PLCC

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Why Building Knowledge?

There is 50+ years of research showing the importance of knowledge for language comprehension and learning.

Content knowledge is both the goal of and scaffold to literacy development; it supports acquisition of academic vocabulary, strengthens reading comprehension, and promotes evidence-based writing and discourse.

Why Building Knowledge?

Building knowledge is for all students.

Professional learning should:

Build expertise with pedagogical strategies that have students read, discuss, and write about topics across the humanities and science.

Build instructional expertise that build shared knowledge with: a volume of reading, the use of multiple texts on a single topic, and vocabulary instruction situated within these texts.

Knowledge and Practices

Create knowledge rich classrooms by: honoring the knowledge, skills, and identities students bring to the classroom, identifying the knowledge students will build, and representing multiple perspectives, identities, and experience.

Ground PL in instructional materials that select texts and design tasks to build a shared knowledge of the world.

Challenge barriers to building knowledge: skills-first instruction and skills-focused pacing calendars, the predominance of generic theme-based units, and the compartmentalization of knowledge building by departments.

Professional learning should:

Foster a positive view of every students’ inherent ability to access rigorous, knowledge-rich content.

Challenge biases about the abilities of students to access knowledge-rich content, especially students facing barriers of racism and poverty.

Educator Mindset

Why Building Academic Language?

Knowing and using academic language is key to accessing grade-level text and engaging in written and oral tasks.

Why Building Academic Language?

Practice with resources and tasks that build academic language is for every student.

Knowledge and vocabulary growth are central to reading comprehension.

Professional learning should:

Build knowledge on the components academic language (e.g. academic vocabulary, syntax, and morphology) and analyse language demands.

Use text- and language-centered instruction that gives regular opportunities to strategically build academic language focused on: morphology, pronunciation, semantics, sentence deconstruction, and building on students’ home language.

Knowledge and Practice

Focus text-dependent tasks on high-leverage words and syntactically complex sentences that are central to a text’s meaning.

Ground PL in instructional materials that enable students to meet the academic language demands of the texts and tasks.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that stunt language development: grade-level word lists, out of context words, and memorization of literary terms.

Professional learning should:

Make clear the importance of high expectations for the academic language capabilities of every student.

Challenge biases about the abilities of students to engage in rich discourse, especially students facing barriers of racism and poverty.

Educator Mindset

Why Evidence-Based Writing?

Practice with a range of grade-level evidence-based writing tasks is essential to students’ college- and career-ready success.

Why Evidence-Based Writing?

Evidence-based writing is both a scaffold to and the goal of literacy development; writing ensures students understand complex texts, deepen their knowledge, and master a variety of writing skills and applications.

Every student must regularly engage in evidence-based writing on substantive topics. Denying such opportunity perpetuates unequal access to learning.

Professional learning should:

Support teachers to understand and implement instructional practices and appropriate scaffolds that provide frequent opportunities for complex and content-focused writing tasks: notes, summaries, short responses, formal essays, research tasks, and on-demand and process writing.

Make clear informational, argumentative, and narrative writing tasks should be anchored in complex texts.

Knowledge and Practices

Anchor PL in instructional materials that use a range of evidence-based writing tasks.

Challenge practices that do not accelerate students’ writing abilities: decontextualized writing prompts, unvarying writing process, and content-free writing tasks.

Professional learning should:

Make clear that evidence-based writing is for all students and such work cannot be withheld in the name of first preparing below grade level skills.

Challenge biases about the abilities of students facing barriers of racism and poverty to engage in rich discourse.

Educator Mindset

Why Evidence-Based Discourse?

Communicating with and relating to others about significant and diverse topics using evidence is critical for literacy development.

Evidence-based discourse is both a scaffold to and the goal of literacy development; it supports content learning and language proficiency.

Why Evidence-Based Discourse?

Every student must have the opportunity to regularly engage with evidence-based discourse.

Professional learning should:

Support teachers to understand and implement discussions grounded in evidence so that students share their thinking, build on one another’s ideas, and ask one another questions to clarify or improve their understanding.

Create classrooms that are communities of learning where all students process, understand, and interpret text-based evidence.

Knowledge and Practices

Frame evidence-based discourse as a way to build shared knowledge, explore challenging ideas, practice using evidence and academic language, and build English language proficiency.

Ground PL in instructional materials that provide tasks and structures to regularly engage students in substantive conversation on robust topics.

Challenge instruction that does not accelerate discourse skills: strategies that limited exchange of ideas and disconnected language routines.

Professional learning should:

Make clear every student is capable of sharing compelling ideas anchored in evidence and experience.

Challenge biases about the abilities of students facing barriers of racism and poverty to engage in rich discourse.

Educator Mindset

Why Complex Text at the Center of Instruction?

Every student should have regular access to and practice with rich and complex grade level text.

Engaging in complex text is essential for improving student reading comprehension.

Why Complex Text at the Center of Instruction?

The ability to read grade-level is the driver of all literacy work and understanding.

Centering complex text is challenging work.

Professional learning should:

Foster the view that every student can regularly participate in grade-level work.

Challenge biases about the abilities of students facing barriers of racism and poverty to read complex text.

Educator Mindset

Professional learning should:

Build knowledge in the factors of text complexity & use them to design instruction with a series of text-dependent tasks.

Build expertise that support students’ reading comprehension with close reading, sequencing of text dependent tasks, and embedding appropriate scaffolds.

Knowledge and Practice

Engage with text centered instruction, not standards-first or skills-first instruction.

Ground PL in instructional materials that use complex grade-level anchor texts and tasks.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that restrict students’ reading opportunities to leveled texts because they create inequitable outcomes and are not based on evidence on how students learn to read.

Why Foundational Skills

Every student can secure early reading skills with systematic foundational skills instruction.

Ineffective teaching of early reading skills has significantly negative impacts on students’ literacy achievement.

Why Foundational Skills?

Students who face barriers of racism and poverty are disproportionately denied opportunities to secure early foundational reading skills.

Professional learning should:

Challenge biases about the abilities of students facing barriers of racism and poverty to secure early reading skills.

Make clear foundational skills instruction is good for all and crucial for some.

Educator Mindset

Professional learning should:

Understand the role that foundational skills and language comprehension play in proficient reading.

Support K-2 teachers to understand & teach: print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and reading fluency.

Knowledge and Practices

Support 3-12 teachers to understand & teach: relationship between phonics & decoding and ongoing fluency development.

Ground PL in instructional materials that follow a research-based scope and sequence.

Challenge misconceptions about early reading skills and name inadequate pedagogy: the three cueing system, the notion of print-rich environments as sufficient, minimal time for teaching of foundational skills, and solely using leveled text.

Why Fractions?

Study of fractions is often treated as a separate topic from students’ previous work with whole numbers.

Students’ knowledge of fractions has shown to be predictive of mathematics achievement in high school and beyond.

Why Fractions?

Students’ understanding of fraction as an extension of the number system gives students access to higher level math.

Many teachers themselves were not taught the critical mathematical concepts underlying fractions when they were students.

Student performance on fraction tasks continues to be persistently low.

Teacher training programs have not yet consistently prioritized fractions.

professional learning should:

Make clear that all students, especially those who face barriers of racism or poverty, can overcome barriers to fractions understanding.

Educator Mindsets

Challenge biases that lead to teaching shortcuts for students who are still developing their understanding of fractions, especially those who face barriers of racism or poverty.

professional learning should:

Ground learning in the research on the development of fraction concepts in children.

Anchor PL in instructional materials that teach fractions as an extension of the number system.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that present fractions, decimals, and whole numbers separately.

Knowledge and Practices

Make clear how unit fractions are building blocks of fractions and support reasoning around magnitude and operations with fractions.

Build understanding of how numbers and operations concepts introduced in K-3 continue to hold true for fractions.

Demonstrate how measurement representations (area and linear) of fractions support reasoning about the magnitude of fractions.

Challenge the assumption that it is necessary for students to be able to use all representations for any work with fractions, and, instead, focus on the key uses of each representation.

Why Proportional Relationships?

Prevalent ways for teaching this content actually undermine the careful progression defined by the standards.

Ratios and proportional relationships is one of the highest priority content for college and career readiness.

Why Proportional Relationships?

Many teachers themselves were not taught the critical mathematical concepts underlying proportional relationships when they were students.

Students’ understanding of ratios and proportional relationships bridges their understandings from earlier work in multiplication to later work on functional relationships.

Teacher training programs have not yet consistently prioritized understanding proportional relationships.

professional learning should:

Foster the view that all students are capable of reasoning about proportional relationships.

Educator Mindsets

Challenge biases that lead to teaching shortcuts for students who are still developing their understanding of proportional relationships, especially those who face barriers of racism or poverty.

professional learning should:

Build skill in connecting different representations of proportional relationships.

Ground learning in the scholarship that clarifies the language, applications, and representations that promote understanding of a proportional relationship.

Emphasize the role of the unit rate in the progression of student learning.

Challenge the prevalent practice of setting up a proportion and using cross multiplication, because it undermines building conceptual understanding of a proportional relationship.

Knowledge and Practices

Build understanding of how the work of multiplication builds towards conceptual understanding of ratios and proportional relationships.

Build understanding of how the work of ratios and proportional relationships builds towards the work of functions.

Anchor PL in instructional materials that keep intact the coherent connections from ratios and proportional relationships back to multiplication and towards functions.

Why Mathematical Modeling?

Many students still do not regularly engage in mathematical modeling tasks.

Mathematical modeling helps students see the relevance of math.

Why Mathematical Modeling?

Modeling shows students how math can be used to answer questions they are interested in answering. and to analyze real world phenomena.

Many teachers themselves did not have regular opportunities to engage in mathematical modeling when they were students.

Students can see that math can be a tool of empowerment -- as a means to communicate about and improve decision making around issues in one’s own community.

Teachers are still not regularly supported in implementing mathematical modeling through instructional materials or teacher training programs.

professional learning should:

Foster the view that math classrooms need to draw upon students’ funds of knowledge as well as provide opportunities to critically analyze the world around them.

Educator Mindsets

Challenge biases that mathematical modeling experiences are only for a particular subset of students.

professional learning should:

Build understanding of the modeling cycle, its multiple entry points, its non-linear structure, and its decision points.

Demonstrate how mathematical modeling allows students to draw upon their lived experiences and engage in important social issues.

Ground learning in the guidelines on implementing modeling through the grades.

Knowledge and Practices

Demonstrate how modeling tasks provide an opportunity to apply math and revisit math content from previous grades.

Anchor PL in instructional materials with modeling tasks that allow authentic engagement in the modeling cycle.

Support educators in preparing for and facilitating modeling tasks for every student.

Build knowledge about real world situations and careers where mathematical modeling applies.

Build expertise in the difference between tasks that model the math vs. tasks that model with math.

Why Cultivate Reasoning and Problem Solving?

Students need opportunities to exhibit the mathematical practices when they are engaging in the math content.

When students have opportunities to share their thinking about the content of the lesson, they see themselves as active contributors of mathematical knowledge.

Why Cultivate Reasoning and Problem Solving?

Regular opportunities to productively struggle helps students develop a strong academic identity and become adept at applying their learning in new problem situations.

When students have opportunities to articulate their own thinking and engage in their peers’ thinking, they gain a deeper understanding of the math.

Classrooms that consistently cultivate students’ reasoning and problem solving is still not yet the norm.

professional learning should:

Support educators in recognizing classroom norms, routines, and structures that prevent, as well as those that enable, every student from engaging in reasoning and problem solving around grade-level work.

Educator Mindsets

Challenge mindsets that some students, particularly those who face barriers of racism or poverty, do not enter the classroom with any useful knowledge for engaging with grade-level mathematics.

professional learning should:

Anchor PL in instructional materials that enable students to regularly engage in reasoning and problem solving.

Ground learning in the scholarship on mathematical identity to make clear the relationship between students doing the majority of the work and their mathematical achievement.

Make clear that students bring an abundance of knowledge to the math classroom, and an educator’s role is to surface that knowledge, connect it to learning goals, and ensure that task selection and facilitation respect students and treat them as active participants.

Knowledge and Practices

Challenge pedagogical approaches that proceduralize problem solving. Instead, practice pedagogical approaches that help students make sense of the problem and represent the problem as they see it.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that reinforce students’ tendency to jump into solution attempts. Instead, practice pedagogical approaches that promote reflection.

Build skill in pedagogical strategies that embrace student struggle and that cultivate reasoning to position students as owners and contributors of math ideas.

Why Strategically Share Student Thinking?

Strategically sharing student thinking provides all students access to the content of the lesson.

Sharing student thinking positions students as owners of mathematical knowledge.

Why Strategically Share Student Thinking?

Strategic shares help move all students towards grade-level understandings.

Classrooms that consistently share student thinking strategically is still not yet the norm.

professional learning should:

Position all students, particularly students facing barriers of racism or poverty, as owners of mathematical knowledge.

Educator Mindsets

Make clear that strategically sharing student work can be an opportunity to disrupt status hierarchies in the classroom and elevate the mathematical identity of students.

Challenge biases about the ability of all students, especially those who face barriers of racism or poverty, to make sense of a problem, to represent their thinking, and to see connections between their and their peers’ thinking.

professional learning should:

Ground learning in the math progressions.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that select and sequence student work with the singular goal of efficiency. Instead, illuminate that the selection of student strategies lives at the intersection of mathematical goals and students’ mathematical identities.

Knowledge and Practices

Challenge pedagogical approaches that only show correct work. Instead of only identifying what students don’t understand, leverage what students do understand and reveal the learning that can and does happen when student work with mistakes and partial solutions are shared and discussed.

Build skill in the practice of anticipating solution methods and selecting representations that, when sequenced strategically and discussed together, can move all students towards grade-level understandings.

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Make apparent how visual representations and concrete manipulation support all students in accessing the learning but are of particular importance for ELLs, learners with special needs, and students with unfinished learning.

Anchor PL in instructional materials that provide tasks and structures that allow for student thinking to be at the center of instruction.

Why Make the Math Explicit?

Teachers’ thorough understanding of the big ideas in a unit of study, and of grade-level expectations, can help them better set mathematical learning goals and communicate them to students.

Teaching with this clarity and alignment to grade-level expectations is a key component of students’ success with math.

Why Make the Math Explicit?

Internalized, clear mathematical goals help teachers plan lessons, assess student progress towards grade-level understandings, and adjust accordingly.

Classrooms that consistently make the math explicit is still not yet the norm.

Teachers need strategies - such as using explanations, representations, tasks and/or examples - to solidify the learning.

professional learning should:

Uphold the belief that every student is capable of doing grade-level work.

Challenge the belief that telling students how to approach a problem will lead to a clear understanding of the math.

Challenge the belief that problem-based learning will lead to unpredictable or muddled lesson outcomes.

Educator Mindsets

professional learning should:

Focus on purposeful planning around tasks and instruction to illuminate a specific learning goal.

Build skill in identifying indicators in students’ thinking that demonstrate where they are in the progression of learning, recognizing common misconceptions, and adjusting instruction accordingly.

Challenge pedagogical approaches that treat representations as methods to be practiced. Instead, demonstrate that representations make mathematical thinking visible.

Knowledge and Practices

Ground learning in the math progressions so that mathematical learning goals are situated within this research.

Anchor PL in instructional materials that consistently present clear mathematical learning goals and problems that build towards the goals.

Build skill in formulating mathematical learning goals that reflect an understanding of grade-level expectations but do not merely reiterate a standard or cluster, that are grounded in evidence of student thinking, and that are contextualized within the current classroom curriculum.