)
More Teacher Talk: Transforming Teaching and Learning for Disadvantaged Pupils Full Prefrontal: A Podcast About Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function Ed's Not Dead: A podcast covering today's hottest education issues Off the Assembly Line: A Podcast with Rebecca Reed ExtraOrdinary Districts: Ordinary school districts that get extraordinary results Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education Science of Reading: The Podcast The Learning Curve with Bob Bowdon and Cara Candel The Report Card with Nat Malkus Education Research Reading Room with Ollie Lovell Principal Center Radio with Justin Baeder Melissa and Lori Love Literacy

PRINT INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES:
EdSource/KQED, This Literacy Expert Reveals the Key Problem Undermining American Education, April 25, 2024 Edutopia, "Why Our Youngest Readers Need 'Knowledge,' Not 'Skills,' July 28, 2022 Edutopia, "Is It Time to Drop 'Finding the Main Idea' and Teach Reading in a New Way?, July 28, 2020 American Educator, "Building Knowledge: What an Elementary Curriculum Should Do", Summer 2020 EdNC, "Reading instruction needs to improve. Who will lead the charge, and how?", February 17, 2020 Perspectives on Language and Literacy, "The Importance of Knowledge" (International Dyslexia Association), Fall 2019 MindShift (KQED) ,"Why Deeply Diving Into Content Could Be the Key to Reading Comprehension," October 22, 2019 Chalkbeat, "Want better readers? Spend less time teaching kids to find the main idea, 'Knowledge Gap' author Natalie Wexler argues", September 16, 2019 District Administration, "Closing the knowledge gap: Why schools are failing to teach fundamental reading and comprehension skills-and how to change it", October 2019
Click HERE to order The Knowledge Gap through the publisher's website or HERE to order from Amazon. Listen to an excerpt from the audio version, read by the author, below. To order the audio book, click HERE.

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Winner of a silver medal from the Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Social Sciences and Education "Is it possible to create a more inclusive and fairer education system? The Knowledge Gap shows the way." Daisy Christodoulou, tes. "The Knowledge Gap is not just a scholarly work.

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Small Group Planner - Sentence Level Work

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Small Group Planner - Sentence Level Work

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Small Group Planning - Sentence Level Work

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The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler, published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley Buy this book from: You may need a writing revolution in your classroom. Here's how to lead it. Expectations about student writing have changed dramatically in recent years.

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A practical framework for creating units that combine whole-class novels and independent reading to truly help students grow as readers. Take a deep dive into the troubles and triumphs of both to find a student-centered, balanced approach to teaching reading.

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Zaretta Hammond

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Excellent resource for teaching resource skills!

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Excellent resource for teaching resource skills!

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This unit is all about learning well in today’s digital world and then sharing that knowledge with others—the most fundamental and joyous of intellectual

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Your Research-based Guide to Developing Skilled Readers. 300+ strategies with learning progressions support 13 reading goals, with each strategy cross-linked to skills, teacher tips, prompts, research, and reading levels-everything from fluency to literary analysis.

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Introduction
A Very Brief Introduction to Principles, Research, and Theory, and How to Use This Book
The idea for a book of writing strategies exists many times over. This one is possible only because of the great books that have come before it. There are books suggesting writing strategies meant for professional writers and college students, such as those by Noah Lukeman, Roy Peter Clark, and Janet Burroway, among others. There are countless examples of excellent compilations of writing strategies in books written for teachers of writing, such as Fletcher and Portalupi's Craft Lessons Series, Barry Lane's After "The End" (1993), Carl Anderson's Strategic Writing Conferences series (2008-2009), Donald Graves' many books, Katie Wood Ray's Wondrous Words (1999) and other titles, Katherine Bomer's books, Georgia Heard's books, Nancie Atwell's In the Middle (2014) and other resources, Lucy Calkins' Units of Study series, and many more. My aim in this book is to offer my favorite, most useful collection of strategies that span all aspects of the writing process, all genres and modes of writing, and that will work well with students in grades K-8. I want to offer you a little bit of everything. I streamlined the language and examples, and I present the strategies in a format that is organized so that the busy teacher can find just the right strategy at just the right moment. Of course, you'll elaborate on the streamlined language and make it your own.

But wait-before you dive in, I'm so glad you're taking the time to spend a few moments with this "Getting Started" introduction. In this introduction, you'll gain a helpful overview of the thinking that undergirds this book's ideas as well as an overview of its organization. You'll learn about strategies and all the aspects that I chose to include to elaborate on them-mentor texts, prompts, lesson language, teaching tips, and more. You'll learn how to navigate the pages of the book so you can find what you're looking for quickly and easily, for this is not a read-every-single-page kind of book (unless you want it to be). You'll get a quick crash course on some important terminology and concepts that will help you use this book to its fullest- thoughts about writing as a process, and modes and genres of writing, for example. And finally, you'll learn how to adapt what's in the book to fit your students' writing time in the classroom, no matter what form that time takes.
Click here to download more of the introduction of this book.
Goal 1: Composing with Pictures

Strategy Go back to your picture(s). Point to the part or picture that teaches something important about your topic. Touch or turn to the next part. Tell what new fact about your topic this part of the picture or this page teaches.

Lesson Language If I wrote or drew to teach, then when I read my writing back I'm going to make it sound like a teaching book. I'm going to tell my reader the facts I wrote about. Let me show you. I drew a picture of a big T. rex. I know a lot about them so I added a lot of details in my picture. I'm going to touch one part and teach what that part says. "The T. rex had very large jaws with big sharp teeth." Now I'm going to touch a new part and teach what that part says. "The T. rex had very short arms. It would only run using its hind legs."

Goal 2: Engagement - Independence, Increasing Volume, and Developing a Writing Identity

Strategy First, identify the problem you're having. Then, check the spot in the room, a resource, or a friend that might help you solve the problem. Try a solution. If it doesn't work, try something else.

Teaching Tip This strategy, like "Use the Room" that appears earlier in this chapter, assumes that there are things in the room that can be helpful, and that you've taught children how to use them. For example, in a primary classroom a word wall may help a writer to spell high-frequency words. If you've introduced and used mentor texts, then having these available for children to reference on their own could help them. Sometimes the problem might be that they need to work in a new spot in the room because of the amount of distractions at their current spot. Brainstorm possible problems with your students, and come up with a list of resources and solutions. Or, this strategy can be like a culmination of past teaching from this and other chapters.

Goal 3: Generating and Collecting Ideas

Strategy Decide on a new place to visit. Go there with no more than a notebook and a set of listening ears and observing eyes. Let yourself pick up on conversation and details of the person. Jot down what you observe, and also what you imagine, about the people you see.

Teaching Tip This strategy will take you outside of the classroom, so it would work well as a whole-class lesson followed by a field trip, or as a suggestion to a student, group, or class for independent writing outside of the school day.

Goal 4: Focus/Meaning

Strategy Think about a memory and all the events that are part of that memory. Think about what's important about that memory, or the big idea the memory leaves you with. Identify the one part of the memory that feels the most important. Write some ideas about what's important about it, and why it's important. Try to write just that one smaller part of the larger moment. Tell it bit by bit.

Teaching Tip The amount a writer will be able to reflect on the overall significance of a small moment will depend on her maturity level and experience with writing. For younger children, you may want to suggest choosing a small moment that will make a good story, rather than one imbued with a deep or heavy significance, or simply encourage them to narrow down the window of time

Goal 5: Organization and Structure

Strategy Before beginning to draft, visualize the shape of what you're going to make. Create some sort of quick visual, in pictures or in words, to represent the overarching structure. As you write, check back to see where you are in your plan.

Teaching Tip This is going to be most helpful after students have learned a variety of ways to structure their pieces and have been introduced to a variety of graphic organizers that would help them to organize, or shape, the information into a structure.

Goal 6: Elaboration

Strategy Think about the subtopics for which you'll want to collect information. Write each of your subtopics as a heading on a notebook or booklet page. As you find new information for your topic, think, "What page in my notebook should this go on? Which subtopic does it provide details for?"

Lesson Language I just found this interesting fact: Ballerinas really wear out their shoes. Many go through as many as 2-3 pairs per week! I'm going to look across the pages of my booklet to see where this would best fit. Would it belong in the section called "Types of Ballet Positions?" No, that's not about the positions. Would it go in the section called "Famous Ballets?" No. "What Ballerinas Wear?" Well, I do talk about pointe shoes in this section, so it might be cool to add this fact about how many pairs of pointe shoes the average ballerina needs. I'll keep the fact here.

Goal 7: Word Choice

Strategy Find all the action verbs in your piece. Focus on any that you think aren't as clear, precise, or exact as they could be. List several options for what might replace that word (use a thesaurus if you need it!). Choose the word that best matches your meaning.

Teaching Tip For this strategy to work, children will need to understand what an action verb is, so identification of verbs is a first step in this strategy. Many teachers weave in some instruction during other balanced literacy components such as word study, read-aloud, and/or shared reading. You could also plan to teach direct minilessons to the class or small groups for those who do not understand parts of speech.

Goal 8: Conventions - Spelling and Letter Formation

Strategy When trying to spell a word, try to visualize where you've seen it written and how you've seen it written before. It may help to close your eyes. Then, in a margin or on a piece of scrap paper, write how you think it's spelled. Try it a second or maybe even third way. Look back at what you've written and ask yourself, "Which of these tries looks right to me?"

Prompts

Check off the parts that look right to you.

Write the word as you think you've seen it before.

Which parts look right? Which part looks off?

Do you think there are some letters missing?

What part of that word is tricky for you?

The part you're trying to spell is also in the word _______. Does that help?

Goal 9: Conventions - Grammar and Punctuation

Strategy Find two sentences that talk about the same topic. Think about the relationship between those sentences. Choose a connector word and try combining the sentences into one. Reread and decide if you like the combined way or original way better.

Lesson Language Here's one spot in my draft where I have two sentences that I
think go well together. I wrote: "A dog is something that can keep you company. A dog
can cheer you up." What's the relationship between those two sentences? They both have
to do with something that is positive about owning a dog, so I think they are related. I'm
adding more information on. I'll try using and to combine those sentences: "A dog can
keep you company and cheer you up." Here's another spot: "I would love to have a dog.
My mom won't let me have a dog." What's the relationship between those two sentences?
The second sentence gives more information that feels in contrast to the first. I'll combine
them with however: "I would like to have a dog, however my mom won't let me." The
new sentence I made seems clearer and more to the point.

Goal 10: Collaborating with Writing Partners and Clubs

Strategy Talk with your partner about your goals (for the writing period, for the week, and/or for writing work to take place at home, and so on). Discuss together how you might get that work done. Write the goal, and make the promise...then check in with your partner soon.

Teaching Tip Reflect on your own life and goals you've set out to accomplish. Now think about how successful you've been and whether or not you made your goals public ahead of time. I know that when I share my goals with my partner, my friends, my colleagues, my editor, I am more likely to get things done. The built-in accountability, the opportunity to celebrate together, the lifeline of support in case something does not go according to plan-these are invaluable.

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Writing Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo.

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Collection of strategies that span all aspects of the writing process, all genres and modes of writing, and that will work well with students in grades K-8. Organized so the busy teacher can find just the right strategy at just the right moment.