"Phrasing and posing a good question can be just as complex and difficult as the process of answering. It involves critical, creative, and reflective thinking from both students and educators."(Erik Francis)

As the author of Inquiring Minds Want to Learn: Posing GoodQuestions to Promote StudentInquiry, Francis explores strategies for how questions can set the stage for student engagement and learning. He shares the power of the questioning stems, "How do you_________? How can you _________? And How could you__________?"

Visit the Maverik Education site here.  

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Whether you are exploring the value (return on investment) of instructional coaching from the school board, central office, school principal or teacher perspective, an increase in student success must be central . Steve shares insights from his experiences with each of these perspectives with Kim Coffino on the @coachbetter podcast.

Listen to the entire CoachBetter podcast here.    

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While teaching in a team has always had benefits, today it is a requirement. The complexity of desired outcomes we are looking to produce can no longer be accomplished with the skills and resources of an individual. Almost all other industries and professions have recognized how employees and customers are best served by teams while schools have continued placing individual teachers in classrooms with sole responsibility for student success. Consider why instructional coaches and school leaders should be working to build and support teaching teams.

Watch "Teaching in Teams (What Schools Could Be)" here.

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What do students need their teacher to know and be able to do to address social and emotional learning? Dr. Maggie Broderick, the faculty lead for Social Emotional Learning at National University explores this question and others with Steve. She explores the issue that “where a teacher lives and works”, impacts the approach to social emotional teaching. What’s possible in a school that doesn’t have SEL curriculum or resources?

Email Dr. Maggie Broderick: [email protected]

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Two authors of Learning by Doing (Fourth Edition), Mike Mattos and Anthony Muhammad, discuss the powerful impact of PLCs. They define a PLC as an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. The discussion explores shifts in the fundamental purpose of PLCs, the use of assessment, responses when students don’t learn, teachers’ work, focus, school culture, and professional development. It offers an insightful dialogue.

Contact Anthony: [email protected]

Contact Mike: [email protected]

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While teams naturally build cohesion and effectiveness over time, it is possible to accelerate the team-building process. Research suggests that deliberate interventions, such as setting clear goals, establishing trust, and providing structured opportunities for collaboration, can help teams move through the stages  of team process faster and reach the “performing” stage more quickly. Consider intentional strategies that focus on establishing trust, clarity, and alignment early on, to speed up the development of high-functioning teams.  

Watch Patrick Lencioni's video here.  

Find Mitchel Resnick's "Projects, Peers, Passion, Play" here.

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Listen in on a conversation as a school leader shares his experiences working with colleagues to continually increase teacher learning for student learning though professional growth plans. The process continually developed from year to year as insights were gained, and hypotheses were formed and implemented.

Follow up with James Penstone on LinkedIn here.

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Understanding the desired outcome of a meeting is key to teachers knowing the participatory behaviors that are most productive. Everything being called a PLC interferes with participants being able to focus on the educator learning in true PLCs that leads to increased student success. In professional learning communities, purposeful teacher learning around how to increase student achievement is the focus. Teachers are collaboratively asking, "What do the students need us to learn?"

Listen to the podcast on PLCs with Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey here. 

Find Chris Jensen's guest blog, "Teaming and Workflow" here.  

Read the Finland Study, "PLC Characteristics" here. 

Read Zachary Herrmann's article, "Cooperate or Collaborate" here.

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Classrooms with less monologue and more dialogue are key to increasing student thinking and student learning. Peter Liljedahl recommends teachers using a strategy that publicly, randomly groups students.

The students visually seeing the groups form is an important element.  When having these random groups work at easy erase vertical boards, engagement and thinking increases. Students seeing each other’s work and the teacher seeing and hearing student thinking around the room all add opportunities for increased engagement in problem solving.

Mindshift: How to Get Kids Thinking Instead of Mimicking in Math Class

Find Laura Wheeler's blog here and read her article here. 

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Steve Ventura, co-author of "Achievement Teams: How a Better Approach to PLCs Can Improve Student Outcomes and Teacher Efficacy," identifies Achievement Teams as a structured, collaborative model that helps educators improve teaching practices and student outcomes through data-driven decision-making.  Collective Teacher Efficacy supports that working together can have a greater impact on student achievement than working individually. The role of instructional coaches and principals in support of Achievement Teams is also explored.

Visit Steve's website here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!