School is a safe haven for children where vast worlds of learning open up to them. They learn and play surrounded by friends and with the example and guidance of teachers. The rituals and routines of the school day give children a sense of order, belonging, and common experience with their peers. Students connect with the values, rituals,…

The Center on Innovations in Learning (CIL) is a national content center established to work with regional comprehensive centers and state education agencies (SEA) to build SEAs' capacity to stimulate, select, implement, and scale up innovation in learning. This report is a collection of evidence ratings and practice briefs. The categories for…

This Solution-Finding Report provides information, requested by Kerri White, Arkansas/Louisiana Technical Assistance Coordinator for the South Central Comprehensive Center, on behalf of Kevin Beaumont, Director of Professional Learning at the Arkansas Department of Education's Division of Educator Effectiveness. Beaumont's request was seeking…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Intentionally and thoughtfully designed close reading lessons that select the just right, short, manageable, complex text worth revisiting and rereading at least three times for literal, structural, and inferred meaning followed by a…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Active student responding (ASR) strategies promote meaningful engagement by all students and have been shown to increase student participation and decrease classroom disruption while also providing real-time formative assessment…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Today's students are generally quite tech savvy. Most learners own a smartphone or other digital device and spend several hours a day using media or on the Internet. Teachers are becoming more tech savvy as well. Seven in ten teachers…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Personalization refers to a teacher's relationships with students and their families and the use of multiple instructional modes to scaffold each student's learning and enhance the student's personal competencies. Personalized learning…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Metacognition is one of the four essential personal competencies emphasized by the Center on Innovations in Learning. Simply stated, metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking. It involves self-reflection: on one's current…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. It seems logical that students would be more successful in learning if instruction is tailored, including the environment, pace, and presentation of concepts, to each student's needs, interests, and aspirations. However, personalizing…

Teachers are accustomed to gathering and analyzing data that show what a student knows, has learned, and has not yet learned. With this information, aggregated for the class, the teacher may alter her lesson plans to accelerate her pace or slow down to reteach. She may make notes to alter the lesson design for the next time she teaches the lesson.…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Norming is an important factor in developing positive classroom and school culture. Norms are specific expectations that teachers and students establish to manage behavior toward one another and the school environment. They are part of…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. The term relational suasion describes a common, human phenomenon: a person is open to guidance from someone he trusts. Any relationship of trust has this potential, and within formal education, it describes a student's openness to a…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Historically, the configuration of public education has been antithetical to variation for and across learners. The structure and process of today's educational system, having cut its teeth during the industrial revolution, emphasizes…

This topic brief is one in a series on personalized learning prepared for Conversations with Innovators, 2018. Student voice is a critical element in implementing student-driven personalized learning. Yet it is one that is often marginalized or ignored. Student-driven personalization is a critical concept in the pursuit of a personalized learning…

This Solution-Finding Report provides information, requested by Anushka Shirali with the Northeast Comprehensive Center|RMC Research, on behalf of New York State, for resources on research-based best practices and instructional strategies so the districts that wish to use technology to create a positive learning environment for their diverse…