II-A: Instruction

1. High Expectations and Support: Supports all students to meet or exceed high expectations, produce high-quality work, and develop self-awareness and skills for independent learning by:

   • Using evidence-based pedagogical practices to provide equitable opportunities for grade-level learning.

   • Providing supports, scaffolds, and tools to meet students' needs.

   • Providing clear criteria for success (e.g., models, rubrics, exemplars).

   • Reinforcing perseverance and effort with challenging content and tasks.

2. Engaging Instruction: Engages all students as active participants in their own learning of meaningful, standards-aligned and grade-appropriate content by:

   • Providing opportunities for students to make choices, explore topics and apply learning in culturally sustaining ways, and through real-world, interactive contexts.

   • Building on students' strengths, interests, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and prior knowledge to motivate learning and support students' information processing.

   • Facilitating cooperative learning with equitable student participation in discussion.

   • Integrating digital tools and educational technology that enhances learning experiences and promotes the development of digital literacy skills.

3. Inclusive Instruction: Accommodates and supports individual differences in all students' learning needs, abilities, interests, and levels of readiness, including those of students with disabilities (in accordance with relevant IEPs or 504 plans), English learners and former English learners, academically advanced students, and students who have been historically marginalized, by:

   • Using appropriate inclusive practices, such as tiered supports, educational and assistive technologies, scaffolded instruction, and use of students' native language to make grade-level content accessible and affirming for all students.

   • Providing students with multiple ways to learn content and demonstrate understanding.

4. Critical Thinking: Develops students' abilities to think critically, ask questions, and analyze sources, perspectives, and biases in order to deepen learning and make connections between the content and real-world problems and events (e.g., issues of identity, equity, power, and justice).

Last Updated: February 6, 2024