As part of our school’s Pre-Planning, Marsha Harris and I facilitated a faculty-teams workshop to continue our work and learning in the Instructional Core.

Here are my notes from the session.

The agenda, shared ahead of the meeting, looked like this:

The slide deck that accompanies this plan looks like this:

As seen in the slides, we checked in with John Hattie’s research around teacher clarity.

Teacher clarity involves the instructional moves a teacher makes that begin with carefully planning a lesson and making the learning intentions for that lesson or unit clear to herself and her students. 

It extends to consistently evaluating where students are in the learning process and describing the success criteria on which students can assess their own progress and on which the teacher bases her evaluation of a student’s progress with a idea or concept. (Hattie, 38 pag.)

To model teacher clarity, we looked at two drafts for

I can establish goals to focus learning.

First, establish goals:

Then, focus learning:

How might we partner together to establish learning goals? What if we by “do the task as a learner” to notice and note needed prerequisites and anticipate potential learning obstacles? Can we deepen learning experiences by connecting to prior learning standards and strategies?

What if we make learning goals visible so that learners are able to identify what they know and need to know next?  How might we team to anticipate needed questions to assess and advance learning? What if we teach learners to ask more questions to forward and deepen learning? How might we empower learners to level up?

When we focus on learning,
we strengthen the Instructional Core.

Hattie, John A. (Allan); Fisher, Douglas B.; Frey, Nancy; Gojak, Linda M.; Moore, Sara Delano; Mellman, William L.. Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12: What Works Best to Optimize Student Learning (Corwin Mathematics Series) (p. 38). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.