“Our Students Have the Best Scores in the School/District, Why Should We Have to do This?”

Jennifer Partrick
Apr 12, 2010

Take a minute and think beyond the test scores in the district to the best that your students can be. Are all of your students working up to their potential? Are all of your students making the gains they should be making? Are all of your students making the highest possible scores on tests? Do you know everything about teaching and instruction? If the answer is no to any of these questions, you should consider the LEARNING-FOCUSED model. As professionals, we must always seek out new methods and strategies to support instruction and learning for continuous improvement. If we do not, we are missing opportunities for growth; our students and our own.

Teachers must utilize the current research on what is working in classrooms to ensure students are reaching their potent ial. If all of our students have learned as much as they can while they are with us, then we can continue to do what we have always done. However, if there is one student who could have learned more, that changes everything.

LEARNING-FOCUSED has, at its foundation, the best teaching strategies housed in a framework that supports exemplary instruction and learning. There is research to support everything that LEARNING-FOCUSED espouses. Teachers who use the LEARNING-FOCUSED model analyze their standards and construct units that support learning, engagement, retention, collaboration, discussion, and memory. They create lessons and assignments that are interesting and stimulating for both teacher and student. Who would not w ant to do that?

Is there room for growth for all! of your students, including your gifted students? Are you able to create lessons that support your lowest and highest achieving students? Are all of your students engaged? If not, there are students whose needs are not being met. LEARNING-FOCUSED lesson construction supports all students to ensure they are all learning. Lessons are chunked in order for students to think about and process their learning. Students summarize after each chunk so teachers are able to assess how well the students have learned the information throughout the lesson. At each assessment point, there is room for practice and summarization. Lessons based on essential standards include Extending Thinking activities which give students additional time to interact with the content in interesting and authentic ways in order to deepen their understanding of the content learned.

Are all of your students working up to their potential? Are all of your students engaged in learning? Are all of your students successful? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself, "Can I afford not to do this?"