Too often, teachers say that the professionaldevelopment they receive provides limited application to their everyday world of teaching and learning. Here The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory shares a five-phase framework that can help create comprehensive, ongoing, and — most importantly — meaningful professional development.

The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) describes ten dimensions of teaching that are linked to student achievement and social development. Each dimension falls into one of three board categories: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support.

The development of new teachers in hard-to-staff schools should be of the highest priority for principals, as stability is key to long-term school improvement. Here are some factors principals should remember when recruiting and retaining teachers.

Teachers: How do you convince your principal, fellow teachers, and other school staff to help the student in your class who has a learning disability? Rick Lavoie, world-renowned expert, speaker, and author on teaching children with LD, tells you how to get your voice heard. Learn how to handle common road blocks and become a proactive and successful advocate in the hallways, the teacher's lounge, and the administrative suite.

Background knowledge is crucial to a child's academic success. Young children, especially those from at-risk communities, need broad and deep exposure to informational text and rich vocabulary in order to develop more complex thinking skills.

When some children are learning to read, they catch on so quickly that it appears effortless. It does not seem to matter what reading curriculum or teachers they encounter, for they arrive at school already possessing the important foundational skills. For other children, though, the path to literacy is far more difficult and by no means assured. It matters very much what curriculum their schools use and who their first teachers are.

According to author E. D. Hirsch, Jr., the only useful way to prepare for a reading test is indirectly by becoming a good reader of a broad range of texts, an ability that requires broad general knowledge.

Teachers can strengthen instruction and protect their students' valuable time in school by scientifically evaluating claims about teaching methods and recognizing quality research when they see it. This article provides a brief introduction to understanding and using scientifically based research.

Review well-established scientific findings about reading and their practical implications, for children with and without reading disabilities. In addition, consider some broader ways that science may be useful to educators and get suggestions for individual teachers interested in becoming more familiar with scientific research on reading.

In order to make reading instruction research-based, the research itself must be trustworthy, teachers must be prepared to understand and use it, and efforts must be made to translate research findings into recommendations for instruction. This article describes the issues involved in each of these three areas.

Making the teaching of reading into a research-based profession requires that research findings be trustworthy and understandable to the classroom teacher. This article summarizes recent initiatives to improve the use of reading research in the classroom, and argues for increased efforts in these areas.

The knowledge and skills base required for teaching reading well is extensive. This outline of a proposed curriculum for teacher education programs in reading covers knowledge of reading development, language structure, and strategies for instruction and assessment.

Teaching reading is a complex process that draws upon an extensive knowledge base and repertoire of strategies. This article argues that many novice teachers are underprepared to teach reading effectively, and examines some of the reasons why.

From relying on research to assessing often, these principles of good instruction provide teachers with strategies for promoting their students' reading achievement.