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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.

Using an “interest inventory” to engage students in learning

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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

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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

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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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Teacher-directed or student-centered instruction? Both, please!

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As a teacher, you’ve likely been cautioned at some point to steer clear of lecturing, delivering direct instruction, or doing anything that remotely resembles being a “sage on the stage.” Instead, you’ve likely been encouraged to let your students take charge of their own learning, explore their own interests, make their own discoveries, and arrive at their own conclusions.

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How The New Classroom Instruction That Works builds on past knowledge

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As someone who has worked extensively with teachers on Classroom Instruction That Works strategies for almost nine years, I understand how a new CITW book with different terms and structures might seem overwhelming. However, at the heart of it, the latest edition sets out to create a bridge, connecting proven teaching strategies with our understanding of how the brain processes and retains new information, known as the science of learning.

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