Introduction to the 10 Ways to Make Your Teaching More Effective, Sustainable, and Ethical I recently spent endless hours watching teacher TikTok videos. While not peer-reviewed, I feel I can call this serious research. The truth is I had a bad case of Covid and most teacher TikToks make me laugh out loud. But, amidst […]
Vocabulary acquisition is one of the most critical aspects of literacy; one of the defining characteristics of great readers and writers is a vast lexicon. This document contains the pillars of highly effective and explicit vocabulary instruction so that teachers can foster word knowledge gains, accelerate students’ reading growth, and increase students’ agency in reading, writing, and academics in general.
Effective and accountable student talk is arguably the most precious aspect of reading and writing development. And yet, if we were to measure the ratio of teacher talk to student talk in our classroom, we would very likely find that we, the teacher, talk more than the students. Or, in the cases where students may be talking more, we might also find that this discussion is less accountable, may not require the use of high-utility academic language, or may not effectively support high levels of language learning and cognitive processing. In their white paper: “Teaching for Rigor: A Call for a Critical Instructional Shift,” Robert Marzano and Michael Toth underscore a crucial shift most teachers will need to make to effectuate wide-spread increases in student achievement: students must work harder than teachers. Additionally, students need to engage in far more effective and accountable academic discourse. We need to subvert the ratio wherein teacher talk minutes outweigh student talk minutes. And, we need support in how to make student talk minutes worth the time and effort.
