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McREL
Blog

Our expert researchers, evaluators, and veteran educators synthesize information gleaned from our research and blend it with best practices gathered from schools and districts around the world to bring you insightful and practical ideas that support changing the odds of success for you and your students. By aligning practice with research, we mix professional wisdom with real world experience to bring you unexpectedly insightful and uncommonly practical ideas that offer ways to build student resiliency, close achievement gaps, implement retention strategies, prioritize improvement initiatives, build staff motivation, and interpret data and understand its impact.

Student engagement: 5 brain-based tips for re-engaging reluctant learners

By Blog, Engaging Classrooms, Research Insights, Teaching

In our work with schools across the U.S. and around the world, we often hear teachers say that more of their students than ever appear to be chronically disengaged from learning. Their bodies come to class, but their hearts and minds seem to be somewhere else. Perhaps it’s lingering effects of online learning during the pandemic, or the distractions of smartphones. Whatever it is, what can we do to win them back? Through our analysis of hundreds of research studies, we’ve come up with five things teachers can do to increase student engagement with their learning.

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Using an “interest inventory” to engage students in learning

By Blog

In Building a Curious School, author Bryan Goodwin notes that students have greater well-being, goal orientation, and motivation when they have a passion worthy of pursuit that makes their lives meaningful. However, for many students, telling them to find their life’s passion can feel overwhelming. They may not feel like they know what they’re really passionate about yet.

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Reviewing your school’s non-negotiables for successful student learning

By Blog

Few things within a school’s control have as much impact on student success as the curriculum. Studies show, in fact, that the extent to which a school has a well-aligned curriculum and ensures it’s taught in every classroom is one of the most important within-school variable driving school performance (second only to teaching quality). This is the perfect time for school and district leaders to think about the extent to which your curriculum is clearly articulated, well aligned, focused on essential knowledge and skills, and enacted in every classroom

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14 teaching strategies for best first instruction in every classroom

By Blog

One of the best ways to help all students succeed is by focusing on delivering effective Tier 1 foundational instruction in every classroom, every day, for every student. Like many others, we call this best first instruction, which we define in our Unleashing the Power of Best First Instruction white paper as “the skillful use of proven teaching techniques that are intentionally sequenced to help all students convert new learning into long-term memory.”

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