A good question can spark curiosity and fuel creativity, understanding, and innovation. In fact, the ability to ask one’s own questions may be the single most important thinking skill students can learn at any stage of their educational journey. Yet it is rarely deliberately taught to all students. How can we build the capacity for all students to take greater ownership and develop higher order thinking skills through question formulation? Learn the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), a simple, powerful strategy to teach students how to ask, refine, and use their own questions. On their own initiative, more than 350,000 educators in diverse pre-K through higher education settings worldwide are now using the QFT simply because it helps their students become more curious, fully engaged learners. Participants will actively experience the QFT, work with classroom examples, collaborate with experienced educators, and leave immediately able to use and share the Strategy.
Workshop participants actively experience and learn the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), a simple, step-by-step strategy to teach students to ask, improve, and strategize on how to use their own questions. Participants leave able to immediately apply the strategy with students and share it with colleagues.
I teach STEM classes to students in grade 6,7 and 8. We focus on solving "real world" problems using the Engineering Design Process. The classes include coding, EV3 Mindstorms Robots, Hydraulic Robotic Arms, Building Geodesic Domes, Biomedical Engineering, current space news, as well... Read More →
Director of Strategy, The Right Question Institute
Andrew P. Minigan is the Right Question Institute’s (RQI) Director of Strategy for the Education Program. As a part of Andrew’s work with RQI he is a Co-P.I. on a National Science Foundation funded research grant to develop a strategy so doctoral students and early career researchers... Read More →
Learn about Bonny Eagle High School's transition to a proficiency-based system, which has been ongoing for the past five years. The work began with the identification of standards and development of summative assessments and is currently focused on formative instruction. Using a combination of Assessment For Learning (AFL) strategies, technology, and teacher ingenuity, we are improving instructional practices. As a result, student engagement is increasing and the number of students who need to remediate assessments is dropping.
Participants will see how we are getting a big impact with the use of a 1/2 time instructional coach and a handful of AFL teacher leaders to help change instruction building-wide. Learn how this work is not "one more thing" but can reduce teacher stress. At the same time, our students are beginning to take ownership of their learning.
Participants will leave with an understanding of how one high school is improving student learning by focusing on the identification of clear learning targets and helping students track their own progress as they prepare for summative assessments.
At White Mountains Regional High School, we challenge students to own their learning. Students personalize their educational experiences through avenues including a STEAM program, CTE completer programs, ELOs, and seminar courses. Regardless of the pathway they choose, each student has the opportunity to engage in meaningful, inquiry-driven work, often based in real-world challenges.
These efforts have not been without challenges. Free blocks and flex periods give students autonomy in using their time and space, and some have struggled to embrace this agency. In response, we have built structures to support students and have implemented new ways to track and assess student learning, such as school-wide exhibitions. In these ways, we strive to ensure that all students thrive and learn in our unique environment, so we can do more for more kids.
In this session we will share how we support students in owning their learning and, in turn, promote the success of all students. We will discuss how our emphasis on teacher agency works in tandem with these efforts. Participants will learn how we hold students accountable for their learning and discuss strategies to implement in their classroom and/or school to help students own their learning.
This session will help participants develop an answer to the question: How can we address Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in middle and high schools in a way that is integrated, rather than an add-on, reaches all students, and feels authentic to staff and students? Participants will explore a framework that features a dynamic relationship among student mindsets, four broad skill sets, specific learning and life competencies, and desired target behaviors and understandings that can be modeled, taught, practiced, and assessed on a daily basis within any classroom.
The session will review evidence-based practices and strategies in six classroom domains for cultivating learning and life competencies. The approach also creates a more equitable, engaging, and culturally and developmentally responsive environment where meaningful learning and social experiences take place.
Participants will gain understanding of an approach, practices, and strategies for integrating academic, social, and emotional learning and development in middle and high school classrooms.
Larry Dieringer has been executive director of Engaging Schools for over twenty-five years. Larry is an experienced school consultant, professional development leader, and university lecturer and has worked nationally with districts on issues including schoolwide discipline and student... Read More →
Smithfield High School’s social studies department has redesigned what our 9–12 curriculum looks like and how it impacts students. For our students, we personalized the delivery of five foundation power standards which are transferable in nature. This has fostered conversations around everything we do. From professional growth to grading to formative and summative assessments to daily instruction, no stone has been left unturned. We have rebuilt our curriculum into a powerful program that has clear, definable, and measurable outcomes for graduating students who are prepared for their next challenges. This session will not only explore how SHS social studies built and refined this system, but how we live in both a proficiency-based and traditional grading world. We will explore how this not only impacted our practices but student learning, feedback, and supports with the hope of helping other academic teams and teachers meet these challenges within their own schools and districts.
Participants will leave with an understanding of the challenges and strategies when transitioning content areas’ traditional curricula into interactive curriculum guides that are standards-based and 21st century skills-focused which produce a graduate with specific and measurable knowledge and skills as well as a practical approach to balancing the reporting out of both standards-based and numerical achievement.
Learn about Bonny Eagle High School's transition to a proficiency-based system, which has been ongoing for the past five years. The work began with the identification of standards and development of summative assessments and is currently focused on formative instruction. Using a combination of Assessment For Learning (AFL) strategies, technology, and teacher ingenuity, we are improving instructional practices. As a result, student engagement is increasing and the number of students who need to remediate assessments is dropping.
Participants will see how we are getting a big impact with the use of a 1/2 time instructional coach and a handful of AFL teacher leaders to help change instruction building-wide. Learn how this work is not "one more thing" but can reduce teacher stress. At the same time, our students are beginning to take ownership of their learning.
Participants will leave with an understanding of how one high school is improving student learning by focusing on the identification of clear learning targets and helping students track their own progress as they prepare for summative assessments.
Would you like to better meet the needs of special education students in the general education classroom? How can you bring the expertise of the classroom teacher and the special education teacher together to develop unit plans that engage students?
In this session, participants will identify best practices in both special education and general education, and apply new ideas to practice, planning, and system design. This session is open to classroom teachers from all backgrounds, with the goal of supporting students on IEP’s and 504 plans within the general education classroom.
How do we design tasks and learning experiences so that every student, every day, in every classroom, is learning and growing? What structures and models will create opportunities for teachers and students to learn deeply? Using authentic student work and tasks, we will explore how instruction and student learning are directly impacted by the design of the learning. Designing for equity also requires us to consider how to become culturally responsive in order to guide all students to competency.
Participants will evaluate tasks and student work to consider the intentionality of task design, instructional planning, and assessment practices in creating high expectations and cultural relevance. We will work in teams and share our thinking as we explore, examine, analyze, and create effective learning opportunities for all.
At White Mountains Regional High School, we challenge students to own their learning. Students personalize their educational experiences through avenues including a STEAM program, CTE completer programs, ELOs, and seminar courses. Regardless of the pathway they choose, each student has the opportunity to engage in meaningful, inquiry-driven work, often based in real-world challenges.
These efforts have not been without challenges. Free blocks and flex periods give students autonomy in using their time and space, and some have struggled to embrace this agency. In response, we have built structures to support students and have implemented new ways to track and assess student learning, such as school-wide exhibitions. In these ways, we strive to ensure that all students thrive and learn in our unique environment, so we can do more for more kids.
In this session we will share how we support students in owning their learning and, in turn, promote the success of all students. We will discuss how our emphasis on teacher agency works in tandem with these efforts. Participants will learn how we hold students accountable for their learning and discuss strategies to implement in their classroom and/or school to help students own their learning.
This session will help participants develop an answer to the question: How can we address Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in middle and high schools in a way that is integrated, rather than an add-on, reaches all students, and feels authentic to staff and students? Participants will explore a framework that features a dynamic relationship among student mindsets, four broad skill sets, specific learning and life competencies, and desired target behaviors and understandings that can be modeled, taught, practiced, and assessed on a daily basis within any classroom.
The session will review evidence-based practices and strategies in six classroom domains for cultivating learning and life competencies. The approach also creates a more equitable, engaging, and culturally and developmentally responsive environment where meaningful learning and social experiences take place.
Participants will gain understanding of an approach, practices, and strategies for integrating academic, social, and emotional learning and development in middle and high school classrooms.
Larry Dieringer has been executive director of Engaging Schools for over twenty-five years. Larry is an experienced school consultant, professional development leader, and university lecturer and has worked nationally with districts on issues including schoolwide discipline and student... Read More →
"Over the past 18 months, an educator design team in Rhode Island, partnering with the RI Office of Innovation, the Highlander Institute, and the RI Department of Education, created a home-grown online repository of deeper-learning, project-based, open lesson plans and units. Join us to explore the process that the OER (Open Educational Resources) Design Team engaged in to build the repository interface, secure excitement from the broader educator community, ensure quality of content, and balance deeper learning with curricular scope and sequence. We'll also offer a demo of the repository and talk about ways participants can join in the effort to share and receive great locally created content.
Participants will leave with access to a bank of quality, locally created open resources, a deeper understanding of how to engage in an improvement process with a cohort of cross-district educators, and thought partnership on how to grow the use of quality OER in their classrooms."
Shawn Rubin is the Chief Education Officer at the Highlander Institute in Providence, Rhode Island. Shawn manages the Institute’s personalized and blended learning initiatives. At the Highlander Institute, Shawn leads the FUSE RI fellowship, which partners educators and administrators... Read More →
Would you like to better meet the needs of special education students in the general education classroom? How can you bring the expertise of the classroom teacher and the special education teacher together to develop unit plans that engage students?
In this session, participants will identify best practices in both special education and general education, and apply new ideas to practice, planning, and system design. This session is open to classroom teachers from all backgrounds, with the goal of supporting students on IEP’s and 504 plans within the general education classroom.
In this session, participants will learn how two higher ed institutions in Maine are aligning their teacher preparation program design to increasingly align with PK–12 beliefs and best practices of proficiency-based education. Preservice teachers from each institution will share perspectives on how they are preparing for both effective teaching and professional practice. Finally, to capitalize on the collective wisdom of current practitioners, participants will use a protocol to share critical knowledge, dispositions, and resources to assist both current educators and preservice teachers in designing proficiency based learning environments.
Participants will identify knowledge, dispositions, and skills critical to the training and early success of preservice educators in proficiency environments and engage in discourse of how to best recruit and prepare our next generation of educators.
"Smithfield High School’s social studies department has redesigned what our 9–12 curriculum looks like and how it impacts students. For our students, we personalized the delivery of five foundation power standards which are transferable in nature. This has fostered conversations around everything we do. From professional growth to grading to formative and summative assessments to daily instruction, no stone has been left unturned. We have rebuilt our curriculum into a powerful program that has clear, definable, and measurable outcomes for graduating students who are prepared for their next challenges. This session will not only explore how SHS social studies built and refined this system, but how we live in both a proficiency-based and traditional grading world. We will explore how this not only impacted our practices but student learning, feedback, and supports with the hope of helping other academic teams and teachers meet these challenges within their own schools and districts.
Participants will leave with an understanding of the challenges and strategies when transitioning content areas’ traditional curricula into interactive curriculum guides that are standards-based and 21st century skills-focused which produce a graduate with specific and measurable knowledge and skills as well as a practical approach to balancing the reporting out of both standards-based and numerical achievement."
Research shows that to succeed in college, career, and civic life, students need more than academic knowledge. They need to possess skills and attitudes colleges and employers prize—communicating effectively and collaborating in diverse groups. While educators support students developing these skills, it can be difficult to assess them rigorously and responsively. What does it look like to communicate effectively? What evidence can we collect to support mastery? How can new assessments complement strategies educators already use in their classrooms?
Join a team of educators and researchers as they share their experiences integrating work-study practices (a.k.a. deeper learning competencies) into New Hampshire’s statewide performance assessment for competency-based education (PACE) system. Participants will learn how others working to assess these critical skills in their classrooms share strategies and systems that may be emerging in their schools, and engage with a research-driven framework for designing work-study practice assessments currently guiding New Hampshire educators.
Participants will leave with practical tips for applying deeper learning competencies in classroom instruction and assessment for learning, focusing on metacognition and self-regulation as well as strategies for designing, communicating, and integrating performance assessment rubrics for deeper learning.
Felicia Sullivan, PhD, joined JFF in 2018 as associate research director. She leads a Hewlett-funded research-practice partnership in New Hampshire and will also assist in the development of the JFF Research Unit. Dr. Sullivan previously worked with the Center for Information and... Read More →
Director of Collaborative Learning, New Hampshire Learning Initiative
Jonathan directs innovative, competency-based projects for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative and is the co-author of Unpacking the Competency-Based Classroom: Equitable, Personalized Learning in a PLC at Work (Solution Tree, 2022) and Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based... Read More →
"At Poland Regional High School, a flagship public high school for proficiency-based education in Maine, an emphasis on self- and peer-assessment and a school-wide process for reassessment has supported students towards successfully reaching their learning goals. Teachers have implemented classroom tasks specifically designed from the current leading guidelines for self- and peer-assessment in hopes of making each student’s learning process transparent. Furthermore, a school-wide process for reassessment has been adopted to ensure each student has the opportunity to demonstrate their best learning on summative assessments. In this session we will walk you through the process that our science, math, and humanities classes have developed for self- and peer-assessment as well as outline the process we took to develop our school-wide reassessment protocol.
Participants will leave this session with practical approaches to teaching self- and peer-assessment; an understanding of how reassessment opportunities can reinforce learning and how assessment strategies are managed in a proficiency based/ standards-based system."
Bloomfield High School invites you to participate in an open and transparent dialogue about the benefits of structure and instructional practices. Topics include: building an effective and collegial professional learning community, ongoing job-embedded professional development, writing standards-based curricula, vertical and horizontal interdisciplinary data teams, ongoing formative and summative assessments, collaborative and calibrated scoring of student work, and providing specific and timely feedback aligned to standards-based analytical rubrics. When teachers reach a common understanding of what excellence looks like, a set of practices are put in place to achieve excellence at the highest level.
Participants will leave with the knowledge of how to build capacity in teachers to transform a school, utilize high effect sized instructional and assessment strategies to promote student achievement and narrow and/or close achievement gaps, and tailor data teams to serve as effective professional learning communities.
Over the past 18 months, an educator design team in Rhode Island, partnering with the RI Office of Innovation, the Highlander Institute, and the RI Department of Education, created a home-grown online repository of deeper-learning, project-based, open lesson plans and units. Join us to explore the process that the OER (Open Educational Resources) Design Team engaged in to build the repository interface, secure excitement from the broader educator community, ensure quality of content, and balance deeper learning with curricular scope and sequence. We'll also offer a demo of the repository and talk about ways participants can join in the effort to share and receive great locally created content.
Participants will leave with access to a bank of quality, locally created open resources, a deeper understanding of how to engage in an improvement process with a cohort of cross-district educators, and thought partnership on how to grow the use of quality OER in their classrooms.
Shawn Rubin is the Chief Education Officer at the Highlander Institute in Providence, Rhode Island. Shawn manages the Institute’s personalized and blended learning initiatives. At the Highlander Institute, Shawn leads the FUSE RI fellowship, which partners educators and administrators... Read More →
How do I set up my gradebook? It’s the end of the quarter; what do I put on the report card? What about missing work? Retakes? Shifting to a proficiency-based system requires rethinking our methods of tracking students’ progress. In this session, participants will explore the purpose of grading, clarify distinctions between grading and reporting, and share practices that support proficiency-based learning. Participants will review best practices for reporting grades, explore topics of interest related to specific gradebook systems, and discuss challenging questions teachers face in the shift to reporting within a proficiency-based system.
For the past six years, RSU 19 has been working hard to redesign its curriculum and approach to teaching and learning by offering a proficiency-based education. But in a system which separates work habits from academic knowledge and skills, how do we hold our students accountable in a way that encourages growth? Won’t students simply do all of their work at the last minute or—worse—avoid practice entirely and take their chances on the summative assessment? Have no fear; the Habits of Work are your friend! We’ll explore several efficient ways of collecting evidence in order to fairly assess students’ Habits of Work in a way that encourages growth while also holding students accountable for their learning.
Participants will leave with tools, resources, and understanding for collecting evidence of and utilizing Habits of Work to encourage students’ learning and growth.
In this session, teachers from the U-32 school district in Montpelier, Vermont will share their experience with implementing the New Tech Teams approach to project-based learning (PBL). This approach is part of the New Tech Network’s multi-year initiative to infuse principles of proficiency into engaged, authentic, and meaningful projects for secondary school students.
The New Tech Teams approach brings together a grade-level team to collaborate on planning, implementing, and evaluating project-based learning. U-32 has several interdisciplinary teams that meet regularly to coordinate instruction. Teachers from these teams will share their successes, challenges, and future hopes for robust project-based learning at U-32, and participants will examine project entry documents, assessments, and other materials that address both transferable skills and content standards. Participants will leave with copies of project documents used in the 2018-19 school year.
Otter Valley has been home of the Moosalamoo Center since 2005. Over the years, Moosalamoo has engaged, inspired, and informed students through its ecological course offerings with real-life applications and rewards. Moosalamoo interlocks the traditional curriculum with interpersonal skills, stewardship, self-direction, and personal investment to create a high school program where marginalized students truly connect and reconnect. Join the co-founding teacher of Moosalamoo and Otter Valley’s GSP Coach as they introduce you to Moosalamoo, the Elements of Effective Instruction (EEI) Beliefs and Practices, and the EEI self-assessment. Participants will use what they learn to devise a plan of action for examining an existing course or program to start—or further—the use of the Elements of Effective Instruction.
During this session participants will review the Elements of Effective Instruction (EEI) Beliefs and Practices and complete the EEI self-assessment, explore an existing school program noting the elements used to engage students, and devise a plan of action for examining an existing course or program to start or further the use of the Elements of Effective Instruction.
At Poland Regional High School, a flagship public high school for proficiency-based education in Maine, an emphasis on self- and peer-assessment and a school-wide process for reassessment has supported students towards successfully reaching their learning goals. Teachers have implemented classroom tasks specifically designed from the current leading guidelines for self- and peer-assessment in hopes of making each student’s learning process transparent. Furthermore, a school-wide process for reassessment has been adopted to ensure each student has the opportunity to demonstrate their best learning on summative assessments. In this session we will walk you through the process that our science, math, and humanities classes have developed for self- and peer-assessment as well as outline the process we took to develop our school-wide reassessment protocol.
Participants will leave this session with practical approaches to teaching self- and peer-assessment; an understanding of how reassessment opportunities can reinforce learning and how assessment strategies are managed in a proficiency based/ standards-based system.
Bloomfield High School invites you to participate in an open and transparent dialogue about the benefits of structure and instructional practices. Topics include: building an effective and collegial professional learning community, ongoing job-embedded professional development, writing standards-based curricula, vertical and horizontal interdisciplinary data teams, ongoing formative and summative assessments, collaborative and calibrated scoring of student work, and providing specific and timely feedback aligned to standards-based analytical rubrics. When teachers reach a common understanding of what excellence looks like, a set of practices are put in place to achieve excellence at the highest level.
Participants will leave with the knowledge of how to build capacity in teachers to transform a school, utilize high effect sized instructional and assessment strategies to promote student achievement and narrow and/or close achievement gaps, and tailor data teams to serve as effective professional learning communities.
For the past six years, RSU 19 has been working hard to redesign its curriculum and approach to teaching and learning by offering a proficiency-based education. But in a system which separates work habits from academic knowledge and skills, how do we hold our students accountable in a way that encourages growth? Won’t students simply do all of their work at the last minute or—worse—avoid practice entirely and take their chances on the summative assessment? Have no fear; the Habits of Work are your friend! We’ll explore several efficient ways of collecting evidence in order to fairly assess students’ Habits of Work in a way that encourages growth while also holding students accountable for their learning.
Participants will leave with tools, resources, and understanding for collecting evidence of and utilizing Habits of Work to encourage students’ learning and growth.
Although we have operated in a competency-based world for over a decade and there is strong evidence that student-centered instruction and competency-based education are mutually reinforcing, convincing teachers, administrators, parents, and students to move away from the instructional status quo can be difficult. Mathematics classrooms are notorious for being less student-centered than other subjects. For change to occur, we believe that not only teachers but also administrators and the educational community at large need to recognize what effective student-centered instruction looks like.
In this hands-on session, activities designed to stimulate mathematical thinking, reasoning, and discourse will be shared. The instructional approaches support the 8 mathematical teaching practices and will be presented in the context of a mathematics classroom but are appropriate for all subjects. The strategies may also be effectively implemented regardless of where a district, school, or teacher is regarding implementation of competency-based education.
Participants will leave the session with a better understanding of what teachers do, what students do, and the characteristics of quality tasks in a student-centered math classroom. Techniques will be modeled that facilitate meaningful discourse and advance students’ ability to make sense of important mathematical ideas and relationships.
How do I set up my gradebook? It’s the end of the quarter; what do I put on the report card? What about missing work? Retakes? Shifting to a proficiency-based system requires rethinking our methods of tracking students’ progress. In this session, participants will explore the purpose of grading, clarify distinctions between grading and reporting, and share practices that support proficiency-based learning. Participants will review best practices for reporting grades, explore topics of interest related to specific gradebook systems, and discuss challenging questions teachers face in the shift to reporting within a proficiency-based system.
Research shows that to succeed in college, career, and civic life, students need more than academic knowledge. They need to possess skills and attitudes colleges and employers prize—communicating effectively and collaborating in diverse groups. While educators support students developing these skills, it can be difficult to assess them rigorously and responsively. What does it look like to communicate effectively? What evidence can we collect to support mastery? How can new assessments complement strategies educators already use in their classrooms?
Join a team of educators and researchers as they share their experiences integrating work-study practices (a.k.a. deeper learning competencies) into New Hampshire’s statewide performance assessment for competency-based education (PACE) system. Participants will learn how others working to assess these critical skills in their classrooms share strategies and systems that may be emerging in their schools, and engage with a research-driven framework for designing work-study practice assessments currently guiding New Hampshire educators.
Participants will leave with practical tips for applying deeper learning competencies in classroom instruction and assessment for learning, focusing on metacognition and self-regulation as well as strategies for designing, communicating, and integrating performance assessment rubrics for deeper learning.
Felicia Sullivan, PhD, joined JFF in 2018 as associate research director. She leads a Hewlett-funded research-practice partnership in New Hampshire and will also assist in the development of the JFF Research Unit. Dr. Sullivan previously worked with the Center for Information and... Read More →
Director of Collaborative Learning, New Hampshire Learning Initiative
Jonathan directs innovative, competency-based projects for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative and is the co-author of Unpacking the Competency-Based Classroom: Equitable, Personalized Learning in a PLC at Work (Solution Tree, 2022) and Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based... Read More →