2023 VASCD Journal (Volume 20)

JOURNAL 2023 Volume 20

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers President Julie Myers, Frederick

President-Elect Amy Acors, Fauquier

Treasurer and Resource Committee Chair Pat Griffin, Virginia Beach

Secretary Jennifer Orr, Fairfax

Parliamentarian/Historian Tom DeBolt, Albemarle

Committee Chairs ADVOCACY

Daniel Smith, Loudoun Joe Douglas, Colonial Heights

The Advocacy Committee works to influence state education policy and legislation in the interest of students and teachers.

RESOURCE

Pat Griffin, Virginia Beach

The Resource Committee establishes and monitors VASCD's budget and ensures responsible fiscal management.

CONFERENCE

Melissa George, Virginia Beach

The Conference Committee designs and executes Virginia's premier annual conference on teaching and learning.

PROGRAMS

Chelsea Kulp, Isle of Wight

The Programs Committee guides VASCD's professional learning activities to ensure high quality and positive impact.

SERVICES

Robin Hoffman, Virginia Beach

The Services Committee elevates the profession through give-back opportunities for appreciation, celebration, and recognition.

BUSINESS MODEL

Thomas Taylor, Stafford

The Business Model Committee seeks out and designs opportunities for monetization and strategic ventures to ensure fiscal stability.

NEW TEACHER SUPPORT

Roberto Pamas, George Mason University

The New Teacher Recruitment and Resources for Support Committee encourages and supports new teachers in the beginning of their careers.

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VASCD's eight Regional Representatives are elected by members in their regions. They conduct outreach activities, keep VASCD apprised of regional needs and issues, and engage their constituents in network-building and professional learning efforts.

Regional Representatives Region I Peyton Anderson, Chesterfield peyton_anderson@ccpsnet.net

Region II Rashard Wright, Newport News rashard.wright@nn.k12.va.us

Region III Sarah Calveric, Caroline scalveric@ccps.us

Region IV Ana Cingel, Loudoun ana.cingel@lcps.org

Region V Sarah Melton, Augusta smelton@augusta.k12.va.us

Region VI Janet Womack, Botetourt jwomack@bcps.k12.va.us

Region VII Ellen Denny, Radford City edenny@rcps.org

Region VIII Jan Medley, Amelia medleyj@ameliaschools.com

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Virginia ASCD Membership Our network is strong! When you join VASCD, you become part of a statewide network devoted to excellence in teaching and learning.

We'll provide you with helpful resources, access to outstanding professional learning opportunities, and monthly "members-only" content provided to us by ASCD. You'll be among the first to access content and services developed by and for VASCD, such as The Profile of a Virginia Classroom and our collection of micro-credentials for teachers and leaders.

You'll be represented at the state level by a leading organization advocating for autonomy with integrity in the education profession.

You'll receive a discounted registration fee at our programs for professional learning offered throughout the commonwealth and online.

Click HERE to join!

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FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Eric Carbaugh, Ph.D. Professor in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and Math Education James Madison University

Michelle Hock, Ed.D. Postdoctoral research associate at the University of Virginia's School of Education in the department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia

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VASCD'S ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Virginia's Premier Conference for Teaching and Learning

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From the Executive Director and President of the Board of Directors

Chris Jones Executive Director Virginia ASCD

Julie Myers Director of Middle and Secondary Instructional Services Frederick County Public Schools President, Virginia ASCD (2022-2024)

It is a tremendous honor for us to present the 2023 VASCD Journal, our 20th volume! Both of us truly admire VASCD’s long-standing presence in Virginia, along with the quality of service we have historically produced. And this volume of our annual journal is no exception!

Our editor, Dr. Eric Carbaugh, has once again delivered on an outstanding resource for the members of VASCD and the educators throughout Virginia. We are also grateful for the educators who submitted their articles for publication; we have enjoyed reading their work and learning from their experience, expertise, and research.

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The past year-and-a-half has been a whirlwind of engagement for our organization and its members. VASCD has offered innovative programming that is responsive to the needs of Virginia’s educators; developed policy priorities, position briefs, and response letters; collaborated with numerous organizations to offer professional learning and matters of policy; and created original content available to members and educators abroad.

The journal’s cover photo - Reflect-Rethink-Revise - was included intentionally as a reminder to all of us at VASCD that each year is a new chapter, and each day a page in that chapter. As an organization, we are proud to serve you. We are proud to uncover the challenges, co-construct the goals, and develop the strategies needed to #Elevate the profession and advance teaching and learning for ALL of Virginia’s students. We will continue to work for and with you as we co-author the next chapter in education. And we hope to make you proud of us in the process.

Our priorities remain in our programs, services, and advocacy work.

We are committed to designing and delivering high-quality professional learning that is based on research, experience, and a focus on market analysis rooted in your voices. We are committed to giving back to the profession through our content, awards, and support services. Finally, our Policy Team is strong and working to influence policy, legislation, and ultimately a system that defines your work.

Enjoy Volume 20 of the VASCD Journal, and we hope to see you at upcoming events advertised throughout these pages!

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Table of Contents 5

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Eric Carbaugh

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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD Chris Jones and Julie Myers

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VASCD AWARD RECIPIENTS

2023 Leadership, Impact, and Team Awards

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CALL FOR 2024 JOURNAL ENTRIES

Want to publish in next year's journal? Information on Article Submissions

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Articles 16

CS + HUMANITIES: A PARTNERSHIP FOR STUDENTS' FUTURES Kristy VanderRoest and Zach Jernigan

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RESPONDING TO READINESS LEVELS: DIFFERENTIATING WRITING INSTRUCTION TO MEET ALL LEARNERS’ NEEDS Michelle Hock, EdD and Leighann Pennington, EdD

58 FEEDBACK MATTERS

Anne Jewett, EdD

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FINDING YOUR POWER THROUGH EDUCATIONAL MINIMALISM Tammy Musiowsky-Borneman and Christine Arnold

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FOSTERING STUDENT INTEREST IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND STEM FIELDS:

Jennifer LaBombard-Daniel, PhD

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DEEPER LEARNING AND ARTS IN EDUCATION IN VIRGINIA PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS

Fraces C. Furlong

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What is a Micro-Credential? A Micro-Credential is a Performance Assessment; essential, assessment of, for, and as learning. Participants explore resources and make decisions for implementation in their classrooms and gather evidence from student work to submit for review by an assessor. The assessor scores the evidence using a rubric and provides feedback and opportunities for revision, if needed. Each Micro-Credential is worth 30 points for professional development toward license renewal requirements.

Why Micro-Credentials? Micro-Credentials provide a direct link between a change in practice and student learning outcomes; they are self-directed and self-paced, personalized, authentic and job-embedded, and verified by an assessor.

Cost: $120 per Micro-Credential

Review the catalog HERE. For group enrollment, please email Kay Carbaugh at vascd.kaycarbaugh@gmail.com.

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CS + Humanities: A Partnership for Students' Futures Kristy VanderRoest, M.A.T. Kristy VanderRoest has been teaching secondary English and social studies for sixteen years, first at Bailey Bridge Middle School in Chesterfield County and currently at CodeRVA Regional High School. Kristy has a Bachelor of Arts in English from Michigan State University and a Master's Degree in Curriculum Development from Marygrove College. Kristy's interests include blending strands, reading across disciplines, Culturally Responsive Teaching, and developing the genius in all students.

Zach Jernigan, M.A.T. Zach Jernigan has been teaching science at the middle and high school levels for eight years.

He is a proud graduate of James Madison University, earning both his Bachelor of Science in Biology and Master of Art in Teaching. Zach was honored as Educator of the Year in 2022 by rvaTech/. He is currently teaching Physics and AP Computer Science Principles at CodeRVA Regional High School.

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CS + Humanities Abstract In order to graduate career ready, Virginia's students must have opportunities to build their durable skills while preparing for technology’s increasing footprint in a wide range of fields. One way to support students as future graduates is through cross-curricular partnerships between computer science and humanities teachers. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of humanities and computer science instruction and integration, show how cross-curricular teaming can lead to better student outcomes, and provide examples of ways teachers can incorporate both computer science and humanities content into their own instruction.

Introduction Humanities and computer science are both increasingly relevant to our 21stcentury world. From the emergence of large language models, like ChatGPT, to the surge of high-paying career opportunities in STEM (also referred to as STEAM) fields, computer science education is an essential component for career-ready graduates. The Virginia Department of Education created and published computer science standards of learning in 2017; with this, Virginia became one of the first states to have such standards stretching from kindergarten to high school graduation. This trend toward including STEM education in schools will accelerate as technology-driven careers increase in number and kind. Computer science teachers have much they can, and should, learn from humanities teachers, however. While computer science tends to focus on technical skills and problem solving, the humanities provide broader opportunities for critical thinking, effective communication, and perspective-building. Together, instruction in these areas can help develop Virginia's 5 C's for Preparing Future-Ready Graduates: collaboration, communication, citizenship, creativity, and critical thinking. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of integrating computer science and humanities

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CS + Humanities standards through cross-curricular partnerships. By learning from others and the best of what they do, educators across the disciplines can better prepare students for their futures.

A Partnership for Students' Futures It comes as no surprise that schools are eyeing computer science with increasing interest. Computer science coursework can lead to lucrative career paths for students, especially given our ever-changing relationship with artificial intelligence. Hoff (2023) reports that of the 30 high-paying careers most likely to see an increase in employment in the next 10 years, six of them relate to computer science. In a list heavily populated by health care

Students can only benefit from exposure to computer science as they prepare for their futures.

and financial services, it is notable that the career expected to increase the most is software developer, potentially adding over 370,000 jobs by 2031.

Even those outside of the computer science field may soon find artificial intelligence an integral part of their jobs (DePillis & Lohr, 2023). Students can only benefit from exposure to computer science as they prepare for their futures.

With an emphasis on technological skills at the forefront, it seems apparent that humanities would take a back seat to computer science, both in schools and in the workplace. And yet, there are many reasons why humanities skills are critical to the work students are learning to do. In addition to being able to read and write as functioning human beings (AI programs were not quite ready to write this article for us), humanities coursework teaches students to value diverse perspectives, view the world outside their small purview, and consider unique solutions to problems. Humanities can serve as the ethical underpinning for coding work, encouraging future computer scientists to

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CS + Humanities work toward a better society rather than the "next great thing" (Pierson, 2017). This is particularly relevant as we view recent news reports indicating that even those most closely involved in the creation of our newest artificial intelligence programs are urging for a pause in development while the social implications are considered (Metz, 2023). Without a strong humanities education, Leetaru (2019) argues that students are "losing the grounding that the humanities provide in helping them understand their role in society and the impact their creations have in shaping and being shaped by society" (para. 1).

The great news is that humanities and computer science play well together.

Ng and Ng (2021) found of STEM and humanities collaborations: "students can understand STEAM knowledge more deeply and comprehensively, and then they can integrate what they have learn[ed] in humanities into the innovations and creative ideas in STEAM" (p. 457). Humanities coursework allows for a deeper exploration of computer science concepts, while computer science provides a meaningful hook for students in their reading, writing, and history learning. Simply asking students to read about China's social credit system or the use of AI emotion-detection software provides a bridge to practicing reading skills, writing analytical essays, and/or learning about varying government systems through a CS lens. Teachers who work within a framework of cross-curricular planning are more likely to discover these connections that blend strands from multiple content areas while valuing students' needs and interests.

The Value of Cross-Curricular Planning While the benefits of cross-curricular planning have been well documented, the truth is that many secondary teachers still work in a silo. Breaking out of that silo offers many opportunities to learn and grow. Learning from professionals outside of their subject areas can provide educators with new ideas for lessons they may never have considered. As noted by Lindsay (2021), "Close cooperation by faculty in different disciplines, whose pedagogical approaches may differ significantly" offers opportunities for students to build "synergistic understanding," or a more interconnected

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CS + Humanities grasp of multiple contents. Cross-curricular partnerships allow educators to experience new-to-them strategies that enhance their pedagogy while also providing an opportunity for students to incorporate their interests across their courses, which increases their motivation in addition to deepening their understanding (Strecker, 2021).

There is emerging data and evidence that focusing on cross-curricular planning between CS and humanities can improve students' learning of durable skills, or those skills that allow students to be successful in and out of the classroom, such as teamwork and attention to detail (Christensen & Knezek, 2015). Despite stereotypes, most computer science jobs involve a significant amount of communication and collaboration; therefore, CS students need to know how to effectively work with others and discuss their work. Improving these skills while in school can result in better career outcomes. For example, "Those who can speak clearly naturally migrate to leadership and management positions" (Spector, 2015, p. 6). In order to ensure career-ready graduates, teachers must provide practice and experience with building durable skills, and cross-curricular partnerships are a means to this end. Computer science and humanities teaching partnerships therefore create an environment that supports students in their future careers.

Examples from the Field Deep Dive: Co-planning and Co-teaching A strong partnership between humanities and computer science teachers can result in interwoven lessons that motivate students' learning and seamlessly blend each content area. An example can be seen in a recent unit we created entitled Hip Hop, Geography, and Sampling. This lesson was created for ninth graders and combined AP Computer Science Principles, English 9, and World Geography curricula.

In this short unit, students learned about the history of hip hop, from its origins in Jamaica and block parties in the Bronx in the 1970s to its global

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CS + Humanities This was also the perfect time to review copyright laws, open source repositories, and citing sources, which are key knowledge and skills in both humanities and computer science. reach and impact on social change today, with a particular focus on South Africa. As part of their historical study, students investigated the geography concepts of regions, globalization, and cultural diffusion. Students also researched and debated the pros and cons of sampling in hip hop. This study naturally connected with the computer science concept of loops, and students had the opportunity to use loops and samples by creating their own songs using EarSketch. A sample of the Create task designed for this unit can be found here. This was also the perfect time to review copyright laws, open source repositories, and citing sources, which are key knowledge and skills in both humanities and computer science.

This unit was more than just a fun opportunity to engage students in something they find interesting, although students were clearly engaged.

Lessons that allow students to think critically about topics of interest are intrinsically motivating, and students who are motivated are more likely to delve into reading and writing tasks with enthusiasm. But also, students were provided with the background knowledge needed to understand the purpose and historical underpinnings of their computer science work. They used their computer science skills in a real world, career-focused application. They synthesized and evaluated a variety of sources; thinking about the ethics of the computer science applications in the music industry encouraged them to reach their potential as well-rounded citizens who think about the "impact of their creations" (Leetaru, 2019). Lessons like these prepare students to be what Christensen and Knezek (2015) call "global engineers" who are capable technology users, effective communicators, and ethical thinkers who value diversity (p. 23-24).

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CS + Humanities However, incorporating computer science and humanities does not require a multi-day unit. Therefore, we also share here some of the ways in which we have blended computer science and humanities within our own classrooms.

Humanities Integrations in CS Computer science offers many opportunities for humanities skills and pedagogies to be incorporated in support of students' computer science learning. For example, one of us, Zach, was well prepared to teach the concepts of coding but did not anticipate the level of support students would need to conceptualize the jargon required to effectively communicate with others in the field. Humanities teachers are experts at teaching students to connect terms with ideas and use them appropriately in context. Simple, yet powerful, tools like graphic organizers already used in humanities courses provide an accessible opportunity for students to learn and remember these terms without having to learn a new strategy. For example, a Frayer Model can help students practice with new terms and apply them in context.

In addition to vocabulary acquisition, an essential skill for students in computer science classes is the ability to articulate what a program is supposed to do, how it does it, and the rationale for accomplishing the task in that manner. In the workplace, this may look like employees explaining to an employer or product owner specifics of the product they have created.

While many computer science teachers might see this as a skill that comes with time and experience, it can and should be explicitly taught to students.

Again, humanities can provide pedagogical tools that help scaffold this skill.

One such tool would be sentence starters, which help students construct ideas, organize those ideas, and understand the requirements of a fullydeveloped explanation or product pitch. In addition, developing students' abilities to communicate about their code is a place where they can practice writing professional emails. In one lesson, students identified an error in code and sent an email to a "coworker" explaining how to fix the error. This encouraged students to improve workplace readiness skills such as articulating their thoughts clearly, focusing on important details, and organizing their ideas.

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CS + Humanities These simple strategies for reaching across content lines provide students with familiar tools and resources to improve their knowledge acquisition, communication, and equitable usability of their products and skills, making them well-rounded students who are ready for the workplace.

Lastly, computer scientists are constantly developing new technologies.

However, as part of this process, they must reflect on the successes and failures of pre-existing technology, which provides a clear pairing with history courses. An area of concern for computer scientists is making sure they are aware of, and doing their best to avoid, algorithmic bias. A discussion of bias in the media, for example, naturally leads to an investigation of algorithmic bias in artificial intelligence, the importance of complete and unbiased data, and research into the computer scientists who are working to solve the problems of inadequate data and bias-free consumer products. Discussing the history of our country provides an inroad to recognizing biases that may appear in consumer products and mitigating their impacts, ensuring that products work correctly for all users.

These simple strategies for reaching across content lines provide students with familiar tools and resources to improve their knowledge acquisition, communication, and equitable usability of their products and skills, making them well-rounded students who are ready for the workplace.

CS Integrations in Humanities Quick investigations into current events offer a multitude of opportunities for students to consider the ethics of computer science in the real world.

Consider, for example, China's use of emotion-detection software to monitor the Uyghur population. Reading about this topic allows students to consider multiple aspects of the ethics of such technology use while practicing their language arts skills.

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CS + Humanities An even simpler integration could be incorporating pseudo-coding language such as If Statements, which encourage creativity in sharing ideas. Figure 1 shows student-created If Statements used to summarize texts. The first comes from a reading of The Crucible, and the second comes from our colleague Andrew Nash's students, who had read The Federalist Papers #10.

Figure 1. If Statements in Humanities

If statements Ex. If Abigail accuses you AND you refuse to confess, Then you are a witch Ex. If (faction == majority) Then Faction > Public Good

Neither of these If Statements will produce meaningful results if coded into a machine, but they connect with students' computer science learning and require an aspect of creative and critical thinking that a normal summary may not offer.

Another option for humanities teachers is to incorporate flowcharts as a way for students to practice making connections and categorizing concepts. This activity demonstrates algorithmic design, one of the four areas of computational thinking emphasized in computer science courses. Computer scientists use flowcharts to map out and design their processes. In humanities courses, students could make a flowchart to create their own personal strategy for the writing cycle, demonstrate how the three branches of government work together and separately to govern our country, or describe how varying events, people, and external forces played out in a major world event.

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CS + Humanities All the examples provided remain firmly focused on the SOL strands connected to the individual courses. By providing students with access to computer science in humanities courses, we are practicing technologybased skills that will be needed in most, if not all, career paths. By incorporating humanities into computer science, students are able to practice durable skills, such as communication, that are essential for their future career success. Together, this pairing creates rich, motivating lessons for students to think critically about their world and the products they create.

Conclusion As previously stated, Virginia's 5 C's for Preparing Future-Ready Graduates can be easily integrated across the curriculum when teachers work together to create meaningful humanities and computer science collaborations. A strong partnership across disciplines can create a richer, more expansive learning environment for students. Even without a strong partnership between departments, individual teachers can incorporate other content areas into their classrooms in small doses to provide students a different lens for learning. Whether you are ready to take the plunge or just dip your toe into the water, we encourage you to see where you can incorporate crosscurricular teaming as you work to better prepare your students as thinkers, leaders, and, most importantly, citizens of our world.

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CS + Humanities References Board of Education, Commonwealth of Virginia. (2017). Computer science standards of learning for Virginia public schools. Virginia Department of Education. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/ 9926/638026394162470000 Board of Education, Commonwealth of Virginia. (n.d.) CTE high-quality workbased learning. Virginia Department of Education. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching-learning-assessment/k-12standards-instruction/career-and-technical-educationcte/hqwbl#:~:text=HQWBL%20experiences%20reinforce%20 Virginia%27s%205,or%20service%2Doriented%20work%20environment Christensen, R, & Knezek, G. (2015). Active learning approaches to integrating technology into a middle school science curriculum based on 21st century skills. In X. Ge, D. Ifenthaler, & J. M. Spector (Eds.) Emerging technologies for STEAM education: Full STEAM ahead (pp. 17-35). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02573-5 DePillis, L. and Lohr, S. (2023, April 3). Tinkering with ChatGPT, workers wonder: Will this take my job? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/business/economy/jobs-aiartificial-intelligence-chatgpt.html Ge, X., Ifenthaler, D., & Spector, J. M. (2015). Emerging technologies for STEAM education: Full STEAM ahead (X. Ge, D. Ifenthaler, & J. M. Spector, Eds.; 1st ed. 2015.). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02573-5 Hoff, M. (2023, April 24). 30 high-paying, fast-growing jobs that are set to boom over the next decade. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/best-jobs-future-growth-highpaying-careers-2021-9

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CS + Humanities Leetaru, K. (2019, August 6). Why computer science needs the humanities.

Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/08/06/whycomputer-science-needs-the-humanities/?sh=1b3416507f45 Lindsay, S. M. (2021). Integrating microscopy, art, and humanities to power STEAM learning in biology. Invertebrate Biology, 140(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/ivb.12327 Metz, C. (2023, March 31). What's the future for A.I.? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/ai-chatbotsbenefits-dangers.html Ng, S. F. E., & Ng, C. H. (2021). Reports from the Field: Secondary School in Hong Kong Integrating the Spirit of Humanities into STEAM Education.

Journal of Learning for Development, 8(2), 456–464. https://doi.org/10.56059/jl4d.v8i2.500 Pierson, E. (2017, April 24). Hey, computer scientists! Stop hating on the humanities. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hey-computerscientists-stop-hating-humanities/ Spector, J. M. (2015). Education, training, competencies, curricula and technology: Full STEAM ahead. In X. Ge, D. Ifenthaler, & J. M. Spector (Eds.) Emerging technologies for STEAM education: Full STEAM ahead (pp. 3-14). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02573-5 Strecker, K. (2021, October 5). Cross-curricular instruction. Curriculum Leadership Institute. https://cliweb.org/cross-curricularinstruction/#:~:text=This%20allows%20students%20to%20broaden, learn%20skills%20in%20different%20contexts.

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Information and Registration

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Responding to Readiness Levels: Differentiating Writing Instruction to Meet All Learners’ Needs MIchelle Hock, Ed.D. Michelle Hock is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Virginia's School of Education in the department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education. She holds both an Ed.D. and M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on gifted education from the University of Virginia, as well as an M.A. from Middlebury College in English Literature. Her teaching and research interests include pre-service teacher education, gifted education, classroom assessment, and secondary English/language arts. Prior to her work at the University of Virginia, she served as a secondary English teacher in Pennsylvania.

Leighann Pennington, Ed.D. Dr. Pennington is an assistant professor of education at Sweet Briar College and a former middle school English/Language Arts teacher and educator of gifted students. She holds an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology and Gifted Education and Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Virginia. Her research interests include curriculum implementation and talent development among diverse learners.

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Responding to Readiness Abstract Given that students' readiness levels for engaging in writing tasks is often highly varied, teachers must systematically use assessment data to develop instruction that is responsive to an array of writing strengths and needs. In this article, we describe how teachers can design writing instruction that leverages the power of flexible grouping so that all learners have an opportunity to be challenged and cultivate their skills. We briefly discuss best practices for differentiating writing instruction, then provide a case study example demonstrating how teachers can develop responsive learning experiences that account for students' diverse needs.

Part 1: Introduction We begin this article by presenting a case study that reflects the reality of many secondary English/language art (ELA) classrooms, where the range of students’ readiness levels for engaging in the writing process often varies widely. The case study scenario is drawn from our own experiences differentiating for students with varied writing strengths and needs so that all students are given opportunities to learn and grow (Tomlinson, 2014). We will return to this case study several times throughout the article to anchor our ideas and recommendations in real-world classroom practices.

Case Study Mr. Davis, an 8th-grade ELA teacher, begins planning for his upcoming unit on expository writing by reviewing the Virginia Standards of Learning (VSOL) (Virginia Department of Education [VDOE], 2010). Guided by the backward design model, he intends to use the standards to write learning goals for the unit, design assessments that will measure those goals, then plan instruction that will help students succeed on the assessment (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). However, before he can begin to undertake that process, Mr. Davis hits a roadblock. While reviewing 8th-grade VSOLs for writing, he realizes

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Responding to Readiness that they seem a bit too advanced for some learners, and too simple for others. Although previous units in Mr. Davis’s class did not focus on writing specifically, he had noticed substantial variation in students’ writing levels based on their written work.

Working backwards, Mr. Davis asks himself: “What is my goal for all students by the end of this unit?” He decides that he wants all students to be able to compose an expository essay on a topic of their choice that demonstrates grade-level proficiency across the six domains of writing outlined by the Grade 8 Writing Instruction Checklist from the Virginia Department of Education (2022): central idea, organization and unity, evidence and details, conclusion, flow, and word choice. Mr. Davis recognizes that this is a big undertaking, especially because of the variety of writing readiness levels in his class. For example, he thinks about Marco, a talented writer and editor of the middle school newspaper, who is strong across all six domains and needs to be challenged to take his writing to the next level. He also thinks about Rishi, an English learner who has an easy time organizing his thoughts coherently in writing, and who struggles with the conventions of standardized written English. Mr. Davis also thinks about Emma, who excels in math and science, and struggles to structure her thoughts into organized paragraphs or essays. As Mr. Davis reflects on the students in his 8th grade class, he observes that some students may be writing at an elementary level, while others are writing at a college level.

After voicing this concern to some of his colleagues, Mr. Davis finds that he is not alone in observing greater readiness-level disparities in his students than was typical just a few years ago prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. To address these disparities, Mr. Davis partners with the other ELA teachers in his professional learning community (PLC) to design a writing unit that leverages the power of differentiation to support all students in achieving grade-level writing goals (or moving beyond them).

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Responding to Readiness What does differentiating writing instruction to meet the needs of students with varied readiness levels look like in action? How can teachers use preassessment data to shape a unit composed of tiered lessons that ask all students to work within their zones of proximal development (Tomlinson & Moon, 2012)? How can formative assessment data be used to make flexible grouping arrangements that give all learners the opportunity to experience academic growth (Doubet, 2022)? Throughout this article, we will follow the case study of Mr. Davis and his 8th-grade students in order to respond to these questions, providing readers with the opportunity to see how differentiated writing lessons work “in action.” To begin, we provide some background information in the following section about how the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in greater disparities in students’ academic achievement and writing skills. We will also provide a brief overview of the research that informs our recommendations for practice.

Part 2: Context and Connecting to the Literacture Writing Demands in Secondary Classrooms Over the past decade, writing demands on students have increased greatly, as students are expected to understand, analyze, and write about texts with increasing levels of complexity (CCSSO, 2010; Olson et al., 2020). As students move from middle school to high school, writing demands increase even further (Datchuk & Kubina, 2013). To meet grade-level standards, students must be able to write structured, organized, and thoughtful essays in a variety of forms, such as expository, persuasive, and literary analysis essays (VDOE, 2010a). Moreover, students’ writing skills are necessary not only for their success in English/language arts (ELA) classes, but also in other content areas such as social studies and science (Graham et al., 2016; National Council for the Social Studies, 2010). Additionally, as many state and national standardized assessments move towards performance-based or portfolio models of assessment in ELA (which depend on writing and analysis skills) and other content areas, the need for students to develop strong writing competencies becomes even more imperative for academic success.

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Responding to Readiness However, disparities in students’ writing skills are known to vary across and within grade levels (Graham et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2018). To address these disparities, teachers should use targeted writing instruction and interventions that increase students’ writing quality, writing productivity, and writing fluency (Kim et al., 2021). Specifically, the Institute for Education Sciences recommends providing explicit instruction on varied writing strategies and using assessments to inform instruction and feedback to bolster students’ writing skills (Graham et al., 2016). However, providing this targeted instruction can be difficult when students in a classroom demonstrate a wide variety of readiness levels for engaging in the writing process. Teachers are expected to ensure that all students can meet the increasingly rigorous state-level standards for writing, yet are challenged by the fact that not all students have the same “starting point” when it comes to writing – a situation that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learning Opportunity Gaps Gaps in opportunities to learn (which may contribute to gaps in scholastic achievement) have been well documented for decades (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2015) and are estimated to have increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (NCES, 2023). Specifically, students who attended high-poverty schools, were from historically marginalized populations, or received instruction predominantly through virtual platforms tended to show evidence of greater learning loss (Goldhaber et al., 2022; Government Accountability Office, 2022; Kuhfeld et al., 2022).

Consequently, opportunity and achievement gaps have widened, and are manifesting in classrooms as substantial variations in students’ readiness levels for engaging with course content. What this means for ELA teachers specifically is that many of their students might come to class with a range of writing competencies that influence their abilities to undertake grade-level writing tasks. However, because cultivating an equitable classroom involves providing all students with opportunities for academic growth, teachers must explore what is known about best practices for supporting writing, then apply

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Responding to Readiness what they learn to create a responsive classroom that meets all students’ needs.

Readiness Levels and Zones of Proximal Development All children deserve opportunities to learn and be challenged to improve upon their writing skills. However, in a classroom of learners with varied strengths and needs, a one-size-fits-all approach to instruction will not allow teachers to achieve this goal. Instead, teachers need to intentionally plan for responsive instruction that is appropriate for all students’ readiness levels, and therefore, within students’ zones of proximal development (ZPD) (see Figure 1). According to the educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky, a task that is within a person’s “zone of proximal development” is one that is challenging enough to engage the learner, but not so difficult that the learner will give up (1978). Therefore, to provide writing instruction that targets varied zones of proximal development, teachers must first take stock of

Therefore, to provide writing instruction that targets varied zones of proximal development, teachers must first take stock of students’ existing readiness levels.

students’ existing readiness levels. With knowledge of where each student stands in relation to grade-level standards and learning goals, teachers can design instruction that encourages all students to work within their ZPD before challenging them to move forward to more complex tasks. The first step in this process involves using the backward design model to determine the end goals for the instructional unit.

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Responding to Readiness Figure 1: Zones of Proximal Development

Zone of Proximal Development

Backward Design: Learning Goals, Assessments, and Instruction Teachers can apply the process of backward design to ensure that their writing unit is coherent and aligned to desired standards and learning goals (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). To engage in backward design, teachers should complete the following steps (described here with a specific emphasis on writing tasks): Step 1: Begin by reviewing the VSOLs to determine grade-level expectations for students’ writing performances.

Step 2: With those standards in mind, write more precise learning goals that reflect what students should know, understand, and be able to do at the conclusion of the instructional unit. We recommend identifying what students should Know, Understand, and be able to Do (KUD format) as described by Tomlinson and McTighe (2006).

Step 3: After the learning goals are established, design a summative, end-of-unit writing assessment that aligns to the unit learning goals (McTighe & Ferrara, 2021).

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Responding to Readiness Step 4: Create an instructional plan that will support student success on the summative writing assessment, including guided practice with the understandings and skills emphasized on this final assessment.

Step 5: Integrate formative assessments continually throughout instruction to ensure that students are progressing toward the learning goals, and therefore, are prepared to succeed on the summative assessment. Analyze formative assessment data after each lesson to gauge student understanding and plan for reteaching particular skills and concepts.

Although using backward design helps to ensure coherence within a unit, following the process described above does not account for the fact that all learners do not have the same starting point. As noted previously, students arrive in our classrooms with varied readiness levels for writing tasks, and these variations may have been magnified during the pandemic. Therefore, teachers need to utilize a pre-assessment (and/or other sources of student data) to get a sense for what students’ individual readiness levels are for engaging with the many skills involved in writing tasks.

Pre-Assessment Pre-assessments are classroom-based assessments that are intended to determine where students stand in relation to learning goals for a unit.

Generally, pre-assessments should be administered several days before a unit begins so that the teacher has time to evaluate students’ work and use the information gathered from the pre-assessment to plan for future instruction (McMillan, 2018). (Note that pre-assessments as we describe them here are not intended to be used for pre-test/post-test comparisons.

Rather, they are meant to be used to determine students’ readiness levels so that a responsive unit of instruction can be planned that targets all students’ ZPDs).

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Responding to Readiness It’s important to remember that pre-assessments are not meant to be evaluated for a grade. Grades should reflect the degree to which students have mastered unit learning goals, and given that pre-assessments occur

Communicating this information to students (as well as their guardians or other relevant stakeholders) will help them see that you value their learning and are not trying to assign punitive grades to their work through use of the pre-assessment. before any instruction takes place, it would not be appropriate to assess and score them for correctness (Tomlinson & Moon, 2012). However, teachers rightly are concerned with making sure that students complete the preassessments – and try their best – so that the results are accurate representations of what students know, understand, and can do. Therefore, we recommend prefacing a pre-assessment with helpful information for students. Doing this involves explaining to students that you are gathering the data because you want to support their learning. Students don’t want to be bored while learning things that they already know, and they don’t want to feel defeated if they are asked to attempt a task that is too complicated (which is why ZPD is so important). Use this information to explain to students that the pre-assessment helps you design tasks that are just right for them! Teachers should also explain that pre-assessments aren’t graded, because you don’t yet expect students to show mastery. Communicating this information to students (as well as their guardians or other relevant stakeholders) will help them see that you value their learning and are not trying to assign punitive grades to their work through use of the preassessment.

Additionally, when designing a pre-assessment to diagnose students’ current writing abilities, teachers should unpack what knowledge, understandings, and skills students need to have in order to produce highquality writing and succeed on the summative task. Many ELA teachers and researchers conceptualize the writing process to include the following steps:

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Responding to Readiness pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing. Within these steps are myriad other skills, such as stating a main idea, selecting supporting details, elaborating upon ideas, selecting appropriate vocabulary, and organizing thoughts (Daniels et al., 2007). Therefore, an ELA pre-assessment should focus on these skills so that teachers can better understand students’ strengths and needs relative to writing tasks within each unit. However, as most teachers know, providing instruction on all of these complex writing skills simultaneously can be difficult. Therefore, we recommend designing a unit that focuses on 1-3 of these skills at a time. In doing so, you can help students to incrementally build their writing abilities while ensuring that you don’t overwhelm them with too many high-level demands.

As an example, you might plan for two back-to-back writing units. In unit one, perhaps you decide to focus on brainstorming, generating main ideas, and locating supporting details. Your summative assessment, then, would evaluate students’ writing based on their abilities to write with clear main ideas and support those ideas with details (which are skills represented in the VSOLs). Your pre-assessment should provide you with information in relation to these same skills, and your instruction would center on targeting those skills as well. Then, for a second follow-up unit, you may choose to focus on vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. Your summative assessment, preassessment, and instruction would all center on vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics, as well. However, in this second unit, you would still expect students to produce coherent main ideas and supporting details in their writing, building on knowledge and skills from the prior unit. In this way, you help students to build writing skills incrementally in meaningful yet manageable chunks.

Your pre-assessment should provide you with information in relation to these same skills, and your instruction would center on targeting those skills as well.

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Responding to Readiness Data-Informed Decision Making (DIDM) Using Pre-Assessment Data Teachers sometimes find data use to be an intimidating or unfamiliar process, unsure of what even “counts” as data. In educational settings, data are broadly defined as any information that can be used to help teachers understand or make informed decisions about their students’ learning. This can include quantitative data (e.g., a score on a benchmark test, a numerical grade on a project, the number of days a student has been absent during the year) and qualitative data (e.g., notes about students’ participation patterns, students’ self-reported out-of-school interests) (Data Quality Campaign, 2023).

In this article, we focus specifically on pre-assessment data, which can provide insights into students’ writing readiness levels relative to the identified learning goals. However, teachers are sometimes unsure of how they should analyze data to better understand what their students know and can do. To engage in data-informed decision making – a research-based approach for providing targeted, responsive instruction (Carlson et al., 2011; van Geel et al., 2016) – teachers should: (a) ask questions to frame data collection, (b) design or choose from assessments that will gather the data to answer their questions, (c) implement the assessment, (d) collect and organize the data, (e) analyze the data for whole-class trends, (f) look at the data for individual students as needed, (g) make instructional decisions based on the data, and (h) monitor students’ progress by gathering ongoing data throughout instruction. Although this might seem like a complex process, later in this article, we provide a step-by-step model to help you analyze pre-assessment data to enhance your students’ writing abilities.

Differentiating Instruction Based on Readiness Levels Differentiation is a framework that can be used to increase student engagement and success by designing classroom environments, content, instruction, and assessments that are responsive to students’ interests and needs (Tomlinson, 2014). Although there are many ways to differentiate, in this article we focus on differentiating writing instruction based on students’

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Responding to Readiness readiness levels (as determined by pre-assessment data). There are numerous strategies that teachers can employ when differentiating in this way (e.g., by varying the abstractness or concreteness of the task, by asking students to work more independently or with greater teacher support, etc.)

In this article, we provide information about one of the strategies that works particularly well for writing: tiered instruction. With tiered instruction, students are generally clustered into 2-3 different readiness-level groups based on shared needs. Each group receives different tiers of support levels for engaging with the writing task, yet all students are working toward the same learning goals. For example, the group that is already meeting the learning goals (as determined by the pre-assessment data) and needs additional challenge will receive very few supports, and may be asked to engage with writing prompts of greater depth and complexity. The group that is nearly meeting the learning goals, but needs additional support, would receive resources with a few scaffolds that help them to build skills that work towards the learning goals. The group that is far from meeting the learning goals would receive resources with even greater levels of scaffolding, and may need more intensive direct instruction from the teacher (perhaps using the I do-We do-You do approach, also known as “gradual release of responsibility”). In Part 3 below, we describe the steps that allow Mr. Davis, our case-study teacher, to design this type of tiered instruction. We also provide examples of what his plan looks like in action.

Part 3: Designing and Implementing a Differentiated Writing Unit Overview Now that we have explored some research about best practices for planning an effective, differentiated writing unit, we return to our case study of Mr. Davis. In the subsequent sections, we will describe Mr. Davis’s efforts to determine a focus for the writing unit based on the VSOL standards, design an aligned pre-assessment, analyze the pre-assessment data, form flexible

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Responding to Readiness groups, and create differentiated instruction that meets students’ needs within their ZPDs. Our description of Mr. Davis’s work will be followed by a snapshot of the sequential steps you can follow as you plan and enact your writing unit, as well as some examples of resources that you could use in your classroom.

Step 1: Identify VSOL Standards and Corresponding Criteria from the Grade 8 Writing Instruction Checklist Mr. Davis and his PLC collectively decide that they will design an expository writing unit that uses VSOL standard 8.7 to guide their work. According to standard 8.7, expository writing is used “to explain and build a body of wellorganized and understandable information.” However, writing an expository piece is not a simple process. As the standards suggest, there are multiple skill sets and understandings that students must possess in order to produce an effective expository essay. Recognizing that focusing on all of the elements of expository writing at the same time would likely be overwhelming for students, Mr. Davis and the PLC agree to focus the unit on what the VSOLs call “structuring and elaborating,” which involves “using descriptive details and examples with a sentence to give detail and depth to an idea” (VDOE, 2010a). In other words, they will focus on helping students generate main ideas, then support or elaborate upon those ideas with details and evidence.

Writing an expository piece is not a simple process.

To determine how they will evaluate students on these aspects of standard 8.7, the PLC then looks to the Grade 8 Writing Instruction Checklist (VDOE, 2022) that the VDOE has aligned to the VSOLs. They identify one row of the checklist called “Evidence and Details” that captures the skills they are looking for students to demonstrate in the unit. According to the checklist, a successful piece of expository writing for 8th-grade students should be/have:

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Responding to Readiness Fully elaborated and containing precise, relevant examples, illustrations, reasons, events, and/or details which support purpose and audience Details clarify the writer’s purpose and clearly elaborate ideas

Step 2: Create Classroom-Level Goals and “Look Fors” Mr. Davis’s next step is to create a set of classroom-level goals and “lookfors” that are aligned to standard 8.7 and to the Writing Instruction Checklist criteria described above. He and his PLC establish the following learning goals, then create an accompanying checklist (see Figure 2) that they can use when evaluating students’ writing: (1) write with a clear main idea, (2) use topic sentences to capture the main idea of each paragraph, (3) use details, examples, evidence, and/or direct quotations to support main ideas, (4) elaborate upon main ideas through the analysis of details, examples, evidence, and/or direct quotations. In Table 1, you can see how Mr. Davis and his PLC are conceptualizing the alignment between the Grade 8 Writing Checklist, the VSOL standards, and the learning goals/KUDs captured in this look-fors list.

Figure 2: Classroom-Level Goals and “Look Fors” Student states a clear main idea.

Student communicates the central idea of each paragraph in the topic sentence.

Student uses details, examples, evidence, and/or direct quotations to support main ideas.

Student elaborates upon main ideas by analyzing details, examples, evidence, and/or direct quotations.

Student provides a relevant conclusion sentence to connect to the main idea.

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Responding to Readiness Table 1: Aligning the Grade 8 Writing Checklist, VSOL Standards and Learning Goals/KUD

Grade 8 Writing Checklist (VDOE, 2022)

Central Idea Clear, consistent focus on central idea Organization and Unity Uses transitions to connect ideas within and across paragraphs Evidence and Details Fully elaborated containing precise, relevant examples, illustrations, reasons, events, and/or details which support purpose and audience; Details clarify the writer’s purpose and clearly elaborate ideas

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8th Grade VSOL (VDOE, 2017)

8.7: The student will write in a variety of forms to include narrative, expository, persuasive, and reflective with an emphasis on expository and persuasive writing. c) Use prewriting strategies to generate and organize ideas. d) Organize writing structure to fit form or topic. e) Establish a central idea incorporating evidence, maintaining an organized structure and formal style. g) Clearly state and defend a position with reasons and evidence, from credible sources. j) Organize information to provide elaboration and unity.

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KUDs

Know main idea how to find, cite, and analyze relevant evidence how to use IDEA to structure a body paragraph Understand Writers make choices about how to organize their writing, including paragraphs in an essay, to clearly communicate and develop their ideas.

Writers plan how to organize and structure their paragraphs.

Writers must choose the most relevant evidence and examples to develop their ideas persuasively.

The purpose of a body paragraph is to develop your ideas.

Do: State the main idea for a body paragraph.

Explain the main idea with meaningful details.

Cite relevant evidence or examples to support the main idea of a body paragraph.

Analyze evidence and examples then connect them to the main idea of the body paragraph.

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Responding to Readiness Step 3: Create and Administer the Pre-Assessment Mr. Davis and his PLC members decide that they need to design a preassessment that gathers data about students’ skills for each of the criteria in the look-fors checklist. They generate the following prompt and set of directions (see Figure 3). Notice how the directions clearly connect to the criteria in the look-fors checklist.

Before administering the pre-assessment, Mr. Davis clearly communicates to his students that the pre-assessment will not be graded. However, he explains why it is important for students to try their best so that he can tailor instruction to best meet their needs during the writing unit.

Figure 3: Pre-Assessment Writing Prompt Pre-Assessment Writing Prompt Directions: Imagine you are writing a body paragraph in response to the essay prompt below. Write an organized and well-developed body paragraph. Your paragraph should: Include a main idea in the topic sentence Include details (e.g., examples, evidence, and/or direct quotations) to develop the main idea Elaborate upon and analyze the details in order to develop the main idea Contain a conclusion sentence that connects to the main idea Be approximately 6-8 sentences Prompt: Do you think that more companies should use robots in the workplace? How might this be helpful to humans? How might more robots in the workforce affect jobs for humans?

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Responding to Readiness After administering the pre-assessment, the PLC gathers to evaluate the students’ work. To do this, they keep the learning goals and look-fors checklist in mind, then engage in the three first stages of the data-informed decision making (DIDM) process (see Table 2).

Table 2: Stages of the DIDM Process for Analyzing Pre-Assessment Data Action

Guiding Questions/Evaluation Criteria

Stage 1 With the learning goals in mind, ask yourself what you’re looking for in the students’ work.

Stage 2 Review all students’ responses, making note of any major trends.

Stage 3 Identify three anchor responses.

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What indicators would suggest that students have met the learning goals?

What indicators would suggest that students are close to meeting the learning goal, but need some additional support?

What indicators would suggest that students are far from meeting the learning goal and require extensive additional support?

Do I notice any patterns?

Are there things that all students appear to “get” or be skilled at relative to the learning goals?

Are there things that students uniformly are missing?

Are there any other emerging trends, or do the preassessment data show a bit of a “mixed bag?”

One of these responses should show student work at a high readiness level (perhaps a student who has already met or appears to be exceeding the learning goals).

Another response should show student work that is close to meeting the learning goals, but would benefit from some additional support.

A third response should show student work that is not yet near meeting the learning goals and may require extensive support.

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Responding to Readiness As an example of what analyzing the pre-assessment data might entail, we have provided you with three pieces of pre-assessment data from fictional students (see Table 3). These data samples include responses to the above pre-assessment prompt that reflect three different readiness levels that students might demonstrate: highest readiness level (meeting or exceeding learning goals, requiring additional challenge), medium readiness level (close to meeting the learning goals, but requiring a few supports), and lowest readiness level (farthest from meeting the learning goals, requiring extensive supports). Determinations about these readiness levels should be based on teachers’ understandings of the learning goals and the look-fors checklist.

Table 3: Sample Student Pre-Assessment Data Sorted into Readiness Levels

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Highest Readiness Level

Medium Readiness Level

Lowest Readiness Level

Sample Student Data: Involving robots in the workplace is a good solution to help businesses fill jobs that are dangerous or undesirable for humans.

While some people think that robots would take jobs away from humans, research has shown that robots can work at jobs that humans do not want, because they are dangerous for humans, such as working on an assembly line. Robots can also do jobs that humans find boring or repetitive, such as hotel check-in on a night shift.

Several businesses, like hotels and cereal factories, have successfully used robots in ways that did not reduce jobs that humans want. Throughout history, many human jobs have been replaced by technology or robots. This is still happening now and will likely continue into the future. This can benefit society as long as we are able to ensure that people can switch to other jobs.

Sample Student Data: Some people think robots in the workplace will take jobs from humans. But there are jobs that humans don’t really like to do. Those jobs are boring and working in a factory or making a lot of phone calls can be replaced by robots. Do you think humans really want to do boring jobs that robots can do instead? Some people think robots will cost less, while other people think they cost more.

Sample Student Data: Robots can be useful in the workplace and fun to play with too. There are lots of jobs that robots can do, like even deliver your food to your house, like fast food or groceries. You can get a robot pet, like a cat or dog, or you can use a reality headset that is like being a robot.

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Responding to Readiness What teachers might note about this student’s response: A student at the highest readiness level has mastered the skills for writing an organized body paragraph with a clear purpose and main idea. This student clearly states the main idea, includes more detail about the main idea in the second sentence, and cites relevant evidence or examples. The paragraph is organized well and ideas are stated clearly. This student met all of the criteria on the look-fors checklist.

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What teachers might note about this student’s response: There is likely more than one way for students to fall into the medium readiness level category. It is most likely that students will be able to state a main idea in the topic sentence. However, students might fall into the medium readiness level if their writing strays from the topic of the main idea. They might also provide evidence that is not connected to the main idea or may not write a conclusion sentence at the end of the paragraph. Teachers should use the look-fors checklist to determine which skills a student at this level will need more support with.

Designing a mini-lesson about how to find and cite relevant evidence or examples will most likely be helpful for students who need to further support their body paragraph main idea with greater specificity or details.

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What teachers might note about this student’s response: The main idea is not stated clearly and does not become more specific or defined in the second sentence.

Examples or evidence are not very relevant to the writing prompt or topic. Students at this level might not analyze the example or connect it to the main idea at the end of the paragraph.

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Responding to Readiness Step 5: Create Flexible Groupings Based on Readiness Levels Once Mr. Davis has analyzed the data and found his anchor responses, he needs to then sort students into readiness-based groups using the anchors and the look-fors checklist to guide his work. Given the high variability of writing skills that Mr. Davis observed in the pre-assessment data, he recognizes that using readiness-based groups is warranted. Mr. Davis knows that it is good practice to sort students based on readiness levels when having students work within their ZPDs in order to ensure that all learners experience academic growth (Doubet, 2022); he wants all of his students to get the equitable, responsive instruction that they need. However, he does not want his students to feel as though there is a hierarchy in the groupings.

Therefore, rather than calling his groups something like “Groups 1, 2, and 3” or “the high group, medium group, and low group,” he assigns each group a color name. The group of students who are meeting the learning goals and need additional challenge is the Blue Group, the group of students who are nearly meeting the learning goals but need some additional support is the Orange Group, and the students who are far from meeting the learning goals and need more intensive support are part of the Green Group.

Step 6: Design Tiered and Differentiated Instruction for Each Group’s Readiness Levels After grouping his students, Mr. Davis considers how he might use tiering to differentiate his instruction for each readiness-based group. To tier the instruction, Mr. Davis considers the learning goals for the unit, which center on developing main ideas by analyzing and elaborating upon supporting details and evidence. After a whole-class mini-lesson on this topic (which involves connecting to students’ prior learning and doing some modeling), Mr. Davis decides that students will break out into their groups and use tiered resources to provide the appropriate levels of support. He begins by considering how he can increase or decrease the complexity, structure, or rigor of the task depending on the needs of the learners in each group. He designs the following plans for each group (see Table 4).

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Responding to Readiness Table 4: Instruction for Readiness-Based Groups Blue Group (students who are meeting the learning goals and need additional challenge) To push these students to improve upon their existing writing strengths in this domain, Mr. Davis designs more complex, open-ended writing prompts for students to work on independently and creates a within-group peer review process for these students. He also opts not to provide these students with templates or scaffolds to support writing structures, which will challenge them to integrate evidence and details using their own approaches to organizational structure.

Orange Group (students who are close to meeting the learning goals but need additional support)

In the Orange Group, Mr. Davis assigns students who are close to being able to meet grade-level proficiency in the domain but who would benefit from more guided practice using structured templates.

Although these students will be working towards producing the same end product as the Blue Group, students in the Orange Group will be given organizational templates with sentence starters that prompt them to include evidence and details into their writing more systematically. By providing these scaffolds, Mr. Davis believes students will strengthen their skills in this writing domain. He plans to eventually remove the scaffolds once the process of building evidence and details into their writing becomes more automatic for students.

Green Group (students who are not yet near the learning goals and require intensive supports)

The students assigned to the Green Group are students who need the highest levels of support to reach proficiency. As with the Orange Group, Mr. Davis also provides students in the Green Group with organizational templates that prompt students to include evidence and details in their writing.

However, these templates will also include some sentence starters and guiding questions that make the task more clearly defined. Additionally, Mr. Davis plans to engage in some direct instruction with this group using the I do-We do-You do model (also known as the gradual release of responsibility model).

This involves walking students through the process of integrating evidence and details into their writing in a more structured and supported way. Eventually, Mr. Davis hopes to remove these intensive scaffolds as students develop their skills in this writing domain.

Designing tiered instruction in the way that Mr. Davis has done can be replicated in any classroom for any type of writing task. For more information, see “Tiered Writing Instruction Examples” section below.

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Responding to Readiness Step 7: Formative Assessment Once students have completed their work in groups, Mr. Davis collects and evaluates the written responses that students have produced. In this way, he is using the essays that students wrote during the writing activity as a formative assessment. In his evaluation of student work, Mr. Davis again returns to the look-fors checklist to determine whether or not students are making progress. He intends to use what he learns from an analysis of the formative assessment data (i.e., the data from the written essays) to continue grouping students flexibly based on their readiness levels.

When reviewing the essays, Mr. Davis is pleased to see that students in the Blue Group have risen to the challenges that he provided, so he designs a follow-up writing activity for the students where he will once again increase the level of writing rigor. He plans to have these students write multiple paragraphs in response to prompts of their choice.

He is also happy to see that students in the Orange Group have done well with their writing. However, when working with the Orange Group, Mr. Davis noticed that three of his students really did not need to use the supports very much. He believes that these students would benefit from some of the additional challenges that the Blue Group is receiving, so he moves those students to the Blue Group for the next in-class writing activity. He plans to monitor their work and offer any additional assistance as needed. Mr. Davis also noticed that two of his students seemed to struggle in their work in the Orange Group. Suspecting that these students would benefit from more intensive scaffolding, Mr. Davis moves these students to the Green Group.

When evaluating the Green Group’s work, Mr. Davis observes that his students have made a lot of progress. Three of the students specifically seemed a bit underchallenged by the task, so Mr. Davis moves them into the Orange Group, where they will receive fewer supports. Mr. Davis intends to continue formatively assessing all of the students in this ongoing way (regrouping as necessary) until he is confident that the students are prepared to demonstrate proficiency on the summative writing assessment. As

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Responding to Readiness students continue to meet the learning goals, he will give them writing tasks of greater complexity in order to ensure that they, too, experience academic growth. For additional ideas for how you can similarly implement a differentiated writing unit in your own classroom, see the appendices at the conclusion of the article.

Conclusion Through the examples provided in this article, we hope to have demonstrated how tiered, differentiated writing instruction can help teachers support and challenge all writers in their classroom, even with a wide variety of readiness levels. Mr. Davis engaged in the full assessment and instructional cycle with his students. Doing so enabled him to pre-assess his students’ skills and to get to know his students better as emerging writers. By analyzing preassessment data, Mr. Davis closely examined students’ writing in relation to a variety of skills. Specific and meaningful learning goals were aligned to his pre-assessment, mini-lesson, and writing prompts. This alignment helped Mr. Davis ensure that all students were working toward the same high-level learning goals, even as he provided writing prompts or scaffolds for varied readiness levels. Overall, creating tiered prompts and varied forms of scaffolding allowed Mr. Davis to improve his writing instruction in manageable ways that meet the needs of all learners in their ZPDs. Through tiered writing instruction, teachers like Mr. Davis can challenge Marco’s advanced writing skills, encourage Rishi by using sentence starters to express his ideas, and help Emma organize her thinking into a welldeveloped, structured paragraph.

ACCESS PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF RESPONDING TO READINESS IN THE APPENDICES HERE

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Responding to Readiness References Carlson, D., Borman, G., & Robinson, M. (2011). A multistate district-level cluster randomized trial of the impact of data-driven reform on reading and mathematics achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33, 378–398. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0162373711412765 Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. https://learning.ccsso.org/wpcontent/uploads/2022/11/ELA_Standards1.pdf Daniels, H., Zemelman, S., & Steineke, N. (2007). Content-area writing: Every teacher’s guide. Heinemann. Data Quality Campaign. (2013). What is education data? https://dataqualitycampaign.org/education-data101/what-is-education-data/ Datchuk, S. M., & Kubina, R. M. (2013). A review of teaching sentence level writing skills to students with writing difficulties and learning disabilities.

Remedial and Special Education, 34, 180–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193251244825 Demirel, M. V., Aydin, I. S. (2019). Examining high school students’ writing self-efficacy perceptions. International Journal of Education and Literacy, 7(4), 106-114. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiacijels.v.7n.4p.106 Doubet, K. (2022). The flexibly grouped classroom: How to organize learning for equity and growth. ASCD. Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., & Viruleg, E. (2020). COVID-19 and learning loss – disparities grow and students need help. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-socialsector/our-insights/covid-19-and-learning-loss-disparities-grow-andstudents-need-help Edyburn, D. (2021, April 2). Are writing skills being left behind during the pandemic? https://www.eschoolnews.com/classroominnovations/2021/04/02/are-writing-skills-being-left-behind-duringthe-pandemic/

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Responding to Readiness Goldhaber, D. , Kane, T., McEachin, A., Morton E., Patterson, T., Staiger, D., (2022) The consequences of remote and hybrid instruction during the pandemic. Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University.

Government Accountability Office. (2022). Pandemic learning: Teachers reported many obstacles for high-poverty students and English learners as well as some mitigating strategies (Publication No. 22-105815). United States Government Accountability Office. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105815 Graham, S., Bruch, J., Fitzgerald, J., Friedrich, L., Furgeson, J., Greene, K., Kim, J., Lyskawa, J., Olson, C. B., & Smither Wulsin, C. (2016). Teaching secondary students to write effectively (NCEE 2017-4002). National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/508_ WWCPG_SecondaryWriting_122719.pdf#page=13 Irwin, V., De La Rosa, J., Wang, K., Hein, S., Zhang, J., Burr, R., Roberts, A., Barmer, A., Bullock Mann, F., Dilig, R., and Parker, S. (2022). Report on the Condition of Education 2022 (NCES 2022-144). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2022144.

Kim. Y. G., Yang, D., Reyes, M., & Connor, C. (2021). Writing instruction improves students’ writing skills differentially depending on focal instruction and children: A meta-analysis for primary grade students.

Educational Research Review, 34, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100408 Kuhfeld, M., Soland, J., & Lewis, K. (2022). Test score patterns across three COVID-19-impaced school years (Publication No. 22-521). Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/ga82-6v47 McMillan, J. H. (2018). Classroom assessment: Principles and practice that enhance student learning and motivation (7th ed.). Pearson.

McTighe, J. & Ferrara, S. (2021). Assessing for student learning by design: Principles and practices for teachers and school leaders. Teachers College Press.

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Responding to Readiness National Center for Education Statistics. (2015). School composition and the Black–White achievement gap (Publication No. 2015018). United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/studies/pdf/ school_composition_and_the_bw_achievement_gap_2015.pdf National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). NAEP long-term trend assessment results: Reading and mathematics. United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ National Council for the Social Studies. (2010). National curriculum standards for social studies: A framework for teaching, learning, and assessment. NCSS. Nickow, A. J., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The impressive effects of tutoring on preK-12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence (Publication No. 20-267). Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/eh0c-pc52 Olson, C. B., Woodworth, K., Arshan, N., Black, R., Chung, H. Q., D'Aoust, C., Dewar, T., Friedrich, L., Godfrey, L., Land, R., Matuchniak, T., Scarcella, R., & Stowell, L. (2020). The pathway to academic success: Scaling up a text-based analytical writing intervention for Latinos and English learners in secondary school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(4), 701–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000387 Pew Research Center (2020). Most parents of K-12 students learning online worry about them falling behind. https://www.pewresearch.org/socialtrends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/10/PSDT_10.29.20_ kids.edu_.full_.pdf Robinson, C. D., Kraft, M. A., Loeb, S., & Schueler, B. E. (2021). Accelerating student learning with high-dosage tutoring. Ed Research for Recovery.

Tomlinson, C. A., (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners (2nd ed). ASCD. Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). How to differentiate in mixed-ability classrooms (2nd ed.). ASCD. Tomlinson, C. A., & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating differentiated instruction and understanding by design: Connecting content and kids. ASCD.

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Responding to Readiness Tomlinson, C. A., & Moon, T. R. (2012). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom. ASCD. van Geel., M., Keuning, T., Visscher, A. J., & Fox, J. P. (2016). Assessing the effects of a school-side data-based decision-making intervention on student achievement growth in primary schools. American Educational Research Journal, 53(2), 360-394. https://doi.org/10.3102/000283121663734 Virginia Department of Education. (2010a). English standards of learning: Curriculum framework 2010 grade 6 – grade 8. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home /showpublisheddocument/34956/638054101750970000 Virginia Department of Education. (2010b). English standards of learning: Curriculum framework 2010 grade 9 – grade 12. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/ 34956/638054101750970000 Virginia Department of Education. (2022). English SOL online writing resources. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching-learningassessment/k-12-standards-instruction/english-readingliteracy/assessment-resources/english-sol-writing-resources Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Wang, E., Matsumura, L. C., & Correnti, R. (2018). Student writing accepted as high-quality responses to analytic text-based writing tasks. Elementary School Journal, 188(3), 357-383. https://doi.org/10.1086/696097 Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.) ASCD.

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Feedback Matters Anne Jewett, Ed.D. Anne began her career teaching 3rd grade in Culpeper County. She has experience as a teacher, school administrator, curriculum specialist, and community college instructor across pre-K through graduate-level contexts. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia where she teaches and directs the fully online M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction program. Her areas of interest include instructional leadership and supporting in-service practitioners with creating and delivering high-quality instruction.

Abstract Feedback is an essential tool to support student growth towards identified learning goals. This article explores the importance of feedback as well as the different types of feedback that can be practically implemented across all classrooms. In addition, a four-step approach to planning for and providing feedback is shared.

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Feedback Matters I don’t get any feedback. I’m not sure how I’m doing. I’d like more feedback.

Am I doing this right? Do I understand this? These are sentiments that are often spoken or unspoken within learning environments by both students and teachers. These wonderings can foster feelings of frustration, uncertainty, and apathy toward learning. Providing feedback can help students better understand the learning goal, evaluate the gap between current performance and the learning goal, and determine actionable steps for working towards attaining the learning goal.

However, giving good feedback can be challenging. There are different definitions and types of feedback, as well as different expectations for how it should be used. Feedback can be challenging for students to hear and can be challenging for teachers to give. It can also be challenging to respond to, yet students and teachers continue to know that feedback matters.

Why is feedback so important?

Think about a time you got an assignment back. Did you immediately look for a grade? The answer may be “Yes!” Then, what did you look at? Did you look at the handwritten or typed notes given by the teacher? Did you look back at the grade or the notes from the teacher more? Which one did you learn more from? Most often, we may remember feedback through notes as the most valuable. We may even remember what a teacher wrote more than the actual grade percentage we earned.

Many students have varied personal experiences with feedback, which has been a focal point in educational research. Student motivation is the highest when they are competent, independent, and goal-oriented, and when they receive both feedback and affirmation from their teachers (Dӧrnyei, 2001).

For example, when feedback is interwoven with instruction in the writing process, Gersten and Baker (2001) found that a common language is created between teachers and students. This common language provides a meaningful way to discuss students’ progress, which results in enhanced products by giving students the opportunity to adjust their performances.

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Feedback Matters Feedback must be effective to support learning. According to Wiggins (2012), effective feedback is: Goal-oriented: It is essential for feedback to be related to a clear goal.

Actionable: Feedback will provide the next steps to master the goal.

Understandable by the student: Tangible and clear feedback is more likely to be used by the student.

Timely: It does not have to be immediate, yet it does need to be timely so that it is responsive to the student’s current level of performance.

User-Friendly: The feedback is not overwhelming. It is manageable and doable. Most often, it focuses on 1-2 processes to improve.

What is feedback?

As teachers, we often have different definitions of feedback within our practice. These definitions may come from our own schooling experiences, teacher preparation resources, and the structure of our school divisions along with other influences. Said differently, feedback is complex and variable (Wisniewski et al., 2020). To better understand what feedback is, it can be helpful to begin by unpacking the word “feedback” itself. For the scope of this article, the focus is on student feedback, which is a feed of information back to the student regarding their progress towards a learning goal.

Most teachers can identify with receiving feedback at some point as a student. Have you ever submitted an assignment and wondered if you were doing it right, then, realize you missed the intended mark? It may be helpful to know that there is guidance for giving feedback. Hattie and Timperely (2007) propose a three-question model to inform a teacher’s feedback practice. By answering these three questions, substantive feedback is provided for both the student and the teacher. The student receives explicit

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Feedback Matters feedback that can redirect their next steps on their learning journey, while the teacher continues to think of progress towards the learning goals, refining their instructional delivery, and how the feedback is received by the student.

3 Questions to Inform Feedback 1. Where am I going?

This question is important because it keeps the learning goals at the forefront of instruction and assessment. The feedback should align with the learning goals and indicate the student’s progress toward attaining them.

2. How am I going?

When giving feedback, this question encourages an understanding of the student’s progress most often in connection with an expectation, standard, previous performance, or outcome on a task.

3. Where to next?

This question encourages teachers to ensure that the feedback is actionable and anchored to the learning goal.

The feedback helps the students know the next steps to take. The importance of this feedback is that it supports the student in self-regulating their learning progress. Students may perceive not receiving feedback if it does not address where to go next (Brooks et al., 2019).

The use of these questions (see Appendix A) is valuable for providing ongoing, targeted, and specific feedback within a curricular unit. While feedback can be given after the summative assessment, it is more powerful for students’ learning to receive formative feedback that is given throughout the curricular unit (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

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Feedback Matters What are types of feedback?

A valuable aspect of feedback is that it does not all have to go directly from the teacher to the student. There is value in students experiencing various types of feedback. Self-assessment, student-to-student feedback, classroom discussion, and instruction as feedback are other types of feedback that can be more easily managed within the learning environment.

All types of feedback aim to shorten the gap between the student’s performance and the learning goal.

Teacher-to-student feedback is perhaps the most often used in classrooms. The feedback is coming from the teacher and being received by the student. It can include nonverbal communication of facial expressions, gestures, or body language, as well as guidance that is spoken, written, annotated, or provided through automated technology.

Implementation Tip: Place a copy of the learning goals nearby to help inform the feedback you provide to the student.

All types of feedback aim to shorten the gap between the student’s performance and the learning goal.

Self-assessment provides the opportunity for the student to assess their own performance and its relation to the learning goal. An important aspect of this approach is that students need a scaffold to support these efforts.

Practical ways to approach this may involve providing the student with a checklist, rubric, or graphic organizer aligned with the learning goal. Selfassessment allows students to have clarity before, during, and after the learning experience while self-regulating their progress toward the learning goal.

Implementation Tip: Model with the students how to use a checklist or rubric to self-assess before they need to use it independently.

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Feedback Matters Student-to-student feedback is one of the most effective types of feedback (Hattie, 2023). Students can provide feedback to each other on tasks such as products or performances. Like self-assessment, it is helpful to have a practical tool to provide clarity among the students about what they are aiming to achieve. A valuable feature of this type of feedback is that it allows students to review a peer’s approach to accomplishing the task that is aligned with the learning goals. Most often, and with encouragement, students will reflect on their efforts to improve their performance because of seeing peer examples.

Implementation Tip: Ask students to create three questions related to the learning goals that they would like the peer to specifically focus on when reviewing their work. This is in addition to general comments they may make. This can be adapted for different grade levels by providing suggested questions, pictorial cues, or a graphic organizer that structures the feedback process.

Classroom discussions provide another opportunity for feedback. Teachers and students can pick up on takeaways that may have been unspoken as a form of feedback. Also, teachers can hear different student understandings while engaging in a discussion using content language related to the learning goals (Alexander, 2020; Mercer et al., 2019). There are various approaches to creating these discussions, such as collaborative reasoning, questioning the author, and book clubs (Anderson et al., 1998; Beck et al., 2020; Raphael & McMahon, 1998).

Implementation Tip: Listen to what students are saying and quickly write down notes. Most likely, the notes will reveal insights into students’ thinking and understanding. These observations can inform your next steps for instruction.

Instruction as feedback occurs when proactively planned instruction is delivered based on students’ needs which is meeting them where they are in relation to the learning goals. It is responsive yet forward-looking. Instruction as feedback provides opportunities to ensure the student understands and

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Feedback Matters focuses on processes to master the objective.

Implementation Tip: Set a timer for 15 minutes. List ways that you know your students’ needs as a whole class. Then, use your class roster to begin thinking about individual student needs. It will be helpful to use various data sources to inform these efforts. After thinking about the needs of your students, consider how you can plan instruction as feedback to support their progress toward the learning goals.

How do I plan for feedback?

Much like any well-thought-out learning experience, it is also important to proactively plan for feedback. If planning does not occur, it is less likely that it will happen as fully intended (or even happen at all). Planning provides an opportunity to break the process of giving feedback into manageable and doable steps. It may be helpful to consider these wonderings: Do I give feedback in ways that don’t overwhelm both students and me? Are the ways that feedback is given in my classroom environment adding value to learning?

Planning for feedback can be interwoven into planning for instruction. The good news is that the following four ways to proactively plan for feedback can be completed one at a time, a few at a time, or all at once. They can all be tried over the next week or over the school year. The order can be selfselected, too.

Video: Planning for feedback

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Feedback Matters Create Routines Getting to lunch on time. Updating the link for the weekly class newsletter.

Picking up the shirts for the pep rally. Getting the counting cubes ready.

Teachers’ to-do lists are always being completed and recreated. The responsibilities of teaching can have various complexities and senses of urgency. As a result -- particularly during these chaotic times -- it might be easy for delivering feedback to slip through the cracks. Creating routines for feedback, and being fastidious with these routines, is a way to ensure your students are receiving adequate feedback.

Considerations for creating routines may be determining the time, place, and resources needed. There could be a short window of planning time devoted to this, or perhaps there are certain days of the week that it can be part of your schedule. Where do you need to be to provide feedback? Perhaps, you need a quiet place or maybe you prefer a place that is bustling with noise. Do you need resources to help you? Spreadsheets, sticky notes, curricular resources, your favorite pen, a template with students' names and learning goals, and a thoughtful colleague may be helpful resources. While doing this, it is important to create routines that support planning for the various feedback types that do not come directly from the teacher, such as selfassessment.

Know Your Options Like pulling up the menu for a new restaurant on your phone to know your options before meeting a friend, a related approach can be taken with feedback. There are a variety of ways to provide feedback. It is helpful to know these options to determine a good fit for both students and your instructional practice. The more information feedback contains, the more effective it is (Hattie & Clarke, 2019). Now is a great time to consider options that may be available:

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Feedback Matters Do I have any options that are readily available from curricular resources?

Curricular resources may provide aligned assessments, relevant instructional materials, or guidance for instructional next steps based on student performance. For example, interactive videos or virtual exit slips may be readily available.

Are there ways to use technology to enhance my feedback practices?

Annotating assignments with feedback can be a robust and efficient way to provide feedback. While comments can be embedded in assignments, many annotating features allow for highlighting, coding, and drawing too. Then, to enhance students’ feedback literacy, consider modeling for students how to use and apply the feedback.

Can whole-class feedback be valuable at some point?

Whole-class feedback provides opportunities to model the use of both receiving and using feedback. Most often, this batched feedback approach addresses common misconceptions or misunderstandings of the class. Student examples can be used to model expectations, next steps, and excellence.

Map It To understand how feedback is being used and to make feedback practices more visible to the students, map it. To begin, choose your favorite highlighter color and a lesson plan. Next, identify areas within your plan that are clearly noted as feedback opportunities. These typically are related to pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. Then, with a different color, highlight areas that could be feedback opportunities.

Now, take a moment to reflect using these wonderings: Are feedback opportunities among the curriculum, instruction, and assessments present?

If not, how can these be created?

If so, how can they be strengthened?

Are feedback opportunities distributed throughout the curricular unit and connected to the learning goal(s)?

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Feedback Matters As you create new plans, consider mapping where feedback occurs either through highlighting or creating your own coding system. To add a layer of insight to this practice, it can be powerful to ask students to identify feedback opportunities. This can provide a pathway to creating a learning environment culture that leans into the value of feedback.

Acknowledge Student Uptake While it is important to think of ways to make feedback happen, it is just important to consider how students receive feedback, process it, and then act on it. Have you ever received feedback and been unsure of what to do next with it? Students may feel the same way. If the aim is for students to use actionable feedback, then it is important to consider how students may be able to act on the feedback. The first step is to ensure that students can access the feedback that has been given. Can they read or watch it? Is it comprehensible? Do their technology devices work? Do they have the login and know how to navigate to review the feedback? Also, it can be important to practice active listening (Hattie, 2023) while also considering the students’ feedback literacy. So, it is important to teach students how to integrate feedback into their efforts as they aim to accomplish learning goals.

Conclusion The goal is for sense-making to occur through feedback. Interestingly, this can occur for both the teacher and students. Establishing a definition, using learning goals and a structure to guide the creation of feedback, and proactively planning for feedback within the instructional practice can be valuable ways to enhance student learning. While there are various aspects to consider, feedback matters.

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Feedback Matters Reflection Questions Spend a few minutes reflecting on these questions by bookmarking this page or grabbing a piece of paper to write your answers down.

How would you rate your planning for feedback?

Option A: It’s part of my planning.

Option B: I think about it, but it may not always happen.

Option C: I don’t plan for it yet.

How would you describe your feedback practices?

In what ways can you enhance your feedback practices?

What are some small steps that you can take to make them happen?

Take the Feedback Challenge Choose 1-2 of these to complete over the next week.

Highlight in your plans where feedback is occurring. Then, use a different color to highlight new opportunities for feedback.

Use a highlighter to color code different types of feedback occurring in your plans.

Create a new opportunity to give feedback. Try it and then think about how it went.

Take 5 minutes to reflect on your current feedback routines. Then, consider how you may want to create or strengthen a routine.

Ask your students what feedback means to them. Ask them to tell you when you typically do it.

Consider how you are making feedback visible for both students and families.

Try to have your feedback connect to where to next in terms of the learning goal(s).

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Feedback Matters References Alexander, R. (2020). A dialogic teaching companion. Routledge.

Anderson, R. C., Chinn, C., Waggoner, M., & Nguyen, K. (1998).

Intellectually stimulating story discussions. In J. Osborn & F. Lehr (Eds.), Literacy for all: Issues in teaching and learning (pp. 170-186). Guilford.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Sandora, C. A. (2020). Robust Comprehension Instruction with Questioning the Author. Guilford Publications.

Brooks, C., Carroll, A., Gillies, R. M., & Hattie, J. (2019). A matrix of feedback for learning. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 44(4), 14-32.

Dӧrnyei, Z. (2001). New Themes and Approaches in Second Language Motivation Research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 41-59.

Gersten, R., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching expressive writing to students with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis. The Elementary School Journal, 101(3), 251–272.

Hattie, J. A. C. (2023). Visible learning: The sequel: A synthesis of over 2,100 meta-analyses Relating to achievement. Taylor & Francis.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Clarke, S. (2019). Visible learning: Feedback. Routledge.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

Mercer, N., Hennessy, S., & Warwick, P. (2019). Dialogue, thinking together and digital technology in the classroom: Some educational implications of a continuing line of inquiry. International Journal of Educational Research, 97, 187-199.

Raphael, T. E., & McMahon, S. I. (1994). Book club: An alternative framework for reading instruction. The reading teacher, 48(2), 102-116.

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Feedback, 70(1), 1016.

Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 3087.

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Feedback Matters Appendix A A Matrix of Feedback for Learning Feedback Level

Feeding Up: Where am I going?

Feeding Back: How am I going?

Feeding Forward: What do I have to do next?

Task

Feeding Up Prompts: Today we are learning...

Success in this task will look like...(exemplar/model) The key criteria for success are...

We are looking for...

Feedback Strategies Reduce complexity Use exemplars/models Identify misconceptions Use diagnostic assessment for goal setting

Feedback Prompts: You have/haven’t met the learning intention by...

You have/haven’t met the success criteria by...

Your answer/work is/isn’t what we are looking for because...

Feedback Strategies Avoid over emphasis of error analysis Feedback must be immediate Match feedback to success criteria

Feed Forward Prompts: To fully meet the learning intention you could...

Addressing the following success criteria would improve your work...

Adding/removing ____ would improve your work.

Feed Forward Strategies Use language from the success criteria Use scaffolding Feed Forward must be timely Use challenge Refer to goals

Process

Feeding Up Prompts: The key ideas/concepts in this task are...

These ideas/concepts are related by...

Key questions you could ask about this task are...

Skills you will need in this task are...

Strategies you will need in this task are...

Feedback Strategies Use graphical organizers Reduce scaffolding Increase complexity Use mastery goals

Feeding Up Prompts: Your understanding of the ideas/concepts within this task is...

Your thinking about this task is...

You demonstrated ___ skills to a ___ level.

You used ___ strategies to a ___ level.

Feedback Strategies Feedback amount can start to increase Feedback complexity can increase Use prompts or cues

Feed Forward Prompts: You could improve your understanding of ___ concepts by...

Thinking further about ___ could improve your work by...

You could improve your ___ skills by...

Feed Forward Strategies Feed Forward amount can start to increase Feed Forward complexity can increase Use prompts or cues Use challenge

SelfRegulatory

Feeding Up Prompts: How will you use the learning intention?

How could you use the success criteria?

Which other ways could you monitor your work?

Feedback Strategies Reduce emphasis of exemplars Mastery and performance goals

Feeding Up Prompts: Are you on track with your work?

How do you know?

To which level are you satisfying the success criteria?

Are you on track to achieve your goal?

How do you know?

Feedback Strategies Delay feedback May only require verification feedback

Feed Forward Prompts: How could you deepen your understandings?

How could you improve your work?

What is the next step for your learning?

How do you know?

Feed Forward Strategies Delay feedback Reduce teacher reliance Develop self-regulated learners

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You know outstanding educators.

We want to recognize, support, and celebrate them.

VASCD's Impact Award is presented to multiple Virginia educators each year to recognize their positive impact on colleagues and/or students. Impact award recipients may serve in any capacity in education, as long as there is evidence that their work exemplifies great teaching and a significant positive influence on others.

VASCD's Leadership Award is presented to one Virginia educator annually for outstanding leadership in curriculum, instruction, and/or assessment. Nominees are those leaders whose understanding of and dedication to best instructional practice is reflected both in the nominee's own work and in the work of those (s)he leads.

VASCD's Team Award is presented to a group of 3 or more Virginia educators who work collaboratively to achieve specific goals that have a significant positive impact on student and/or educator learning. These teams may be teachers, building administrators, central office staff, or some combination of these categories. These teams influence, impact, and inspire others to implement innovative practices that improve learning.

Nominations due December 15, 2023. bit.ly/2024VASCDAwards

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2023 VASCD Leadership Award Recipient Candi Skinner Candi Skinner is the Chief Academic Officer for the York County School Division.

During her time in York County, she has also served as a middle school teacher, assistant principal, coordinator of licensed staff development, middle school principal, and director of elementary instruction. Darlene Graham, who nominated Candi, had this to say: “It is an honor to nominate Mrs. Candi L. Skinner for the Virginia ASCD Leadership Award. Serving as chief academic officer for the York County School Division requires one to be a strong and innovative leader who is dedicated to creating a culture that prioritizes high expectations for all and providing a high caliber of diverse learning opportunities within and beyond the classroom. Her overall charisma, passion for education, and heart for service have served her well as she has led the charge of ensuring every student is valued, supported, and challenged through learning experiences, which prepare them for a successful future.”

Candi Skinner 2023 VASCD Leadership Award Recipient vascd.org

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2023 VASCD Impact Award Recipients

Cathleen Beachboard Cathleen Beachboard is an author, researcher, and a teacher at Fauquier High School. Caroly Shaw, Cathleen’s nominator, co-teacher, colleague, and friend, had this to say in her letter of recommendation: “Cathleen Beachboard is the embodiment of an incredible teacher and person. She deserves the impact award and more. Cathleen puts her whole heart into everything she does without expecting anything in return. I am not only blessed to have Cathleen as a co-worker, but also as a friend. Cathleen has made and will continue to make an impact on the classroom, school, and education for years to come.”

Dr. Justin Grigg Dr. Justin Grigg is the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction for Louisa County Public Schools and an Adjunct Professor for Longwood University. His nominator, Marcia Flora, a 5th grade teacher in Louisa, said “Dr. Grigg has helped me to grow, not only in my instruction and leadership as a teacher, but in my temperament. He has led by example, and helped a hot-headed (let’s call it passionate) teacher turn that energy into productivity, focus, and drive. I am now better equipped to approach conflict with a composed manner and can channel the passion for my students through productive means. Dr. Grigg’s calm demeanor and pleasant personality have always set the standard and made me feel like he’s in my corner and will support me, no matter what.”

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2023 VASCD Impact Award Recipients Dr. Kambar Khoshaba Dr. Kambar Khoshaba is the Principal of South County High School in Fairfax County. His nominator, Amy Daniel, who is a teacher at Western Branch Middle in Chesapeake, where Kambar was previously principal.

She had this to say: “ ‘To a child, love is spelled T-I-M-E’ (Zig Zigler). As a lifelong learner and believer in the power of a great education, the time he has given has been one of his greatest contributions to all those with whom he has worked with and led. He has dedicated more than ½ of his life to serving his community through empowering all stakeholders. He is a positive message to future generations of leaders that will continue the noble pursuit of striving to make sure that ALL students are provided grace, dignity, opportunity, and inclusivity as well as a quality education which will serve and impact the rest of their lives.”

Maria Ramadane Maria Ramadane is the Director of Teaching and Learning in Spotsylvania County Public Schools. Tom Alexander, who is her nominator, said, “I am honored to nominate Maria Lewis Ramadane for the Impact Award. Her accomplishments, leadership, and service to students, teachers, and staff have been a model for all educational professionals. I have worked with and know Maria for nearly six years. She continues to be a model leader, coach, and mentor for numerous other educational professionals and me.”

Lin Rudder Lin Rudder is a Teacher, Equity Lead, and Collaborative Learning Team Leader at Lightridge High School in Loudon County. Her principal, Dr. Ryan Hitchman, had this to say: “Ms. Rudder has had a tremendous impact on the learning environment at Lightridge. She not only shares her voice but allows students to share their experiences and goals. Lin truly empowers and encourages students to make meaningful contributions to the world.”

Dr. Karen Sanzo Dr. Karen Sanzo is a Professor of Educational Leadership and the Graduate Program Director for the Educational Leadership Services program at Old Dominion University. Jacquelne Miller, had this to say: “Dr. Sanzo’s passion for continually setting the bar higher, investing in finding innovative educational practices, and understanding that her work contributes to an uncalculated number of individuals positively impacted by her contributions is worthy of VASCD’s Impact Award.”

Julia Urban Julia Urban is a STEAM Specialist at Clymore Elementary School in Augusta County. Her principal, Fonda Morris, had this to say: “When I think of Ms. Urban, many words come to mind. She is passionate, energetic, committed, innovative, and engaging. In all my years as an administrator, I’ve never observed another teacher quite like her. She draws you into her classroom and keeps you engaged throughout. She develops very strong relationships with her students and empowers them to go above and beyond.”

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2023 VASCD Impact Award Recipients

CONGRATULATIONS, Impact Award Recipients!

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2023 VASCD Team Award Recipients

Virginia Tiered Systems of Support Tier 1 Team from Cumberland County Elementary School The team's primary responsibility is to develop school-wide procedures and build capacity for the implementation of VTSS. The school leadership team works with the VTSS System's coach from the Virginia Department of Education to implement research-based best practices and align the current practices within the school. The elementary school team has a strong understanding of the VTSS model and takes time to carefully investigate and understand current practices within the school.

The team has developed school-wide expectations for all areas of the school, such as the classroom, playground, etc. Family engagement activities have been scheduled for the entire year. Some examples of family engagement are family literacy night, home visits, and kindness challenges. The team has done an exceptional job of using an informed decision-making process to review data, increase behavior- specific praise, and reteach behavior expectations in identified locations. The development of the Student Success Team has been instrumental in addressing the tiered support needed for students' success.

According to Superintendent Chip Jones, “the impact of the work of this team is evident within the school.

They have established school wide expectations, promoted an inclusive environment, fostered an environment for family engagement, employed consistent processes and procedures, encouraged both student and teacher growth, and most importantly, engaged in purposeful reflection.”

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2023 VASCD Team Award Recipients

LOTUS Academy Team - Caroline County Public Schools In the first year of the rebranding of the alternative program, LOTUS Academy has developed a pathway process in and out of the program that provides students what they need academically, behaviorally, and social-emotionally. Staff have been strategically selected to address and educate students who are referred by student support teams, special education teams, the CCPS discipline committee, and parent/student referrals. Each student works collaboratively with the all members of the LOTUS staff to create a student success plan to address all areas of growth with the goal of transitioning students successfully back to the comprehensive school setting on a path to on-time graduation. This has been done by creating a three prong master schedule. Intensive daily social emotional lessons occur daily both as a whole group and individually. Every student explores multiple career paths through field trips, guest speakers, and innovative uses of technology and community partnerships.

According to Assistant Superintendent Herb Monroe, “we continue to shout loud and proud that LOTUS Academy was selected as one of seven effective alternative schools in Virginia. The CCPS LOTUS program was featured through the creation of a 30-miute film that opened the VDOE after school webinar series highlighting the most innovative alternative programs in the Commonwealth. Under the leadership of Darleen Keener and her amazing team, the LOTUS Academy is truly creating an inclusive culture where teaching and learning inspire and prepare students to become contributing citizens.”

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Finding Your Power Through Educational Minimalism Tammy Musiowsky-Borneman Tammy Musiowsky-Borneman has been in the field of education for over 23 years. She began her career in Edmonton, Canada, and has since taught and led in New York City, Singapore, and Hawai’i Island. She is the founder of Plan Z Professional Learning Services and also serves as the Director of Teaching and Learning at Kokua Academy in Kona, Hawai’i. Over the last several years, Tammy has written blogs and articles on a range of educational topics such as learner agency, student engagement, and minimalism in education. She is the co-author of the ASCD book, The Minimalist Teacher.

Christine Arnold Christine Arnold is an Australian educator with experience at home and abroad. She has worked in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Belgium, and The Netherlands as a teacher, coach, mentor, co-teacher, coordinator, tutor, and supervisor from early childhood education to adult education. Her dedication to teaching has led her to serve on the board of the Singapore chapter of SENIA, publish educational articles, and present at various international and Australian conferences. Her interests in education include exploring research-based pedagogy and practice, inclusive education, quality early childhood education, inquiry, and promoting well-being for students and colleagues.

Tammy and Christine host the new podcast, The Minimalist Educator, available on all platforms. vascd.org

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Educational Minimalism Abstract The global education sector is witnessing a rise in educators adopting a minimalist approach to work and life, driven in part by the pandemic.

Teachers are leaving the profession due to burnout caused by excessive expectations and administrative burdens. To regain a sense of purpose and effectiveness, educators are encouraged to identify their purpose, prioritize tasks using tools like the Urgent/Important Matrix, and declutter their physical spaces. By embracing educational minimalism, teachers can find empowerment, create a healthier work-life balance, and foster a supportive network of like-minded educators.

A shift towards a healthy and “balanced” life for educators has become a global movement, perhaps exacerbated further by a global pandemic and its aftereffects. The focus seemed to shift to educators “quietly quitting” (Harvard Business Review, 2022) or working only during contract hours.

Education has been a “maximum-ist” profession (Musiowsky-Borneman & Arnold, 2021) for too long. Educational minimalism may be the key to bringing our field to a healthy state of being. Holding beliefs about minimalism in education is about finding power in paring down and resurfacing value. There is power in the hope that we can collectively become part of large-scale adjustments and change the way we do education. There is power in taking action as a result of our increased self- and social awareness. There is power in knowing that we must start saying no to the not-so-essentials, and yes to the oh-so-essentials that add value to our lives and our profession, to stay in the field we love so much.

We have been watching teachers leave the profession in droves. The National Education Association (2022) reported that the pandemic has left teachers burned out. But we know that this is only one piece of a puzzle that has been falling apart for years. Governments around the world are scrambling to ensure that schools remain staffed and are coming up with incentives such as pay rises and bonuses to retain and attract teachers.

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Educational Minimalism Teachers have been consistently bombarded with more and more expectations, requirements, and documentation, that make work lives increasingly unmanageable. Teachers who have persisted in schools, often citing the students as their reason for staying, are feeling increasingly exhausted and ineffective, despite their passion for their work.

Is it possible, then, to reclaim some value, ownership, and agency in our work to feel empowered once again? In our book, The Minimalist Teacher, we explore some approaches to employing minimalist strategies to regain our sense of purpose and effectiveness in teaching, whilst still maintaining a work-life balance. We outline the Triple P Framework, which encourages teachers to identify and refocus on their Purpose and Priorities, and then Pare Down to the essentials to once again feel empowered in their work. Here are some suggestions to think through and implement at any point you need to during the year.

Identify your purpose.

Considering our purpose for being a teacher can be instrumental in feeling a renewed sense of empowerment in our work. To do this, forgive us for borrowing briefly from another wonderful minimalist, Marie Kondo, and ask you, “What is bringing you joy?” Take a moment day to day, and consider what it is that brings you joy in your work. It may be seeing those lightbulb moments, tracking measurable growth in learning, or enjoying the moments of personal connection with your students and colleagues. Whatever it is that is bringing you joy in your work, is likely to be a clue as to your purpose for entering and remaining in the field of education. Keep this purpose at the forefront of your mind. Despite the many messages you will hear coming from the varied stakeholders, you can remember the reason why you are working in education.

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Educational Minimalism List and categorize your priorities by month.

When prioritizing in general, we can initially think that prioritizing is challenging because everything seems like it is a priority! What makes an item a priority? Ask yourself if it aligns with your purpose. Using a tool like our Urgent/Important Matrix can help you sort out those items that are high priorities versus the ones that are not.

Table 1: Urgent/Important Matrix Urgent

Not-so-Urgent

Important

High priority: Take action

Medium priority: Plan

Not-so Important

Medium priority: Plan

Not a priority right now

Identifying a small number of top priorities for the remainder of the year can help narrow down what you spend your time and effort on, as well as what you say yes to over the next few weeks. Your priorities will be unique to you depending on your situation and current context, and will change. You may prioritize maintaining home-school communication, trying out a new classroom management strategy, completing a set of assessments, or just leaving the building at a set time each day. Revisit your matrix at the end of the time period, or whenever it feels like the right time. Have another go at prioritizing your list to ensure you are making shifts at the right time.

Prioritize to-do lists.

Are you a list maker? Many educators love them! It feels empowering to make a list and check items off once completed. Counter to this, making that long to-do list, and never getting to the end of it, can seem like the antithesis of trying to empower yourself into doing less. The good news is that you can still create that long list, then categorize it, and prioritize it. If one of your top

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Educational Minimalism three priorities for the semester is to maintain a solid home-school communication plan: write a to-do list specifically for that priority. write each bullet on your to-do list as a step in the process of maintaining a communication system keep that list posted refer to it to keep you on track.

Prioritize your materials in your spaces.

We can take on a couple of approaches to prioritizing the materials in our learning environments.

Map out the classroom areas (or home areas) on a paper or whiteboard or, Physically label each area with an index card.

Once you have spent time mapping or labeling, write out the priority for each space and list the materials needed to meet the area priorities. Setting up a systematic way to sort out your physical space helps you feel a sense of control when beginning a decluttering or prioritization process. Once you have your priorities listed for each area and the materials you need to meet the priority, choose the area that is the cornerstone in creating and maintaining a cohesive classroom. At that point, you can begin your decluttering or gathering process. Table 2 illustrates an example.

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Educational Minimalism Table 2: Prioritizing and paring down one area of the classroom

Area

Materials cupboard

Priority

Paring Down Actions

Student can easily access needed materials for each class period

Acquire suitable containers and tubs for essentials items Label tubs Retrieve only essential items Place items in containers Label outside of cupboard so students know where to access items

This is an achievable starting point even if the rest of the cupboard remains cluttered - for now. If you are tackling a space at home, you can use the same strategy and get the family involved!

Choose your priority entry point.

Think of an “entry point” as an easy point of access to begin your prioritization activities. This can be an empowering moment for those who find making decisions a challenge. Because of the preemptive work in sorting and organizing to-do’s and priorities, it now comes down to knowing what you can make progress with, without delaying those top priorities. Sometimes choosing that entry point must be treated as a time of celebration.

Remember, this is why you have chosen just a few priorities for the remainder of the year. Start with one thing, make sure you’re considering your purpose, and then pare back whatever you can.

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Educational Minimalism Educational minimalism will help us all remove nonessentials from our line of vision, which means recentering on our purpose and spending time sorting out priorities. As you move forward now with your priorities in focus, share and celebrate that feeling of self-empowerment as you achieve success in paring down. Advocating for ideas about minimalism can support our effectiveness, as well as develop a network of educators to work alongside.

Together we can work towards creating a sense of clarity and a culture of balance.

For more about minimalism in education: Listen to VASCD Deeper Insights podcast episode called Simplicity with VASCD Executive Director, Chris Jones and the authors of this article.

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Educational Minimalism References Jotkoff, E. (2022, February 1). NEA survey: Massive staff shortages in schools leading to educator burnout; alarming number of educators indicating they plan to leave profession. National Education Association. https://www.nea.org/about-nea/media-center/pressreleases/nea-survey-massive-staff-shortages-schools-leadingeducator-burnout-alarming-number-educators Musiowsky-Borneman, Tamera & Arnold, C.Y. (2021). The Minimalist Teacher. ASCD. Zenger, Jack, & Folkman, Joseph. (August 31st, 2022). Quiet Quitting is About Bad Bosses, Not Bad Employees. Harvard Business Review.

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VASCD Content on YouTube

Video Podcasts Spotlight DocuSeries: Classroom, School, and Division Infomercials and Special Announcements CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS vascd.org

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Fostering Student Interest in Computer Science and STEM Fields: A METRICS Approach to Maximizing Engagement Through Regular Immersion in Computer Science Jennifer LaBombard-Daniel, Ph.D. Jennifer LaBombard-Daniel, PhD directs the EIR METRICS Grant for Winchester Public Schools and is an adjunct professor in the School of Education and Leadership at Shenandoah University. In her 24 years of education, Dr. LaBombard-Daniels has served as a STEAM Instructor, elementary and middle school science teacher and chair for her science departments. She served as an Assistant Professor of Education at Colorado Mesa University for 6 years and a K-12 Project Specialist and science educator with Washington County Public Schools in Maryland for 8 years prior. Among her many awards and achievements, Dr. LaBombard-Daniels’ team was most recently awarded The National STEM Honors Societies Chapter of the year, 2021. She was nominated for the K12 Innovations in Technology Award, 2020, was awarded JKES Teacher of the Year, 2019, and was nominated CMU’s Distinguished Faculty 2017 and Advisor of the Year 2016. She has also earned the NASA In-flight Downlink Commemorative Award in 2016 for which her NSTA Student Chapter was awarded Chapter of the Year for their work with this project. Jennifer earned her PhD in K-12 Educational Leadership, Walden University-Baltimore; a Masters of Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Loyola College-Baltimore, and a BA, Literature, State University of New York Oswego State-Oswego, NY.

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METRICS Abstract This paper explores the ways in which increasing student interest in computer science (CS) and STEM fields can influence the academic achievement of underrepresented populations. METRICS, a program designed to boost student interest in CS and STEM, incorporates key components such as immersive experiences, strategic planning, project-based learning, and community partnerships. This paper discusses the insights gained from implementing METRICS, including its relationship between student engagement and learning outcomes. Additionally, it proposes ideas for growing and expanding the program in order to further foster student interests in CS and STEM fields.

Introduction Background and Significance Education plays a critical role in shaping the future of individuals and societies, and it is crucial to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

Winchester Public Schools, a district renowned for its commitment to academic excellence, has an immediate interest in increasing student interest in Computer Science (CS) as well as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. This emphasis on CS and STEM in schools is critical, as these fields have become increasingly vital in driving innovation, economic growth, and addressing global challenges.

Maximizing Engagement Through Regular Immersion in Computer Science (METRICS) is a five-year U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) Innovation and Research grant awarded to Winchester Public Schools (WPS) in October of 2019. The initiative is being implemented in two WPS K-4 Title I elementary schools (Garland Quarles and John Kerr) that serve over 900 students combined. The purpose of this grant is to increase student achievement in mathematics and reading levels while simultaneously increasing student’s interest in the fields of computer science and STEM,

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METRICS particularly among girls and underrepresented communities. Working collaboratively with community partners, METRICS coaches and teachers have been implementing a whole-school immersion computer science (CS) initiative focused on three integrated field-initiated innovations at the elementary level: 1) creating rigorous CS curriculum units and assessments to support STEM coursework connected across all subjects through problembased learning; 2) providing high-quality teacher development and support to sustain innovative CS instructional practices; and 3) strengthening students’ tethers to CS and STEM coursework by engaging them in realworld linkages beyond the classroom specifically aimed at traditionally underrepresented and/or female students. The aim of this article is to share the four year journey of METRICS programming and the impact on students in grades three and four.

Students are more likely to engage and be interested in these fields when they see the connections to real-world problems and career opportunities that inspire passion, creativity, and perseverance in learning.

Literature Review To understand and address the low student interest in CS and STEM fields statewide, it is helpful to first understand the factors that influence student engagement and interest in these areas (CodeVA, 2018). Several studies have identified key factors that impact student interest in CS and STEM, such as the perceived relevance and practical applications of CS and STEM concepts. Students are more likely to engage and be interested in these fields when they see the connections to real-world problems and career opportunities that inspire passion, creativity, and perseverance in learning (Immersive Experience Design, 2021). Immersive learning experiences help students develop problem-solving skills, retain information, and explore new topics all in a more natural way, such as through virtual reality sessions where students have visual and hands-on experiences that actively engage their learning (Buljan, 2022).

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METRICS Addressing the issue of decreased student interest in CS and STEM fields requires a multifaceted approach. It is essential to create a learning environment that cultivates a genuine curiosity for these subjects, nurtures a growth mindset, and emphasizes the relevance and impact of CS and STEM in various industries and everyday life (Poth, n.d.). By providing engaging and inclusive educational experiences, all schools can inspire a new generation of students to embrace CS and STEM and unlock their full potential.

Furthermore, the quality of teaching and instruction also plays a significant role in student engagement. Effective teaching practices that emphasize hands-on activities, problem-solving, and collaboration have been found to enhance student interest in engagement in CS and STEM (Hasim et al., 2022). Engaging pedagogical approaches, such as project-based learning (PBL), have also shown positive effects on student interest and motivation in CS and STEM fields (PBLWorks, n.d.)

Existing Approaches to Promote Student Engagement Various approaches and interventions have been implemented to promote students' engagement in CS and STEM fields. One effective approach is the integration of CS and STEM across the curriculum. By infusing CS concepts and skills into other subjects, students are provided with interdisciplinary learning experiences that highlight the relevance and practical applications of CS (Asuda, 2018). This integration can foster deeper connections between CS and other disciplines, enhancing student engagement and interest.

Our METRICS team also found that utilizing community partnerships and industry collaborations has been effective in promoting student engagement.

By connecting students with professionals in CS and STEM fields – particularly in their communities, such as Amazon’s virtual tours for students – students gain exposure to real-world applications and career opportunities, which can spark their interest and inspire their future aspirations (Poth, n.d.). These partnerships provide students with authentic experiences and allow them to see the practical relevance of CS and STEM in the professional world.

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METRICS METRICS: Addressing the Problem Our team firmly believes that by creating an educational system that integrates CS and STEM throughout the curriculum, and by providing immersive learning experiences for teachers and students, we can inspire students to not be just consumers of technology, but to become producers and computational thinking experts who will strive to explore CS and STEMrelated opportunities in their future educational endeavors. This will ensure a pipeline for our students to pursue STEM track courses in middle school and apply to more STEM-related courses through our WPS Emil & Grace Shihadah Innovation Center at the high school level.

According to CodeVA, Virginia is home to 1.4 million CS and STEM-related jobs, yet the state only produces two thousand CS graduates annually (CodeVA, 2018). This discrepancy highlights the urgent need to cultivate student interest and aptitude in CS and STEM fields. The METRICS grant, a Federal innovation in education research grant, has provided our team with the resources to train and support teachers through professional development and STEMersions (immersive experiences in a STEM related field). Through this grant, we have created integrated CS units, provided student support, developed assessments for underserved students, and established real-world connections to foster a deep understanding of CS and STEM concepts.

Virginia is home to 1.4 million CS and STEM-related jobs, yet the state only produces two thousand CS graduates annually.

Key components of METRICS In our METRICS program, we have identified several key components that contribute to maximizing student engagement and interest in CS and STEM:

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METRICS Immersive experiences: We offer engaging after-school clubs and field experiences that immerse students in hands-on CS and STEM lessons. These experiences are taught by passionate and knowledgeable teachers and experts in the field who have undergone extensive training to cultivate their own passion for CS and build their expertise.

Strategic planning with key stakeholders: We collaborate monthly with division administrators, school principals, curriculum and instruction teams, and CS leaders to develop strategic plans that integrate CS through the curriculum. By aligning CS instruction with the overall educational goals of the school, we ensure a cohesive and comprehensive approach to CS education.

Integration of project-based learning units: We believe in the power of project-based learning to engage students and deepen their understanding of CS and STEM concepts. Through our partnerships with Defined Learning and PBL Works, we have adapted our curriculum to include rigorous CS units that are seamlessly integrated throughout various content areas, allowing students to apply their knowledge and skills in real-world contexts and allowing teachers to assess their students' knowledge through project-based rubrics. This permits student voice and choice in all projects, allowing students to demonstrate their learning with curriculum guided content planned throughout the process.

Community partnerships: We actively seek partnerships with community organizations and industry professionals to provide students with authentic experiences and real-world connections. Our partners with CodeVA support professional development in CS integration. Working with the Smithsonian’s Zero Barriers in STEM program, our team will look at developing a plan for reaching all students in a strategic and accessible way. With our partners, Linda Liukas, Blandy Experimental Farm, Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, Kings Dominion Engineering Days, and Steve Spangler Science, we are creating immersive learning experiences in the STEM fields for both students and teachers to learn first hand about various topics. For example students in

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METRICS all grades are researching biodiversity of plant life. By providing a field experience with Blandy Experimental Farm’s STEM “Let’s Sprout” program, students become researchers and get to identify insects and plant species native to their area and learn key aspects of biodiversity through the eyes of experts in the field. According to Blandy Experimental Farms, outdoor exploration of the plant world reinforces student understanding of plant parts, functions, and roles in the watershed. Students select appropriate tools for planting seeds and providing care for their seeds. Through this immersion, the field investigations are more meaningful to students because they are integrated into the curriculum. To support this in the classroom, our integrated PBL Unit plans, (see our METRICS website for connections to concepts) teachers reinforce the STEM and CS concepts throughout math and language arts.

Likewise, several of our teachers were able to study the biodiversity of Iceland with Steve Spangler’s Science of Iceland tour. During this tour we worked with experts in the field to study the changing glaciers and descend inside a volcano. Both of these experiences gave learners hands-on visual experiences that they can now take with them to research further with their classrooms. We also filmed 360 video footage so that we could upload for our students to view what we studied through their ClassVR headsets. You can view how these teachers will take this experience back to the classroom through our Science of Iceland Presentation.

Program Evaluation Our METRICS team set out to investigate whether or not providing students with computational thinking strategies and developing their coding mindsets would not only improve students’ efficacy in the fields of STEM and CS, but would also increase their math and reading scores on state tests. In reviewing both of the METRICS schools’ testing scores, there appears to be a fairly steady maintenance of math Standards of Learning (SOL) with a 58% (7% increased differential over time) proficient or advanced scoring and reading SOLs with a 55% (2% increased differential drop over time) in our two treatment schools (those implementing the program).

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METRICS However, despite numerous opportunities in lab activities and careerintegrated lessons for teachers, there was a slight drop in perceived interest among students and teachers according to our yearly self-reflection surveys.

In part, this might be due to a prevailing misconception for students that CS and STEM revolved around gaming, and when challenged with more difficult computational thinking tasks, such as coding and data analysis, these tasks were perceived as being unattainable. This misconception often leads to self-doubt and a lack of confidence and interest among students, deterring students and teachers from pursuing more CS and STEM projects.

Additionally, with a 20-30% mobility rate (movement into and out of the designated schools) among students and teachers, there were many students who did not access all of the provided labs, experiences, and instruction.

Furthermore, the implementation of METRICS lessons are not utilized equally in all classrooms. The METRICS team has observed that the addition of COVID-19 recovery programs led to a decrease in CS- and STEM-related hands-on activities, projects, and collaboration that can foster a sense of curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

METRICS has demonstrated a positive impact through case studies and success stories.

METRICS in Action: Stories of Success Although the quantitative findings are mixed, METRICS has demonstrated a positive impact through case studies and success stories. In year three of the program, METRICS focused on teacher development and support. Eighty three percent of participating WPS teachers completed 60 hours of METRICS professional development, and an additional 11% teachers completed between 40-59 hours. Overall, 94% of teachers completed over 40 hours of professional development, including attending conferences, workshops, and training sessions (WPS, 2022).The program has also shown success in

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METRICS increasing student engagement and participation. STEM clubs, competitions, immersive field experiences, and family STEM nights provided opportunities for students and their families to engage with CS and STEM concepts (WPS, 2022).

METRICS Labs, including STEAM labs, PEDLE labs, and Makerspace centers, have been established in both METRICS schools. These labs have provided students with hands-on experiences, and attendance data indicate active participation. Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, METRICS Labs adapted and continued to provide learning opportunities for students (WPS, 2022).

The program's impact on student interest and engagement is further demonstrated through recognition and achievements. Both METRICS schools received the National STEM (NSTEM) Honors Societies Chapters of the Year Award, and the team members were invited to participate as speakers in the NSTEM Women in STEM Webinar. The schools were featured in this YouTube video highlighting the importance of STEM education, and they received media coverage for their active play with Unruly Splats (WPS, 2022). Since then, the schools were featured in the Associated Press for their work with innovative CS farming techniques titled “Cute Ducks Could Open Doors to Future Careers,” and one of the METRICS coaches was awarded Virginia’s CS Coach of the Year by Virginia Department of Education and CodeVA.

Insights and Findings Throughout the implementation of our program, we gained valuable insights and made significant findings in the following areas:

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Student Engagement and Interest in CS and STEM Fields: Despite the drop in perceived interest levels in our early surveys, we observed a high level of student engagement and interest in CS and STEM for those who participated in after-school programs and immersive experiences both for teachers and students.

Learning Outcomes and Skill Development: Our program contributed to positive learning outcomes and skill development among students. However, we noticed limited growth in their knowledge and understanding of CS concepts over time, as their initial scores were already high at the beginning of the school year. To further enhance learning outcomes, we recognize the importance of utilizing computational thinking strategies to help students process information and deepen their integration of CS into their overall learning experiences.

Teacher Professional Development and Capacity Building: Teacher professional development and capacity building were crucial aspects of our program. Feedback from teachers indicated their appreciation for the freedom to choose and access online learning opportunities. To address the challenges of limited professional development time constraints, we identified two sites, UTeach and CodeVA, where teachers could access selfguided learning in CS microcredentials and online resources. Our coaching model, focusing on "model, co-teach, feedback," proved effective in providing teachers with support and collaboration opportunities. Teachers felt more confident integrating CS skills into their classrooms and expressed a desire for ongoing professional development opportunities.

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METRICS Ideas for Growth and Expansion Scaling up METRICS: Reaching a Wider Audience To grow our program and expand its reach, we envision the establishment of a STEMersive learning program. This initiative aims to provide immersive experiences to students across grade levels, emphasizing inclusion for all learners, including girls and/or students from underserved communities. By leveraging emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and extended reality (XR), we offer engaging and interactive learning opportunities that are accessible to all students. For example, students can explore historic battlefields and engineering design labs, study the human heart through immersive experiences, or design wing patterns for space flights by working directly with a guiding professional. The potential impact of an explicit immersive experience that brings minds-on and handson quality education to all students is immeasurable. Scaling up METRICS in this manner would allow us to share what we have learned with the broader education community.

Collaborative Partnerships with Industry and Academia To support the growth and expansion of our program, collaborative partnerships with industry and academia are crucial. These partnerships can provide expertise, resources, and funding to further develop and enhance the STEMersive experience. We envision working closely with curriculum writers, platform designers, and educators to create the core architecture of the experience.

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METRICS Long-term Impact on Student Career Choices One of the key future directions of our program is assessing and understanding the long-term impact on student career choices. By engaging students in CS and STEM education through immersive experiences, we aim to cultivate their interest and passion in these fields. Our hope is to create a pipeline for developing interest in these fields through our middle school STEM tracks and applications to our WPS Emil & Grace Shihadeh Innovation Center. It is important to track the career paths of students who have participated in our program and determine whether or not their exposure to CS and STEM has influenced their career choices. Longitudinal studies and surveys can provide valuable insights into the extent to which our program has shaped students' aspirations and influenced their pursuit of careers in CS and STEM fields.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank our two model schools in Winchester Public Schools, Winchester, VA for their efforts in this grant project and development of curriculum and young minds. We would also like to thank the Department of Education for granting us the funds and opportunity to fulfill this EIR grant opportunity. Finally, we would like to thank our partners in this grant: The Evaluation Group, Virginia Department of Education, CodeVA, the Smithsonian, Blandy Experimental Farm, Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, Linda Liukas, Steve Spangler and all of our many partners for allowing us the opportunity to partner with them, to learn and to grow.

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METRICS References About Us. CodeVA. (n.d.). https://www.codevirginia.org/about/ Asunda, P. A. (2018). Infusing computer science in engineering and technology education: An integrated STEM perspective. Journal of Technology Students, 44(1). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26730725 Berkenkemper, S. (2021). METRICS promotional video. Winchester; Birchfields.org.

Brehm, B. (2022, March 31). Cute Ducklings could open doors to future careers for students. The Winchester Star. https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/cute-ducklingscould-open-doors-to-future-careers/article_2e3a6baa-6786-59739113-9f39bfb5b3d3.html Buljan, M. (2022, March 3). The truth about immersive learning and its sharp benefits. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/the-truthabout-immersive-learning-and-its-sharp-benefits Charlesworth, T. E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Gender in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics: Issues, causes, solutions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(37). DOI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759027/ Dowell, K. (2022, January). 20190924_Winchester_EIR_Evaluation plan year 1 v02.docx. Winchester; TEG. LaBombard-Daniels, J. (2019). EIR METRICS Narrative Grant Performance Report Cover Sheet. Winchester; Winchester Public Schools.

LaBombard-Daniels, J. (2020, July). ED 542-B Form: Grant Performance Report. Winchester; TEG. Mohamad Hasim, S., Rosli, R., Halim, L., Capraro, M. M., & Capraro, R. M. (2022). Stem professional development activities and their impact on teacher knowledge and instructional practices. Mathematics, 10(7). https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/10/7/1109 PBLWorks. (n.d.). All about PBL. https://www.pblworks.org/ Poth, P. D. (n.d.). The benefits of college and career readiness for middle school students. July 17, 2023, https://blog.definedlearning.com/thebenefits-of-college-and-career-readiness-for-middle-school-students

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METRICS Ruscella, J. (2021). Immersive experience taxonomy. AccessVR. https://www.accessvr.com/immersive-taxonomy Shin, N., Bowers, J., Krajcik, J., & Damelin, D. (2021, August 2). Promoting computational thinking through project-based learning. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research. https://diser.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43031-021-00033-y

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Deeper Learning and Arts in Education in Virginia Public High Schools Frances C. Furlong Frances C. Furlong is a Ph.D. candidate at William & Mary’s School of Education in the K-12 Education, Policy, Planning, and Leadership (EPPL) program. Her research interests include arts-based education and deeper learning, neuroaesthetics, neurodiversity, student engagement, and equity in PK-12 Virginia public schools. She is an Adjunct Faculty member of the Virginia Community College System (VCCS)’s Workforce Services Division of KidsCollege. Her writing and research are informed by her background as an English/Language Arts and elective drama teacher, theatre coach, and afterschool youth theatre director. Her other passions include gardening, nature, puppetry arts, film, and spending time with her family and 14-yearold cat, Tiger.

Abstract The article provides both a constitutive and operational definition of deeper learning and makes connections to arts in education research with VASCD’s 2023-2024 six policy priorities for the upcoming year. Links between policy and practice provide us with concrete tools based on new research and the science of arts and learning to potentially elevate the profession and prioritize the well-being and success of students.

Stakeholders might reflect on VASCD’s policy as to how these policy initiatives combined with arts-based research might contribute to a worldclass education for every Virginia student.

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Arts in Education Schools and districts throughout Virginia need to have a coherent vision around deeper learning. Arts in education programs can be a key component of that mission. The constitutive definition of deeper learning includes secondary schools that nurture “engaging, equitable, and intellectually vibrant learning environments for all adolescents” (Mehta & Fine, 2019, p. 4).

Research on deeper learning supports the view that these schools often have rich curricula in theatre, music, and dance electives and after-school activities (Jones et al., 2022; Mehta, 2022). In a post-pandemic school landscape, it is especially important to consider how secondary theatre, music, and dance education programs throughout the state can be avenues to support adolescent students in meaningful new ways (Bollino, 2023; Mehta & Fine, 2019; White et al., 2022). Strategies are currently being implemented to address student learning loss and a return to a back-tobasics curriculum leftover from the effects of school closures and remote teaching and learning during the pandemic (Kuhfeld et al., 2022). Core courses in reading and math take priority over arts-based education in districts throughout the nation (Guilbault & McCormick, 2023; Tunceli, 2023).

How can we advocate, then, for theatre, music, and dance education as effective learning environments for deeper learning in Virginia Public High Schools? The Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (VASCD) provides us with a good place to start.

VASCD 2023-2024 Policy Priorities This fall, VASCD has identified key focus areas that represent six policy priorities for the upcoming school year: 1) The purpose of education and the Standards of Learning; 2) Virginia’s Accountability System; 3) Virginia’s Assessment System; 4) Outstanding Educators for Virginia’s Students; 5) Personalized Learning for Educators; and 6) Appropriate Guidance for the Use of AI in Education (VASCD, 2023, p. 2). Links between policy and pedagogy might provide us with concrete tools to elevate the education profession and prioritize the well-being and success of students (VASCD, 2023). We might reflect on policy priorities and how arts-based education contributes to a world-class education based on deeper learning for every Virginia student (2023).

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Arts in Education The Purpose of Education and the Standards of Learning VASCD is in the process of defining a unified purpose of education that aligns with school accountability criteria. VASCD calls upon The Virginia Board of Education, the Department of Education, and Virginia lawmakers to clearly articulate what is meant by “high quality education” (VASCD, 2023, p.

4). We might consider how arts-based education can inform our definition of high-quality education that includes deeper learning for Virginia Public Schools. The Standards of Accreditation and the Standards of Learning (SOLs) provide roadmaps in which to accomplish this goal.

We might consider how arts-based education can inform our definition of high-quality education that includes deeper learning for Virginia Public Schools.

SOLs in Virginia Public Schools and the Profile of a Virginia Graduate (2017) mandate help educators frame curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices with arts-based education. The Standards of Accreditation, for instance, includes components such as “helping students in a process of self-discovery and endowing them with the intellectual and ethical power to pursue their interests” (VASCD, 2023, p. 4). Theatre, music, and dance programs are comprised of places and spaces where students often find voice and choice in their learning, especially when making decisions regarding the myriad number of non-academic electives and out-of school time (OST) classes they can sign up for in the co-curriculum (Jones et al., 2022; Mehta & Fine, 2019; Ornstein & Hunkins, 2018). Students often gain a sense of purpose, inspiration, and personal agency that elective and afterschool theatre, chorus, band, orchestra, or step-dance teams, among other arts-based activities, provide (Bollino, 2023; Fullan, 2020; Robinson, 2011). These performing arts programs exemplify how arts-based education align with one aspect of the Standards of Accreditation.

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Arts in Education The Standards of Learning (SOLs) and The Profile of a Virginia Graduate (VDOE, 2017) are other examples of how arts-based education might contribute to the definition of high-quality education for Virginia Public Schools. SOLs are designed for each subject outlined in the Virginia Curriculum (VASCD, 2023) and arts education strands are included in the fine and performing arts standards. The Profile of a Virginia Graduate (2017) is a framework based on the five C’s: creative and critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and citizenship and provides us with an operational definition of deeper learning.

Deeper learning traces its origins to the Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Framework (2013). “The Hewlett Foundation crystalized the term ‘deeper learning’ as an umbrella for the range of skills students would need to participate in modern life: critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and the ability to direct one’s own learning” (Mehta & Fine, 2019, p. 403).

From there, scholars have adapted deeper learning definitions to varying degrees. VASCD advocates that “Profile of a Virginia Graduate…should be prioritized through inquiry-based approaches to the SOL content requirements, with an emphasis on cross-curricular connections and exposure to the 17 career clusters” (VASCD, 2023, p. 5). Cross-curricular connections in theatre, music, and dance programs are positive outlets for many high school students seeking creative and collaborative opportunities with like-minded students in non-core, co-curricular electives, and afterschool programs that can potentially plant the seeds to nurture future careers in the arts (Mehta, 2022; Mehta & Fine, 2019).

Secondary instruction in fine arts elective classes in theatre, music, and dance offers engaging authentic learning opportunities that can be measured through rigorous performance-based assessments such as final projects, auditions, portfolio reviews, and jury exams. Auditions are held, for example, as the “assessment of student learning at the end of some period of instruction” (Gareis & Grant, 2015, p. 5). Students can also participate as actors, dancers, or musicians and in technical or business aspects of the play production process in after-school activities. In both situations, students can

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Arts in Education test the waters as amateur designers of sets, lights, costumes, and props or in sales, marketing, and administrative behind-the-scenes roles learning real-world applications to arts career fields (Fullan, 2020; Wren & Gareis, 2019). Some high school programs may provide additional opportunities for playwriting, improvisational theatre, or debate and forensics.

Arts-based education often fosters high school students with a sense of belonging within their schools and in their communities (Bodilly, 2008; Mehta, 2022). High School theatre in Virginia Public Schools, for example, often includes public performances of Fall One-Acts, the Virginia High School League (VHSL) local, regional, and state drama competitions as well as the Virginia Theatre Association (VTA) showcases, and Destination Imagination (DI) teams. In secondary schools throughout the state, Virginia high school students can benefit from the rich mosaic of arts and cultural opportunities in rural, urban, and suburban communities that are found in the Commonwealth (Bollino, 2023).

Music and dance education are further examples of how arts-based education might contribute to the definition of high-quality education based on deeper learning for Virginia Public Schools. The Virginia Music Education Association (VMEA) organizes events throughout the state. Instrumental and choral music students can also take advantage of applied music instruction during the school day and in after-school activities that culminate in competitions, concerts, and state-wide and international festivals throughout the year. Dance opportunities in ballet, jazz, modern, hip-hop, and crosscultural folk-dance traditions from around the world are offered in afterschool clubs and teams and may also be found in Virginia’s public magnet high schools or at The Governor’s School for the Arts. These opportunities can provide pre-professional training with global citizenship perspectives for possible careers in the arts.

Teaching and learning in K-12 education can be updated by the breakthroughs in neuroscience that could add to the conversation on the benefits of the theatre, music, and dance education in promoting deeper

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Arts in Education learning goals. Evidence-based neurological studies in an emergent new field of neuroaesthetics involving brain plasticity and how children learn when participating in an arts-based activity, for example, provides us with new insights on arts and learning research. Magsamen and Ross (2023) summarized research findings on what happens in the brain when a student learns a new piece of music, tries a new dance step, or learns how to play a character onstage. These arts-based learning activities increase the brain’s plasticity, which helps it to adapt to new experiences.

This evidence-based neurological research involving brain plasticity and how children learn can inform the work of education researchers and practitioners of deeper learning (Dwyer, 2011; Hess, 2023; Mehta, 2022). For example, Pellegrino and Hilton (2012) described deeper learning “as the process through which an individual becomes capable of taking what was learned in one situation and applying it to new situations (i.e., transfer)” (p. 5). Applying this concept to performing arts education infers that the individual develops expertise “through deeper learning (which often involves shared learning and interactions with others in a community)” (p. 5). The science behind neuroaesthetics cannot be ignored and needs to be addressed in our conversations regarding deeper learning and the purpose of education and the Standards of Learning in Virginia Public Schools.

These arts-based learning activities increase the brain’s plasticity, which helps it to adapt to new experiences.

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Arts in Education Virginia’s Accountability System The purpose of the Virginia Accountability System is to measure the shared purpose of education. This year, the Board of Education is reviewing the current system. In terms of arts-based education, VASCD advocates a “new accountability system [that] also includes the removal of indicators that are outside the control of the school (e.g., chronic absenteeism) and replaced with measures of engagement, achievement, and citizenship” (VASCD, 2023, p. 6). In our conceptualizing of a new Virginia accountability system, it is worth considering how arts and learning research makes connections to deeper learning goals of student engagement that are often not found to the same degree in core subjects (Jones et al., 2022; Mehta & Fine, 2019; Robinson, 2011). “Student motivation and engagement, including improved attendance, persistence, focused attention, heightened educational aspirations, and intellectual risk-taking” (Dwyer, 2011, p. 15) are some of the benefits of student participation in theatre, music, and dance education.

Arts-based education experiences often have broader benefits for student learning that extend beyond their coursework such as skill transfer to other subjects (Magsamen & Ross, 2023; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). “Studies have consistently found a positive association between participation in a variety of extracurriculars and subsequent academic, social, and psychological outcomes, including grades, test scores, mental health, and civic engagement” (Mehta and Fine, 2019, p. 261). “Extracurriculars are not just fun and engaging, but also highly aligned with a powerful mode of learning” (p. 306). Arts-based education experiences often have broader benefits for student learning that extend beyond their coursework such as skill transfer to other subjects (Magsamen & Ross, 2023; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). Deeper learning research points us in the direction to take a fresh look at the benefits of arts-based education throughout the school day elective classes and in out-of-school (OST) activities (Jones et al., 2022; Mehta & Fine, 2019; Robinson, 2011).

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Arts in Education Virginia‘s Assessment System VASCD advocates that Virginia’s student assessment system “should support and align with today’s student learning goals…[that] should be modernized to incorporate methodologies such as on-demand testing, interdisciplinary, portfolio, and performance-based assessments” (VASCD, 2023, p. 7). A revamped system for arts-based education must address shifts in perspective-taking, cultural norms, and the changing demographics of a more diverse student body in Virginia Public Schools. For example, we should consider moving in a direction of intended learning outcomes and meaningful assessments (Gareis & Grant, 2015) that consider reconceptualized notions of adolescent identity of students who comes from increasingly diverse backgrounds, cultures, religions, SES levels, ethnic and gender identities. Based on the assessment research of Brookhart et al., (2020) and Hough (2021), we might address changes in summative assessments of the arts in education to include the following steps: 1) Address changes in language, stereotypes, and literature to represent the mosaic of multi-cultural storytelling, music-making, and dance performances; 2) Select pieces for performance that are suitable to student voice; 3) Incorporate a growth-mindset approach to performance-based assessments that are more inclusive, fair, and unbiased; 4) Aim for rigorous standards that consider student differences; 5) Maintain credentialled adjudicators to increase inter-rater reliability and not accept jury examiners and judges based on convenience and availability; 6) Maintain openness and flexibility to the voices represented in the 21st-century classrooms of today.

These possible approaches to arts-based education could be the first steps in the conversation to revamp Virginia’s Assessment System for arts-based education in secondary schools.

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Arts in Education Outstanding Educators for Virginia’s Students VASCD’s next priority seeks to elevate the teaching profession and its professionals through a process of “autonomy with integrity” (VASCD, 2023, p. 8). This not only means compensating educators beyond low salaries and changes to the current Virginia Retirement System (VRS) benefits, but to provide an environment where educators are given “greater flexibility to make decisions in the interest of students while aligning their teaching with the Standards of Learning and must be trusted as assessors of student learning” (p. 8). For arts-based educators, having learning environments that allow teachers freedom to teach and assess the SOLs in creative and innovative ways (Robinson, 2011), might make significant change to reduce teacher attrition and maintain teacher retention over time (Fullan, 2020; Kraft & Lyon, 2022).

Personalized Learning for Educators As a follow-up priority to “autonomy with integrity” (VASCD, 2023, p. 9), VASCD recommends ways in which the teaching profession and its professionals may be elevated through a process of personalized learning for educators. “Educators should be able to learn in ways that are relevant to their jobs and able to be demonstrated in the ways they plan, deliver, and assess learning for their students” (p. 9). The rationale for this priority emphasizes meaningful professional development through microcredentialling and alternative pathways to recertification. For arts-based education, VASCD has identified a key component: “educators’ professional learning plans should address schoolwide priorities while accommodating educators’ individual needs and choices” (p. 9). Theatre, music, and dance teachers need to be included in professional development and certification procedures that align with their experience, training, and arts educational backgrounds. In this way, perhaps they may be more likely to stay in the profession as arts educators with regards to their individual needs and choices (Kraft & Lyon, 2022).

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Arts in Education Appropriate Guidance for the Use of AI in Education New technologies have emerged that will assist educators with unprecedented resources of artificial intelligence (AI). VASCD embraces the full potential of AI with guidelines to develop appropriate guardrails in Virginia Public Schools. “Virginia has an opportunity to be a nationwide leader in developing resources to maximize the potential of AI and [provide] guidance to protect our stakeholders…briefs, guidance documents, and model policies are essential for decision-making at the local level” (p. 10). For arts-based education, AI can support theatre, music, and dance teachers with tools that facilitate varying amounts of administrative tasks such as customized communication to parents, students, the school community, and the general public. For example, notices to parents for field trips, rehearsal schedules, fundraising opportunities, publicity, marketing, and ticket sale information can now be completed with the time-saving tools of AI as a co-constructor of content. This technology will only increase exponentially the availability of new resources to school divisions throughout the Commonwealth. The benefits of AI for arts educators to spend less time doing administrative tasks (Burns, 2023) and instead be able to teach live theatre, music, and dance classes will only make arts in education jobs more efficient by freeing up valuable time.

The main guardrails that must be navigated in AI’s future and K-12 schools are likely going to be learning how to properly attribute copyright law, licensing rights, and royalty fees for content that is not in the public domain when producing any school-based arts performances in the teaching and learning environment. AI’s challenges are not new to us. Isn’t this what the Screen Actors Guild -American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAGAFTRA), and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike is positing as well?

Professional writers and actors are continuing to raise concerns about AI. As of this writing, the Writers Guild of America ended a 146-day strike with a tentative contract agreement to include provisions that guarantee AI technology will not impinge upon writers’ credits and compensation for their creative content (del Barco, 2023).

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Arts in Education The future Implications of AI and arts in education will continue to unfold (Burns, 2023). For arts-based education in K-12 education, Virginia continues to offer high school students and their families a rich array of diverse opportunities to develop their talents and interests in the performing arts. The nexus between arts-based education and AI, however, will need to keep up with the explosion of emerging technologies.

Conclusion VASCD provides us with a compass to assist educators, policymakers, and lawmakers with the inherent value of theatre, music, and dance elective classes and after-school enrichment activities in Virginia Public Schools. It is useful to see how policy initiatives are interconnected with arts-based education in Virginia Public Schools. Links between policy and pedagogy might provide us with concrete tools based on new research and the science of arts and learning to elevate the education profession and prioritize the well-being and success of students (VASCD, 2023). It is important that we do not just focus on a back-to-basics curriculum in a post-pandemic world at the expense of reducing or possibly eliminating arts in education programs (Bollino, 2023). Stakeholders might reflect on VASCD’s policy priorities and how arts-based education contributes to a world-class education for every Virginia student (2023).

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Arts in Education References Bodilly, Susan J. (2008). Revitalizing arts education through community-wide coordination. Rand.

Bollino, A. (2023). Arts in Education Week. [Webinar]. September 21, 2023.

Americans for the Arts. https://www.artsactionfund.org/arts-educationweek-webinar-2023 Brookhart, S., William, D., McTighe, J., & Guskey, T. (2020). Eight Essential Principles for Improving Grading. Educational Leadership, 1–5. https://doi.org/http://www.ascd.org/publications/educationalleadership/sept20/vol78/num01/Eight-Essential-Principles-forImproving-Grading-aspx Burns, M. (2023). How to use ChatGPT: Time-saving tips for busy educators.

[Webinar]. June 15, 2023. ASCD. https://www.ascd.org/webinars/chatgpt-webinar del Barco, M. (2023, September 24). Hollywood writers reach a tentative deal with studios after nearly five month strike. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/24/1200770450/writers-strike-ends? utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content= 20230925&utm_term=8977549&utm_campaign=news&utm_id= 36754717&orgid=701&utm_att1= Dwyer, C. (2011). President’s committee on the arts and the humanities. U.S. Government. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED522818.pdf Fullan, M. (2020). Leading in a culture of change (2nd Ed.). Jossey-Bass.

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Guilbault, K.M. & McCormick, K.M. (2022). Three lessons learned from teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mensa Bulletin.

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Arts in Education Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development [VASCD].

(2023, September 1). VASCD 2023-2024 Policy Priorities. [Online forum post]. www.vascd.org White, A. M., Akiva. T., Colvin, S., & Lei, J. (2022). Integrating socioemotional learning: Creating space for afterschool educator expertise.

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VASCD Briefs The following pages contain a library of work from VASCD over the past 20 months. You will find access to our full briefs: Profile of a Virginia Classroom, 2nd Edition Assessment Summit Executive Summary 2023 General Assembly Priorities Considerations for Virginia’s Accountability System AI and ChatGPT Position 2023-2024 Policy Priorities

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VASCD's Profile of a Virginia Classroom The Profile of a Virginia Graduate describes the knowledge and skills that support students' readiness for life beyond school. For modern learners, this readiness requires deeper learning than standardized test-driven instruction provides.

Deeper learning not only equips students with the understanding and skills needed to solve problems and explore questions they have not encountered before but also leads them to metacognition - awareness and understanding of how they think and learn. This deeper learning is transferable to new challenges and situations.

Planning for Deeper Learning Implementing Quality Instruction Creating a Culture of Respect Redefining Teacher and Student Roles Embedding Formative Assessment and Feedback

Access the Profile HERE

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Read the Full Executive Summary HERE

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Access the Priorities HERE

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Read the Full Brief HERE

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Access the Position HERE vascd.org

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Read the Full Priorities Brief HERE

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CALL FOR 2024 JOURNAL ARTICLES! Do you have anything interesting or exciting about your work as a teacher or leader that you’d like to share with educators around the state? If so, consider writing for the VASCD Journal! The annual VASCD Journal highlights innovative classroom and school practices that showcase the work of individual educators, schools, or districts across all subject areas and topics. If there’s a story to tell, we’d love to hear it!

Practices can include instructional approaches, assessment strategies, curricular decisions, or professional development offerings, to name a few.

For example, authors might consider focusing on any of the following: Adjustments or modifications to existing curriculum to prioritize what is taught Innovative instructional approaches with or without the use of technology Assessment strategies that…

- provide consistent, ongoing feedback to students; - are passion-driven or personalized; - promote opportunities for deeper learning; and/or, - replace or augment traditional grading practices.

Strategies to support the social-emotional needs of students (or teachers) during these uncertain times Wrap-around supports for students and families Professional development that is relevant and meaningful We publish content from a variety of perspectives and topics, so please reach out if you have an idea you’d like to run by us! We are excited to hear from you!

Manuscripts are due

August 1, 2024 and should be sent to our Editor, Eric Carbaugh, at carbauem@jmu.edu.

Because the VASCD Journal is published in an online format, authors are encouraged to include videos, hyperlinks, podcasts, audio or animations to enhance their articles.

Manuscripts should, as closely as possible, follow format and reference guidelines outlined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association (APA).

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http://vascd.org

JOURNAL 2023 Volume 20