School Connectedness and Academic Engagement Demonstration Programs
Many of the following programs were recommended by schools and families in military
impacted districts – they may or may not have sufficient evidence to show their
effectiveness, often because they are smaller programs (or simply approaches) designed
for the specific needs of the school population.
Activities to Integrate Math and Science
The AIMS (Activities to Integrate Math and Science) foundation provides activity books
and training workshops (for sale) to engage elementary and middle school students in
science and math learning. For several states (California, Ohio, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) AIMS has a science core curriculum that is aligned with
the state’s science standards.
www.aimsedu.org.
Advancement Via Individual Determination
Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) is a college preparatory program
that has been implemented both school-wide and as an elective class in more than 2,200
schools in 36 states and 15 countries. It begins in upper elementary grades and follows
the students through high school. Teachers are trained to offer only rigorous coursework
and to ensure that their students are succeeding in that coursework. Teachers use
intensive writing instruction, Socratic questioning methods, collaborative grouping, and
academic reading strategies to promote learning. In addition, students are taught study
skills. One teacher is responsible for a group of students throughout the students’ tenure
at school, making sure the students succeed in each class and addressing the barriers that
may be impediments for the students.1 AVID has been recognized by the Military Child
Education Coalition as an exemplary support program that promotes high achievement
and improves the quality of a students’ educational experience, and is being offered as an
elective class in various Department of Defense schools.
http://www.pac.dodea.edu/edservices/EducationPrograms/AVID.htm
Backward Design
Backward design is a curriculum and assessment development strategy created by Grant
Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Teachers begin lesson planning with the end in mind: “What
do I want my students to learn? How will my students demonstrate their understanding
when the unit is completed? It is based on the concept that both the students and teacher
will have a much firmer and clearer grasp of where the learning is going if the goal or
summative assessment is clearly articulated right from the beginning. The basic steps to
the backward design process are:
Step 1: Decide on the themes, enduring understandings and essential questions for
the unit.
Step 2: Decide how students will demonstrate their understanding. Wiggins and
McTighe describe ‘six facets of understanding’. They believe that students truly
understand when they:

Can Explain: provide thorough, supportable and justifiable accounts of
phenomena, facts and data

Can Interpret: tell meaningful stories; offer apt translations; provide a revealing
historical or personal dimension to ideas and events

Can Apply: effectively use and adapt what we know in diverse contexts

Have perspective: see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see
the big picture

Can empathize: find value in what others might find odd, alien, or
implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience

Have self-knowledge: perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and
habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; aware of
what we do not understand and why understanding is so hard.
Step 3: Design the sequence of learning experiences that students will undertake to
develop understanding. It is important to align the unit with the State Standards and to
choose outcomes, strategies, resources, and best practices to teach them.
Step 4: Review and refine as needed.
Numerous resources such as a curriculum development map/guide, themes, and reading
lists are available at: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/612/BackwardDesign/Overview.htm. More information can be found at drawn from:
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/BackwardDesign/BDstep1.htm and
http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au/Planning/models/princbackdesign.htm
Kagan Structures
Kagan structures are content-free, repeatable sequences of steps designed to structure the
interaction of students with each other, the teacher, and/or the curriculum designed to
implement basic principles such as equal participation or enhancing multiple
intelligences. Many Kagan structures are specifically designed to develop various types
of higher-level thinking skills including brainstorming, analysis, synthesis, deduction,
induction, and understanding points of view different from one's own. The structures are
explained in books available for purchase that also include hundreds of activities for
language arts, art, social studies, math, science, and literature; and ten detailed
cooperative learning, higher-level thinking lesson plans across the curriculum. The Kagan
cooperative learning structures engage students by stimulating interaction. Kagan
multiple intelligences structures produce greater engagement by engaging the range of
intelligences, and allow teachers to prepare one lesson that will engage all learners
because the same content is approached through a range of structures. The structures are
used on a daily basis, every ten or fifteen minutes, in dramatic contrast to approaches
which would have students do the occasional cooperative learning or multiple
intelligences lesson. Kagan structures allow teachers to prepare one lesson which will
engage all learners because the same content is approached through a range of structures.
Since the structures are content free, they serve as tools for teachers to help them teach
more effectively rather than programs layered on top of the curriculum; they do not
attempt to replace existing, well-developed programs but instead increase the options
teachers have for delivering those programs.
http://www.kaganonline.com/
Marzano‘s “Instructional Strategies that Work”
Researchers at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) have
identified nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student
achievement across all content areas and across all grade levels. These strategies are
explained in the 2001 book Classroom Instruction That Works by Robert Marzano, Debra
Pickering, and Jane Pollock. The strategies include: identifying similarities and
differences; summarizing and note taking; reinforcing effort and providing recognition;
homework and practice; nonlinguistic representations; cooperative learning; setting
objectives and providing feedback; generating and testing hypotheses; and cues,
questions, and advance organizers. For a summary, see: “Getting Acquainted with the
Essential Nine” by Laura Varlas, ASCD Curriculum Update Winter 2002, available at:
http://www.middleweb.com/MWLresources/marzchat1.html
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)
PBIS is a universal, school-wide prevention strategy that is currently implemented in
over 5,000 schools across the nation to reduce disruptive behavior problems through the
application of behavioral, social learning, and organizational behavioral principles.
School-wide PBIS is a non-curricular prevention strategy that aims to alter the school
environment by creating improved systems (e.g., discipline, reinforcement, and data
management) and procedures (e.g. office referral, reinforcement, training, leadership) that
promote positive change in staff and student behaviors. The program draws upon
behavioral, social learning, and organizational behavioral principles which were
traditionally used with individual students, and extends and applies them to an entire
student body consistently across all school contexts. This whole-school strategy aims to
prevent disruptive behavior and enhance the school’s organizational health by creating
and sustaining primary (school-wide), secondary (classroom), and tertiary (individual)
systems of support. The three-tiered prevention model follows a public health approach,
whereby two levels of targeted and selected programs are implemented to complement
the universal school-wide components of the model. Check out MCI’s Best Practices
monograph and DVD to see PBIS implemented in a school: www.jhsph.edu/mci
www.pbis.org
Teacher Effectiveness Training
TET is a well-known program for classroom management, discipline, and communication
skills. Over 100,000 teachers have taken the TET course in more than twenty countries.
In TET, teachers learn specific skills of interpersonal communication and problem
solving that they use to more effectively assist students with problems and to help get
changes in unacceptable student behaviors. The result is that teachers teach more and feel
better about themselves as teachers, because their students learn more. Seven specific
behavioral skills and their application in the classroom are taught in TET: behavioral
observation, identifying problem ownership, demonstrating understanding, being
understood, expressing recognition, confrontation and Win/Win problem solving.
Teachers in Hawaii found the use of “I-statements” – statements that tell the listener what
you see/think/feel/want in an objective manner that does not assign blame or put the
listener down—to be particularly useful. TET is a 45-hour course that is typically taught
on weekends or over five full days.
http://teachereducation.com/course_outlines/graduate_classroom/tet_outline.htm
1
Program description from: Swanson, M.C. (2005, November 21). [Interview with Michael Shaughnessy]
Mary Catherine Swanson: About (AVID) Advancement Via Individual Determination. Retrieved July 25,
2006 from: http://www.educationnews.org/writers/michael/an-interview-with-mary-catherine.htm