DAY 2 Special Education

Topeka Public Schools (TPS) in partnership with Dr. John Hattie, is implementing high impact Visible Learning Strategies. As TPS continues its work on Teacher Clarity, the focus is student engagement, higher order questioning, and student voice. These three student centered strategies are written into School Improvement Plans and part of the classroom observation walk-through tool.

• Student Engagement - Students are cognitively challenged in learning through the use of district supported initiatives (e.g., Kagan Cooperative Learning, Building Thinking Classrooms, student to student discourse strategies, hands-on activities, use of manipulatives).

• Higher Order Questioning includes both teacher and student questioning, looking at the Depth of Knowledge, and Dr. Hattie’s four key questioning strategies:

• designing higher cognitive questions.

• developing a sequence of questions.

• increasing wait time.

• responding to answers - redirecting, probing, reinforcing.

Student Voice - Students are able to articulate what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how they will know when they have learned it.