Page 4 - In Focus Newsletter_February 2019

Checklist for Culturally Responsive Instruction

The Checklist for Culturally Responsive Instruction provided

by Hanover Research helps classroom teachers improve
their instruction approaches by considering differences in
social dynamics, learning styles and life experiences of
students. The checklist includes engagement strategies,
learning environment strategies and feedback strategies.

Visit www.casdany.org/Hanover-Research to read the brief
and keep checking back each month for the latest research.

To supplement this resource, CASDA would like to explore
some practices drawn from the teachers featured in “Toward
a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” by Gloria Ladson-Billings, one
of this movement’s foundational texts. She emphasizes the
importance of how culturally responsive teachers structure
the social dynamics of their classrooms by “maintaining fluid
student-teacher relationships, demonstrating a connectedness with all of the students, developing a
community of learners and encouraging students to learn collaboratively and be responsible for
one another.” Click here to read more.

Save the Date: Building Culturally Responsive

Literacy Using Text Sets on May 16

Carmella Parente, K-12 Social Studies, World
Language, and Family Consumer Science
Coordinator for Schenectady City Schools and
Kerri Messler, K-12 English Language Arts and
Library Coordinator for Schenectady City
Schools will present their work on using text

sets to help students build background
knowledge to support their engagement with
reading. Messler and Parente draw upon the
research of Dr. Lynn Gelzheiser of UAlbany and
Dr. Keith Stanovich to address the relationship
between background knowledge and literacy.

Their method of scaffolding carefully-curated texts around a theme strengthens students’
knowledge foundation as they advance to more complex readings. Messler and Parente have
applied this practice to their district’s focused pursuit of educational equity by highlighting the
cultures of their diverse student body and community in their text sets, enabling teachers to
address the nuts and bolts of reading instruction in a way that promotes inclusion and celebrates
cultural pluralism. Stay tuned for more details!