Observe as if you were a student

Content and Big Ideas

• What’s the big conceptual idea or essential question in this lesson?
• How does it connect to what I already know?

Depth of Knowledge/ Cognitive Demand

• How long am I given to think, and to make sense of things?
• What happens when I get stuck?
• Am I invited to explain things, or just give answers?

Differentiated Access to Content

Student Voice

• Do I get to explain, to present my ideas? Are they built on?
• Am I recognized as being capable and able to contribute in meaningful ways?

Checking for Understanding/ Formative Assessment

• Do classroom discussions include my thinking?
• Does the teacher respond to my thinking and change course so that I am helped to think more deeply?
• Does the teacher help me see how to think differently? 

• Do I get to participate in meaningful learning?
• Can I hide or am I ignored?
• Do I understand the words the teacher uses? 

Dimensions of Powerful Student Academic Engagement

Content and Big Ideas

The extent to which the subject matter discussed is focused and coherent, and to which connections between procedures, concepts and contexts (where appropriate) are addressed and explained. Students should have opportunities to learn important subject-matter content and practices, and to develop productive habits of mind.

Depth of Knowledge/ Cognitive Demand

The extent to which classroom interactions create and maintain an environment of productive intellectual challenge conducive to students’ conceptual development. There is a happy medium between spoon-feeding new concepts in bite-sized pieces and having the challenges so large that students are lost at sea.

Differentiated Access to Content

The extent to which classroom activity structures invite and support the active engagement of all of the students in the classroom, including English language learners. No matter how rich the subject-matter content being discussed, a classroom in which a small number of students get most of the “air time” is not equitable.

Student Voice

The extent to which students have opportunities to conjecture, explain, make arguments, and build on one another’s ideas, in ways that contribute to their development of agency (the capacity and willingness to engage in learning) and to feel good about their learning.

Checking for Understanding/ Formative Assessment

The extent to which the teacher solicits student thinking and subsequent instruction responds to those ideas, by building on productive beginnings or addressing emerging misunderstandings. Powerful instruction “meets students where they are” and gives them opportunities to move forward.