Moving toward Cognitive Alignment: Effective Data Provides Feedback Teachers Can Use to Make Adjustments in Learning Activities That Result in Standards Alignment with Content and Cognitive Rigor

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Check out this list of effective teaching practices:

* Identifying similarities and differences

* Summarizing and note-taking

* Reinforcing effort/providing recognition

* Homework and practice

* Nonlinguistic representations

* Cooperative learning groups

* Setting objectives/providing feedback

* Generating and testing hypotheses

* Cues, questions, and advance organizers (Marzano, 2001)

Or this list of effective strategies for English learners:

* Introduce new material in a "whole-part-whole" framework

* Provide for active student involvement

* Maintain a print rich environment

* Access prior learning

* Provide for peer interaction

* Ensure that "meaning" precedes "form"

* Provide multiple opportunities to verbalize thoughts

* Use formative assessments

* Use models, demonstrations, realia, visuals

* Prompt and correct

(These are among the practices identified by the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz as essential for assisting English language learners.)

There is something these lists have in common. Overwhelmingly, the strategies require higher order thinking. However, in walkthroughs of now more than 50 schools, most of which are feeling …