Author: Curtis Griffin

Chapter 1 overview

Curtis Griffin

This section focuses on instructional practices that are based on rigorous intervention research conducted primarily over the last decade in reading, writing, mathematics, and cognitive science and reasoning. Many of these research- based instructional strategies apply across various content areas and are designed to enhance students’ content area learning, increase engagement, and maximize students’ ability to recall, apply, and synthesize information. For example, summarization strategies can be implemented in social studies, science, or language arts; class-wide discussion practices can be used in mathematics to explore problem-solving methods and enhance reasoning ability.

When these strategies are implemented school wide, students experience consistency (for example, one strategy for identifying main idea rather than seven) and have the opportunity to apply and practice strategies in various contexts. These repeated exposures help students generalize the use of these strategies to other areas—in and outside of school and beyond the middle grades.

The content dimensions included in this section on research-based instruction are
• Reading and Reading Interventions
• Writing and Writing Interventions
• Mathematics and Mathematics Interventions
• Cognitive Science and Advanced Reasoning

Practical tools for implementing these practices can be found on the following web page:
http://www.middleschoolinstitute.org/toolkits.

Dropout Prevention Overview

Curtis Griffin

Dropout prevention strategies, such as using data to identify students at risk of dropping out and providing support to improve academic performance, have been proven to reduce the risk of students disengaging from and dropping out of school.

Overview of Dropout Prevention Principles and Practices

Principle 1: Use data systems to help identify students who are at risk of falling off the path to high school graduation.

  • Practice 1: Use data to identify incoming students with histories of academic problems, truancy, behavioral problems, and retention.
  • Practice 2: Continually monitor the academic and social performance of all students.
  • Practice 3: Monitor students’ sense of engagement and belonging in school.

Principle 2: Assign adult advocates to students who are at risk of falling off the path to high school graduation.

  • Practice 1: Select adults who are committed to student success.
  • Practice 2: Keep caseloads low.
  • Practice 3: Match students with adult advocates purposefully.
  • Practice 4: Provide training to advocates on working with students, parents, and the school staff.
  • Practice 5: Establish a regular time in the school day or week for advocates to meet with students.

Principle 3: Provide academic support and enrichment to improve academic performance.

  • Practice 1: Provide individual or small group support in test-taking skills, study skills, or targeted subject areas, such as reading, writing, or mathematics.
  • Practice 2: Provide extra study time and opportunities for credit recovery and accumulation through after-school, Saturday school, or summer programs.

Principle 4: Implement programs to improve behavior and social skills.

  • Practice 1: Use adult advocates to help students establish attainable academic and behavioral goals.
  • Practice 2: Recognize student accomplishments.
  • Practice 3: Teach strategies to strengthen problem-solving and decision-making skills.
  • Practice 4: Establish partnerships with community-based program providers and other agencies, such as social services, welfare, mental health, and law enforcement.

Principle 5: Personalize the learning environment and instructional process.

  • Practice 1: Implement team teaching and smaller classes.
  • Practice 2: Use the school schedule to create extended time in the classroom.
  • Practice 3: Foster after-school activities and encourage participation in them.

School Climate Overview

Curtis Griffin

Successful schools create a shared vision for high academic achievement and student success that reflects the vision of the community and is supported by the entire school staff. Schoolwide efforts to increase student attendance, promote positive behaviors, and increase student effort allow students to take full advantage of classroom instruction.

Overview of School Climate, Culture, and Partnerships

Principle 1: Create a can do school culture marked by a shared mission among the staff members that centers on academic achievement and a shared belief that they can collectively enable students to succeed.

  • Practice 1: Organize the school around teams of teachers working collectively with a common set of students that is stable and of a manageable number.
  • Practice 2: Establish a distributive leadership structure so that all key stakeholders are involved in school decision making and committed to do what it takes to raise student achievement, with time and effort invested in mission building among the staff.

Principle 2: Create a school environment in which mutually supportive relationships between students, teachers, and parents can develop.

  • Practice 1: Use surveys to gather information on school climate and culture.
  • Practice 2: Use teams of parents, teachers, administrators, and students to analyze survey data and to create and implement action plans based on the needs the survey identified.

Principle 3: Engage in schoolwide efforts to increase student attendance, promote positive behaviors, and increase student effort (where needed).

  • Practice 1: Measure and analyze data on chronic absenteeism, suspensions, and sustained mild misbehavior.
  • Practice 2: When chronic absenteeism and student misbehavior are at significant levels, implement evidence-based, whole-school strategies to prevent and reduce these behaviors.

Principle 4: Focus the school-family partnership on communicating to students the importance of high academic and educational aspirations and showing the steps that need to be taken to actualize these aspirations.

  • Practice 1: Provide parents, supportive adults, and students with information on the important role the middle grades play in high school readiness, high school graduation, and postsecondary success.
  • Practice 2: Create and provide parents and students with ready access to high school readiness benchmarks.
  • Practice 3: Make adult participation a critical part of your process.

Principle 5: Conduct student-need and asset analyses and select community partners and supports based on student need. Design and manage a plan to link community supports to success in school and use common metrics to gauge their impact.

  • Practice 1: Create and maintain on-site, in-school coordination and monitoring of community support programs.

Student Behavior Overview

Curtis Griffin

A schoolwide behavior support system can improve attendance and behavior by instructing students in a consistent manner, reaching out to students who struggle in behavioral areas, intervening with research- and evidence-based interventions, and recognizing students and classes that reach their attendance and behavioral goals.

Overview of the Principles and Practices

Principle 1: Consistently teach, model, and recognize appropriate and positive academic and social behaviors across all classrooms.

  • Practice 1: Modify and reduce maladaptive classroom behavior through consistent teaching, modeling, and recognition of positive classroom behaviors.

Principle 2: Provide classroom instruction in self-monitoring and regulation, academic organization and study skills, goal setting, persistence, and healthy behaviors.

  • Practice 1: Teach academic and healthy behaviors that support success in school.
  • Practice 2: Embed the self-monitoring and regulation, academic organization and study skills, goal-setting, persistence, and healthy behavior skills into the academic courses students take throughout the middle grades.
  • Practice 3: Provide students with opportunities to practice and employ these skills through service learning projects, as well as high interest and participatory electives with strong cognitive content like drama, debate, and robotics.

Principle 3: Establish processes for identifying problem behaviors early, diagnosing their causes, identifying e ective interventions, applying the interventions at the scale and intensity required, and monitoring their effectiveness.

  • Practice 1: Implement an intervention framework generalized to student attendance, behavior, and course performance.
  • Practice 2: Connect teachers to one another or to mentors to help with ongoing problem solving, student behavior, and any other classroom management needs.

Principle 4: Make the value of schooling personal.

  • Practice 1: Engage students in activities that allow them to reflect on the influence school will have on their future life and goals.

Principle 5: Create a sense of belonging for all students.

  • Practice 1: Include information on social integration in middle school transition programs.
  • Practice 2: Carefully frame academic tasks to reduce the risk of stereotype threats.

Principle 6: Connect students’ academic success to effort.

  • Practice 1: Set high expectations for students and clearly communicate those expectations and the belief in their potential to succeed when providing feedback to students.
  • Practice 2: Eliminate the use of indiscriminate incentive programs and unearned praise.

extended learning time overview

Curtis Griffin

Successful middle schools provide students with opportunities to learn outside the school day that connect and align with students’ existing academic programs.

Overview of Principles and Practices

Principle 1: Align the Extended Learning Time (ELT) program academically with the school day.

  • Practice 1: Use ELT program coordinators to develop relationships and maintain ongoing communication between schools and the ELT program about student academic performance and personal and social issues.
  • Practice 2: Designate a school staff person to coordinate communication with ELT programs.
  • Practice 3: Connect ELT instruction to school instruction by identifying school goals and learning objectives.
  • Practice 4: Coordinate with the school to identify staff for ELT programs.

Principle 2: Maximize student participation and attendance.

  • Practice 1: Design program features to meet the needs and preferences of students and parents.
  • Practice 2: Promote awareness of the ELT program within schools and to parents.
  • Practice 3: Use attendance data to identify students facing difficulties in attending the program.

Principle 3: Adapt instruction to individual and small group needs.

  • Practice 1: Use formal and informal assessment to inform academic instruction.
  • Practice 2: Break students into small groups and use one-on-one tutoring if possible.
  • Practice 3: Provide professional development and ongoing instructional support to ELT instructors.

Principle 4: Provide engaging learning experiences.

  • Practice 1: Make learning relevant by incorporating practical examples and connecting instruction to student interests and experiences.
  • Practice 2: Make learning active through collaborative learning and hands-on academic activities.
  • Practice 3: Build adult-student relationships among ELT program participants.

Principle 5: Assess program performance and use the results for program improvement.

  • Practice 1: Develop an evaluation plan for ELT programs.
  • Practice 2: Collect program and student performance data.
  • Practice 3: Analyze the data and use findings for program improvement.