The Blog

Before assuming non-compliance, gather comprehensive evidence about the student's abilities. This step requires careful observation and documentation: Has the student successfully completed similar tasks before? Was the task completion consistent and fluent? Did they demonstrate mastery multiple times? Can they complete the task in different settings or with different people? Do they show consistent performance across similar assignments?

Concept-Based Instruction: Building Units with Depth and Complexity, which emphasizes designing units that promote both rigor and relevance, while focusing on thinking over task completion and transfer over recall.

If you want readers to better understand the text they are reading, vocabulary should be part of your plan. 

If you’ve spent any time in education lately, you’ve probably heard the phrase “science of reading.” But it’s more than a buzzword. The science of reading is a large body of research explaining how people learn to read, why some students struggle, and which instructional practices reliably lead to success. It’s not a single program or trend — it’s decades of evidence that can transform how we teach literacy.