What two or three things should a k-12 education guarantee each learner to ensure student success?

As you read this you probably have a lot of ideas floating through your head about the amazing learning activities you’re going to experience with your students. Whether it is an idea you read about in an article, something a colleague of yours has tried, or an awesome PD session you’ve attended, it’s time to put those concepts into action! Regardless of how far into, or away from, the start of the year you are, I’d like to share 7 simple ways that you can start increasing student success in your classroom today!

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1. Set Systems and Routines:
2. Let Students Set The Pace:
3. Increase Student Engagement:
4. Keep ALL Stakeholders Involved:
5. Increase Student Ownership:
6. Set High Expectations:
7. Have Fun:
1. A Common Curriculum Calendar
2. Dedicated Time
3. Collaboration
4. Formative Assessments and Data Analysis
5. Involved and Informed Leadership

1. Set Systems and Routines:

I don’t want to beat a dead horse here ,or echo the wisdom of Wong and Wong, but the key to any successful instructional environment is systems and routines. Students will do better in an environment that is safe, predictable, and positive in nature. I would also argue, based on experience and observations, that it is a foundation of systems and routines that can allow for greater student freedom in the classroom. By providing this type of environment you will allow your students to thrive!

2. Let Students Set The Pace:

If you did an evaluation of the most common reasons why management issues occur, or what causes student frustration to increase, or if you reviewed the most common interventions for special needs students, pace would be at the core of it all.

Many students will disengage or act out because they are either bored because they have already mastered the material, or they are frustrated and lost due to the pace of the class being to fast. This is the exact reason why self-paced and mastery learning strategies have begun to increase in prevalence. More importantly, we are at a stage where technology can allow these strategies to be more effective and easy to manage than ever. By making this single shift you can drastically increase the success of your students and reduce management issues at the same time.

3. Increase Student Engagement:

Regardless of how long you’ve been teaching, or how many systems and routines you have in your class, the single best way to reduce management issues and increase student buy-in is with engaging content and learning opportunities. This means putting down the text book, and looking for real-world connections and dynamic interactive lessons to provide your students with. The best instructional framework and management in the world is never going to make “Chapter 3” interesting for your students. It’s our job as educators to make the content come alive and have meaning for our learners. When this happens, they will work harder and learn like never before.

4. Keep ALL Stakeholders Involved:

One of the quickest ways to ruin a school year is having your colleagues, administrators, parents either questioning what you’re doing or providing extra work in the form of meetings, calls, and sometimes awkward or uncomfortable discussions. The easiest way to avoid this is to keep them all involved and informed as to what’s going on in your classroom. Being transparent about what’s going on and what you’re doing with your learners, and being pro-active about communicating these things, will help you avoid a lot of confusion and headache. Inviting stakeholders into your room is another way you can increase their trust and understanding of the amazing work you are doing! This is a simple thing you can do to help yourself stay focused on what matters: student growth!

5. Increase Student Ownership:

Increasing student ownership is one of the hardest but most powerful things you can do to improve your classroom. By shifting this dynamic your students will more freely ask questions, express their concerns, and more importantly feel empowered to do their best, fail, and try again. When students own their learning and have more control, they simply learn more. You can do this in many ways, but you can start small with peer to peer tutoring, self-paced learning, or even having your students help create some of those systems and routines at the beginning of the year. It’s hard sometimes, but the more you can let your students own their experiences, the more they will mean to them in your classroom.

6. Set High Expectations:

Before you call me out about a “dead horse being beaten”, I know this one is a bit cliche. However, it doesn’t mean that setting high expectations isn’t important to student success. There’s even a large amount of research to support it. The way that you see your students and their potential can have a direct impact on how you treat, interact, and instruct them. Setting high expectations and making those expectations explicit for learners can drastically increase their achievement.

7. Have Fun:

One of the most important lessons I have learned as a teacher is that my students can ALWAYS tell when I was “faking it.” Whether I was having an off day, frustrated from a meeting, or maybe just tired at the end of a week, they can see it. When we just go through the motions, students not only feel it, but react to it in the same way. At the core of every single educator I’ve met is a love for what they do and a passion for sharing knowledge and the gift of learning with their students.

I can’t stress enough how having fun with your students, laughing with them, making mistakes, and just enjoying what you do will improve your classroom. When you show your learners that you love spending time with them, they will appreciate it, and that is the foundation of the relationships you will build. It’s hard sometimes to keep this up, especially when times get tough, but find joy in the small things, silly chuckles, and moments of brilliance you create with your students. We have the best job in the world. One of the hardest, but the best nonetheless. Never forget to enjoy every single moment you have with your students, even if it’s just a simple smile.

There are hundreds of other things that could have made this list, but these are the foundations of the most successful classrooms I’ve ever seen.

After Arizona's Mesquite Elementary School developed Reteach and Enrich, a program to provide additional instruction time for students struggling with math, test scores shot to the top and have stayed there ever since.

Photo credit: Zachary Fink

Teachers have specific weekly curricular objectives; students who need more time for mastery receive an additional half-hour of differentiated instruction every day.

Mesquite Elementary School, in Tucson, Arizona, attributes much of its turnaround in student performance -- and their ongoing success -- to their Reteach and Enrich program. Within the first year of implementation, even before teachers had worked out all the kinks, Mesquite went from a "performing" school (as labeled by the state of Arizona) in 2002 to an "excelling" school, the highest ranking, in 2003. The school has maintained an "excelling" status ever since.

The goal of the program is to give students the opportunity to master essential skills and knowledge before they move on to the next level. Here's the approach:

Each week has defined curricular objectives.
Teachers assess students on those objectives at the end of the week.
Based on assessment results, teachers assign students to either reteach or enrich sessions for the following week.
Beginning the following Monday, students attend either a 30-minute reteach or enrich session every day.
- Reteach: Teachers reteach objectives using different lessons for students who need additional time for mastery. The teacher whose students performed best on the previous week's assessment teaches that week's reteach students. Students stay with that teacher for the daily half-hour sessions the whole week to minimize transition.
- Enrich: Teachers expand on objectives for students who have mastered the basics. Students in the enrich class rotate to a different teacher each day so they can experience varying teaching styles as well as learn with different peers.

Reteach and Enrich (R&E) is highly replicable; every school in the Vail School District has implemented the program, and it continues to lead to improved student performance. However, there are some essential elements that are key to making it work.

1. A Common Curriculum Calendar

R&E depends on a shared set of clearly defined curricular objectives that are scheduled out for the entire year. This means that for any given week within each grade, all the teachers are teaching the same objectives. However, they are not necessarily teaching the same way; the instructional approach is left up to each individual teacher. The calendar keeps them on track by setting the pace so that teachers know that by year's end they will have taught -- and students will have learned -- all the essential standards. Says Vail superintendent Calvin Baker, "When we hold students accountable for very specific standards, and we expect all of them to know that standard, then we hold ourselves accountable for getting that job done."

2. Dedicated Time

Everyday at Mesquite, from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m., the whole school is involved in R&E. In addition to this daily half hour, R&E requires time for teachers to review and assess student data as well as plan instruction to meet each child's needs, both generally and within the program. At Mesquite, each grade has dedicated common planning time for teachers while their students are in "specials" (e.g., P.E., computer lab, library time, and so on).

To fit all that in, time management is also of the essence, right down to classroom transition time. For R&E, all the students transfer from their regular classroom to their assigned reteach or enrich room in under a minute, thanks in part to the convenient setup of their classrooms around a common area (see video below).

3. Collaboration

Collaboration is a key part of Mesquite's culture and is essential to R&E. Students rotate to different teachers during R&E, so every teacher must know every student in his or her grade level. Teachers share information about their students' progress so that all the teachers in a grade level share ownership of every child's education. They plan together and share resources and lesson plans that have been successful, and they seek insight from one another on lesson plans that were less effective.

4. Formative Assessments and Data Analysis

Early on, the teachers at Mesquite created their own weekly assessments; now there is a team of teachers at the district level that writes them. The assessments are short -- usually just five questions on one objective -- but they provide consistent insight into students' progress so that teachers can address any needs promptly. Diane Samorano, Mesquite's student achievement teacher, tracks the assessment data and the data from schoolwide screenings and quarterly benchmarks. She meets with the teachers every two weeks to review the latest results, to identify students who are struggling, and to help teachers plan instruction accordingly.

5. Involved and Informed Leadership

In order to address a variety of student needs, teachers must have access to resources, and principals must know what's going on in the classroom. Katie Dabney, principal at Mesquite, routinely visits classes, converses with students, and attends every data meeting for all grades. "As instructional leader, I have to stay on top of the data and be actively involved in searching for students who are at risk or need an extra challenge."

601 | Public, Suburban$6,252 School • $6,815 District • $7,609 State22%

12% special needs 3% English-language learners

Data is from the 2010-11 academic year.