The Standards For Effective Pedagogy: The TOOL

Standard &

Identifier

Definition

Teacher Indicators

Standard 1:

Joint Productive Activity 

Identifier:

Teachers and students producing together

Facilitate learning through joint productive activity among teachers and students

Teacher Indicators for JPA: 

• Designs instructional activities requiring student collaboration to accomplish a joint product
• Matches the demands of the joint productive activity to the time available for accomplishing them
• Arranges classroom seating to accomodate students' individual and group needs to communicate and work jointly
• Participates with students in joint productive activity
• Organizes students in a variety of groupings, such as by friendships, mixed academic ability, language, project, or interest, to promote interaction
• Plans with students how to work in groups and move from one activity to another, such as from large group introduction to small group activity, for clean-up, dismissal, and the like
• manages student and teacher access to materials and technology to facilitate joint productive activity
• Monitors and supports student collaboration in positive ways  

Standard 2:

Language and Literacy Development 

Identifier:

Developing Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum

Develop competence in the language and literacy of instruction throughout all instructional activities

Teacher Indicators for LLD: 

• Listens to student talk about familiar topics such as home and community
• Responds to students' talk and questions, making "in-flight" changes during conversations that directly relate to students' comments.
• Assists writeen and oral language development through modeling, eliciting, probing, restating, clarifying, questioning, praising, etc., in purposeful conversations and writing. 
• Interacts with students in ways that respect students' preferences for speaking that may be different from the teacher's, such as wait-time, eye contact, turn-taking, and spotlighting
• Connects student language with literacy and content area knowledge through speaking, listening, reading, and writing activities
• Encourages students to use content vocabulary to express their understanding
• Provides frequent opportunity for students to interact with each other and the teacher during instructional activities
• Encourages students' use of first and second languages in instructional activities

Standard  3:

Contextualization

Identifier: Meaning Making: Connecting School to Student's Lives

Contextualize teaching and curriculum in the experiences and skills of home and community

Teacher Indicators of Contextualization: 

• Begins activities with what students already know from home, community, and school
• Designs instructional activities that are meaningful to students in terms of local community norms and knowledge
• Acquires knowledge of local norms and knowledge by talking to students, parents or family members, community members, and by reading pertinent documents
• Assists students to connect and apply their learning to home and community
• Plans jointly with students to design community-based learning activites
• Provides opportunities for parents or families to participate in classroom instructional activities
• Varies activities to include students' preferences, from collective and cooperative to individual and competitive
• Varies styles of conversation and participation to include students' cultural preferences, such as co-narration, call-and-response, and choral, among others. 

Standard  4:

Challenging Activities 

Identifier:

Teaching Complex Thinking

Challenge students toward cognitive complexity

Teacher Indicators for Challenging Activities:

• Assures that students-- for each instructional topic-- see the whole picture as a basis for understanding the parts
• Presents challenging standards for student performance
• Designs instructional tasks that advance student understanding to more complex levels
• Assists students to accomplish more complex understanding by building from their previous success
• Gives clear, direct feedback about how student performance compares with the challenging standards 

Standard  5:

Instructional Conversations

Identifier:

Teaching through Conversation

Engage students through dialogue, especially the instructional conversation

Teacher Indicators of Instructional Conversations:

• Arranges the classroom to accommodate conversation between the teacher and a small group of students on a regular and frequent basis
• Has a clear academic goal that guides conversation with students
• Ensures that student talk occurs at higher rates than teacher talk
• Guides conversation to include students' views, judgments, and rationales using text evidence and other substantive support
• Ensures that all students are included in the conversation according to their preferences 
• Listens carefully to assess levels of students' understanding
• Assists students' learning throughout the conversation by questioning, restating, praising, encouraging, etc. 
• Guides the students to prepare a product that indicates the Instructional Conversation's goals was achieved