Small Changes, Big Impact: Ten Strategies to Promote Student Efficacy and Lifelong Learning (a Pocket Guide to School Reform Through Research-Based Instructional Strategies)

Discover a pathway to improvement that is simple and field tested. Designed as a practical guide to school reform, this resource outlines a series of ten small-scale changes powerful enough to make a lasting impact in schools and districts. Within each chapter, you will find easy-to-implement strategies for strengthening culture, building relationships, and promoting student growth at every K-12 grade level.

Use this resource to leverage student reflection and reperformance to ensure high levels of learning:

• Understand how to redefine student success as efficacy and ownership of learning.
• Gain research-based instructional strategies and teaching methods for creating student-centered mission statements that promote student success, self-reliance, and social-emotional learning (SEL).
• Explore how to use performance-based assessments as a process for learning.
• Examine the qualities of growth-based feedback to promote a future pathway for achievement.
• Obtain tools for developing dynamic reporting structures that communicate stories of learning and promote self-evaluation.

Contents:
Chapter 1: Redefine Student Success
Chapter 2: Create Student-Centered Mission Statements
Chapter 3: Organize the Curriculum Around Skills, Not Content
Chapter 4: Develop Student-Centered Rubrics
Chapter 5: Use Assessment as a Process for Learning
Chapter 6: Implement a Generative Learning Model of Instruction
Chapter 7: Provide Critical Growth-Based Feedback
Chapter 8: Leverage Reflection and Reperformance
Chapter 9: Use Evidence-Based Grading Practices
Chapter 10: Establish Dynamic Reporting Structures

Anthony R. Reibel is a creative, vibrant, and caring school leader who hails from Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois, where he is the current director of assessment, research, and evaluation.

In 2006, he became a Spanish teacher at Stevenson, where he served as a curricular team leader, core team leader, coach, and club sponsor. In 2010, Anthony received recognition from the State of Illinois, and in 2011, Illinois Computer Educators named him Technology Educator of the Year.

Anthony is a coauthor of the books Proficiency-Based Assessment and Pathways to Proficiency, which explore the key relationship assessment has with teaching and learning, exploring evidence-based grading strategies.

He is also the publisher and chief editor of The Assessor (assessormag.com), a publication that publishes short articles written by teachers and administrators to support the conversation around formative assessment.

Matt Thede, MS Ed, is an assistant principal at Mount Vernon High School in Mount Vernon, Iowa. He is a former biology and AP Biology teacher at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he also led curricular improvements and professional development initiatives in the areas of standards-based grading, unit design, and instruction and assessment, and aligned those efforts with the district s progress as a professional learning community (PLC). After leaving professional baseball in 2003, Matt became an educator with a teaching background in science. His education experiences range from working in rural communities and school districts (Benton Community, Van Horne, Iowa) to urban and city districts (Cedar Rapids Prairie High School).

Matt has a strong belief in collaborating with and developing schools that desire to improve and respond to student needs, especially in the areas of grading, instruction, and assessment. He has also been a presenter at state standards-based conferences, speaking on the topics of evidence-based reporting and leading grading changes in secondary schools. He has a passion to help schools of any size and background implement lasting changes that positively impact student achievement with the resources they have.

Matt has consulted with several schools around the Midwest, taking his leadership and experiences from initiatives he s led and helping other schools do similar work. In addition, he was involved in working with gradebook developers to create a gradebook module that works for educators using standards-based practices.

Matt received a bachelor's degree in biology from Wartburg College, a master's degree in education from Graceland College, and a master's degree in educational leadership from Drake University.