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Thank a School Librarian: Celebrating 40 Years of Impact
Each year, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) sponsors the celebration of April as School Library Month! It is a month-long celebration of school libraries and librarians and all they do for their communities. April 2025 will be the 40th year of celebrating April as School Library Month nationally. The first celebration occurred on April…
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The Case for Assessment Literacy: Building Capacity for Meaningful Learning
Assessment remains one of the most powerful tools available to teachers, administrators, and district leaders in the ever-evolving education landscape. When used effectively, assessments inform instruction, guide decision-making, and, most importantly, support student learning. However, the impact of assessment is only as strong as the knowledge and skills of those designing and implementing it. Assessment…
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Unlocking Student Success: The Power of a Balanced Assessment System
Within education, assessments serve as a crucial foundation for evaluating student progress and measuring the efficacy of instructional methods. However, the conventional perspective of assessments, often limited to standardized tests or final exams, falls short of providing a comprehensive understanding of a student’s capabilities and journey. In response to this limitation, the concept of a…
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How to Connect Verbal and Visual Worlds to Benefits Student Academic Success
Are you looking for a way to help your students retain information better and increase their comprehension of different content areas? Sketchnoting is the answer! It’s a powerful visual tool that helps students connect verbal and visual information, leading to improved comprehension and retention. Sketchnoting is an effective way to help students gain a deeper…
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Strategies to Create an Equitable Learning Environment for English Learners
Integrating digital resources into every day instruction can help close the digital divide, address differentiation needs, and provide multiple ways for English Learners (ELs) to both access and respond to content. Today’s learners need to develop multi-literacies and use multimodalities to develop language and content together. How can teachers support language development of academic and…
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How to Address Integrity in Online Assessements
Written by Keith Tramper, Educational Technology Consultant at Kent ISD Assessment is a critical part of any learning environment. Assessment provides us with data into how and what our students are learning. It can help us understand where our students are succeeding and running into barriers, which we can use to adjust our learning plans.…
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Top Ten Posts of 2019
As we begin a new year it is a great time to reflect on what we shared last year and catch up on what you may have missed. We shared topics on literacy, diversity, mental health, personalized learning, leadership, and so much more! Here are the ten most visited blog posts of 2019: Dr. Kilpatrick…
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Shifting Routines for Student Proficiency Gains
As we approach the end of the first six weeks of the school year – educators are starting to see community form, relationships build, and role modeling taking place in the classroom. Many students begin to self-regulate, utilize sentence stems, and probe one another’s thinking. Routines, a sequence of action followed regularly, are forming in…
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Can Improving Mental Health, Improve Achievement?
“Kids who suffer from mental health disorders…inevitably miss out on opportunities for learning and building relationships.” -David Anderson, expert on schools and mental health at the Child Mind Institute There are more than 50 million public school students in the United States, and as many as 1 in 5 show signs of a mental health…
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Pattern Interrupted- Timed Tests, Part 2
written by: Andrew J. Smith, Kent ISD “Technical changes are changes to tools or mechanisms professionals use to do their jobs effectively. These changes within a school context refer to changes in structure, policies, or teaching tools. These changes are definitely necessary to effect improvement in student performance, but they produce very few positive results…