Search Results: (46-60 of 67 records)
| Pub Number | Title |  Date |
|---|---|---|
| REL 2016158 | Getting It Right: Reference Guides for Registering Students With Non-English Names
Getting a student’s name right is the first step in welcoming him or her to school. Incorrectly entering student names can mean that the same student is listed in different databases in various ways and often with incomplete records. Consequently, students who are eligible for services (for example, English learner support) can be unidentified or overlooked. This set of naming conventions guides can serve as a reference for accurately and consistently entering students’ names in school, district, and state databases as well as address and greet parents and other family members in a culturally responsive and respectful way. The guides are available for students with home languages of Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese. |
6/14/2016 |
| REL 2016129 | Self-study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions
The Self-study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions is a tool to help district and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing early literacy interventions for kindergarten, grade1 and grade 2 students. This guide is designed to promote reflection about current strengths and challenges in planning for implementation of early literacy interventions, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement. This self-study guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion. |
4/5/2016 |
| REL 2016108 | An educator's guide to questionnaire development
Educators have many decisions to make and it’s important that they have the right data to inform those decisions and access to questionnaires that can gather that data. This guide, developed by REL Central and based on work done through separate projects with the Wyoming Office of Public Instruction and the Nebraska Department of Education, provides educators with a process for developing questionnaires. Principals, superintendents, state-level personnel, or other school or district personnel can use this guide when they need to make a decision about an education policy or practice but (1) lack the information needed to make that decision and (2) lack a preexisting questionnaire that can be used to gather the information. This guide can help these educators collect information about attitudes, perceptions, or factual information to inform their decisions. |
1/7/2016 |
| REL 2016100 | The Examining Evaluator Feedback Survey
This report presents a survey tool, developed by REL Central at Marzano Research, designed to gather information from teachers about their perceptions of and responses to evaluator feedback. District or state administrators can use this survey to systematically collect teacher perceptions on five key aspects of evaluation feedback: (1) feedback usefulness, (2) feedback accuracy, (3) evaluator credibility, (4) access to resources related to feedback, and (5) teacher response to feedback. The survey tool was developed using an iterative process that included expert review, cognitive interviews, and a pilot study. Evidence regarding the reliability and validity of the survey tool is also reported. |
11/12/2015 |
| REL 2015105 | Professional learning communities facilitator's guide for the What Works Clearinghouse practice guide: Teaching academic content and literacy to English learners in elementary and middle school
The Professional Learning Communities Facilitator's Guide is designed to assist teams of educators in applying the evidence-based strategies presented in the Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School educator's practice guide, produced by the What Works Clearinghouse. Through this collaborative learning experience, educators will expand their knowledge base as they read, discuss, share, and apply key ideas and strategies to help K–8 English learners acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically. The facilitator's guide employs a five-step cycle that encourages professional learning communities to debrief, define, explore, experiment, and reflect and plan. This cycle is supplemented with activities, handouts, readings, and videos. Participants will develop a working knowledge of some of the best practices in the English learner practice guide through analysis of teaching vignettes and other interactive activities. Included in the toolkit of materials are activities along with 31 handouts and 23 videos. Four of the videos provide a narrative overview of each of the four recommendations in the practice guide, and the remaining videos show actual classrooms from three different grade levels putting the recommendations into practice. |
7/7/2015 |
| REL 2015057 | Logic models for program design, implementation, and evaluation: Workshop toolkit
The Logic Model Workshop Toolkit is designed to help practitioners learn the purpose of logic models, the different elements of a logic model, and the appropriate steps for developing and using a logic model for program evaluation. Topics covered in the sessions include an overview of logic models, the elements of a logic model, an introduction to evaluation, uses of a logic model to develop evaluation questions and identify indicators of success, and strategies to determine the right evaluation design for your program or policy. The toolkit, which includes an agenda, slide deck, participant workbook and facilitator’s manual, was delivered to three REL-NEI research alliances: the Northeast Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance, the Urban School Improvement Alliance, and the Puerto Rico Research Alliance for Dropout Prevention. |
5/5/2015 |
| REL 2015080 | Instructional improvement cycle: A teacher's toolkit for collecting and analyzing data on instructional strategies
This toolkit, developed by REL Central in collaboration with York Public Schools in Nebraska, provides a process and tools to help teachers use data from their classroom assessments to evaluate promising practices. The toolkit provides teachers with guidance on how to deliberately apply and study one classroom strategy over the course of one unit and systematically document and compare results to consider the effects of a given instructional strategy on student learning. The process for testing the strategy uses a scientific approach by comparing the performance of students who receive the strategy to the performance of a similar group of students who do not receive the strategy. Teachers can use this information to reflect on their practice and consider adjustments to their instruction to increase student learning. |
5/5/2015 |
| REL 2015063 | Toolkit for a workshop on building a culture of data use
The Culture of Data Use Workshop Toolkit helps school and district teams apply research to practice as they establish and support a culture of data use in their educational setting. The field-tested workshop toolkit guides teams through a set of structured activities to develop an understanding of data-use research in schools and to analyze examples from practice. Teams learn to apply these concepts to enhance their own culture of data use and outline effective next steps. The conceptual framework of the toolkit draws on five research-based elements known to support an effective culture of data use, and supporting materials—a facilitator's guide and agenda, a slide deck, and participant handouts—provide workshop facilitators with all the necessary materials to lead this process in their own setting. |
4/21/2015 |
| REL 2015069 | A Guide for Monitoring District Implementation of Educator Evaluation Systems
This guide was developed to provide guidance to states or districts wishing to monitor implementation of educator evaluation systems. It describes a three-step process: develop state guidelines for educator evaluation systems; develop data collection methods; and determine adherence criteria and review data against criteria. The process was developed by REL Central, working with personnel from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MO DESE). MO DESE is using the resulting process and tools to collect data about how districts are implementing educator evaluation systems as aligned to their principles of effective evaluation systems. The guide includes a description of how the process was implemented in Missouri, as well as tools developed to collect information about policies and practices in districts related to their educator evaluation systems. The tools include: Missouri’s principles of effective evaluation systems; a Policy Data Collection Checklist; surveys to collect practice data from teachers, principals, mentors, and district administrators; rating guides to assess implementation against criteria; and templates for reporting the results. |
4/6/2015 |
| REL 2015070 | Summer Reading Camp Self-study Guide
This guide is designed to facilitate self-studies of planning and implementation of state-required summer reading camp programs for grade 3 students who scored at the lowest level on the state reading assessment. It provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion that may improve instruction and increase the number of students meeting the grade-level standard by the end of the summer reading camp. The guide is composed of a scoring guide and consensus rating form. The scoring guide includes guiding questions and potential sources of evidence. After completion of the scoring guide, a facilitator will guide the self-study team through a consensus rating process to come to agreement on the current status of implementation in the district or school and planning for next steps. The content of the scoring guide is based on eight areas that research indicates are important for summer reading camp implementation: teacher effectiveness and qualifications; student selection and enrollment; instructional time; content and instruction; assessment selection and data use; mentoring and/or paraprofessional use; learning environment; and communication with administration, staff, and parents. |
2/12/2015 |
| REL 2015056 | A Practitioner's Guide to Implementing Early Warning Systems
To stem the tide of students dropping out, many schools and districts are turning to early warning systems (EWS) that signal whether a student is at risk of not graduating from high school. While some research exists about establishing these systems, there is little information about the actual implementation strategies that are being used across the country. This report summarizes the experiences and recommendations of EWS users throughout the United States. |
1/6/2015 |
| REL 2015043 | Practitioner Data Use in Schools: Workshop Toolkit
The Practitioner Data Use Workshop Toolkit is designed to help practitioners systematically and accurately use data to inform their teaching practice. The toolkit includes an agenda, slide deck, participant workbook, and facilitator’s guide and covers the following topics: developing data literacy, engaging in a cycle of inquiry, accessing and analyzing available data, identifying and creating student goals, and using data to make action plans about instructional decisions. The workshop was used with three REL-NEI research alliances: the Northeast Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance, the Urban School Improvement Alliance, and the Northeast Rural Districts Research Alliance, and can be customized for use in other contexts. |
12/29/2014 |
| REL 2014042 | The College Readiness Data Catalog Tool: User Guide
The College Readiness Data Catalog Tool and User Guide enable states, districts and other educational entities to assess the presence of college readiness indicators in extant data sets and identify gaps that may present challenges in developing future indicator systems. The College Readiness Data Catalog tool is a flexible Excel workbook that provides a shell for organizing and tracking student data relevant for measuring college readiness. The user guide also includes a sample data catalog summary report and a template for a data catalog summary report. Created by REL Northeast and Islands for the US Virgin Islands College and Career Readiness Research Alliance, the tool may be used by any educational organization to determine whether it has sufficient data to study college readiness indicators. |
9/24/2014 |
| REL 2014035 | Speak Out, Listen Up! Tools for Using Student Perspectives and Local Data for School Improvement
Listening closely to what students say about their school experiences can be beneficial to educators for understanding and addressing school-related topics and problems and rethinking policies and practices. The purpose of this toolkit is to provide educators with a purposeful and systematic way to elicit and listen to student voice to inform school improvement efforts. School improvement is complex work that relies on multiple sources of information to frame challenges and address and monitor change efforts. Student voice brings an additional, important source of information to these efforts. The toolkit offers three tools. ASK (Analyzing Surveys with Kids) involves students in analyzing and interpreting survey results associated with a school-related topic or problem and then producing suggestions for school improvement. Inside-Outside Fishbowl organizes a special kind of focus group in which students and educators trade roles as speakers and listeners during a facilitated discussion of a school-related topic or problem, and jointly develop an action plan. S4 (Students Studying Students’ Stories) guides a digital storytelling process in which students produce and analyze videotaped interviews of other students about a school-related topic or problem and then host forums with educators to suggest improvements. The toolkit includes detailed information about how the tools work, the questions they address, the number and types of participants needed, the amount of time required, space and materials considerations, and directions for using the tools. It also includes a tool template so schools and districts can create new student voice tools for their particular needs and interests. |
7/29/2014 |
| REL 2014014 | Developing a Coherent Research Agenda: Lessons from the REL Northeast & Islands Research Agenda Workshops
This report describes the approach that REL Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) used to guide its eight research alliances toward collaboratively identifying a shared research agenda. A key feature of their approach was a two-workshop series, during which alliance members created a set of research questions on a shared topic of education policy and/or practice. This report explains how REL-NEI conceptualized and organized the workshops, planned the logistics, overcame geographic distance among alliance members, developed and used materials (including modifications for different audiences and for a virtual platform), and created a formal research agenda after the workshops. The report includes links to access the materials used for the workshops, including facilitator and participant guides and slide decks. |
7/10/2014 |
Page 4
of 5