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Virginia Department of Education

Training & Technical Assistance Center

May/June 2014

EVENTS

15th Annual Content Teaching Academy

James Madison University

June 23-27, 2014

Visit T/TAC Online

for additional

Professional Development

VDOE UPDATES

Steve Staples is appointed to Superintendent of Public Instruction

Launching of the
Center on Transition Innovations (CTI)
website

Visit the new
AIM-VA website
to order accessible textbooks and other instructional materials for eligible K-12 students with IEPs at no cost.

TeacherDirect is designed to establish a direct line of communication with classroom teachers and educators.

Make It Crystal Clear! Explicit Instruction to

Support Students With Disabilities

By Lee Anne Sulzberger, M.Ed.

Explicit instruction has been shown to promote learning for diverse students, including students with disabilities. In addition to our regular features such as VDOE Updates and Upcoming Events, this edition of Link Lines presents several strategies that highlight the importance of supporting students with disabilities by providing organized, systematic, and clear instruction. Click here to see what you can do to help students understand what they need to do and how they need to do it.

Reciprocal Teaching: Seeing Is Believing By Joan Baker, M.Ed., and Lisa M. Emerson, M.Ed., M.Sc.
Reciprocal teaching has proven to be an effective instructional strategy for active engagement and higher-order thinking skills. It is designed to gradually release responsibility from the teacher to the students to encourage student ownership of comprehension strategies. Read more

Learning How to Learn: A Critical

Component of Academic Success

By Debbie Grosser, M.Ed.

Use of metacognition skills and study strategies is critical to students' academic success. These skills are not innate and, therefore, must be taught and practiced to be mastered. Direct instruction and structured approaches provide avenues to ensuring that students with disabilities learn these valuable strategies. Read more to discover resources and examples that will support students in taking charge of their own learning.

Question-Answer-Relationships and

Co-Teaching Across the Curriculum

By Cathy Buyrn, M.Ed.

Systematic use of effective reading strategies across the curriculum is critical when students are required to transition between teachers and content areas during the school day. The Question-Answer-Relationship (QAR) strategy can be implemented as a school-wide intervention focused on building metacognitive skills that support comprehension in every single classroom. While students with disabilities and students who struggle benefit first from such consistency, all students stand to benefit from the development of strategies that can be applied across the curriculum. Read more

Making the Most of Your Team Meeting:

An Excerpt From the Considerations Packet

Strategies for Creating Effective School Leadership Teams

By Lee Anne Sulzberger, M.Ed.

How often do you attend a team meeting and wonder why the group is even meeting given that nothing worthwhile seems to get accomplished? Click here to read an article from the 2012 Link Lines archives to learn how to turn your team meetings into powerful problem-solving events that support school improvement efforts. The article provides an excerpt from the Considerations Packet entitled Strategies for Creating Effective School Leadership Teams addressing strategies for conducting productive meetings.