Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Serving Counties: Clark, Esmeralda, Lincoln, Mineral and Nye
http://rpdp.net
School-level Assessment of Instructional Standards: Standard 3
Standard 3: Students Engage in Meaning-Making through Discourse and Other Strategies
Indicators
Evidence
Evidence
Evidence
1. Teacher provides opportunities for extended,
productive discourse between the teacher and student(s)
and among students
2. Teacher provides opportunities for all students to
create and interpret multiple representations
3. Teacher assists all students to use existing
knowledge and prior experience to make connections
and recognize relationships
4. Teacher structures the classroom environment to
enable collaboration, participation, and a positive
affective experience for all students
Questions about the standard:
1. What is discourse? How is it used as a strategy? What other strategies specifically help students make meaning?
2. How might you use strategies such as complex instruction, dilemmas, essential questions, graphic organizers, hypothetical situations, analogies,
presentations, role-playing, simulations and other strategies to encourage dialogue and to stimulate students’ connection between understanding
and action?
Questions about the indicators:
1—What do you do to maintain a classroom discourse that is productive over time?
—How do you develop student-to-student discourse?
—How do you incorporate discourse into lesson design?
__How do you use text-based conversations?
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Serving Counties: Clark, Esmeralda, Lincoln, Mineral and Nye
http://rpdp.net
2—How do you develop students’ understanding of representations? How might you give one representation and have students create another?
What about giving two or more representations and having students check for consistency between/among them? When might you give one
representation and have students choose a second consistent one from multiple choices? How might you develop the use of verbal descriptions,
creative enactments, diagrams, pictures, charts, notes? How might you assess student mastery through the use of multiple representations?
3—How might you use explanation as a strategy for connecting prior learning to new concepts or skills (verbal explanation, identification of
missing steps, procedure analysis, error analysis, deconstruction, etc.)? What are some connection models you use to help students build
relationships (translate between visual models and verbal descriptions, create scenarios, justify choice, classify and organize information, etc.)?
4—How is your classroom organized to support discourse, production and discussion of multiple representations, and to provide a positive
environment for learning?