Welcome to Early Impact: Strategies for School Year Success

Hi there!

Happy summer! Whether your adventures lead you to an exotic beach or just to your favorite spot on your patio, we hope you’re making the most of the season. At the same time, for those of us who support students both in and out of the classroom, it’s all but impossible not to think ahead to the new school year! To aid in your planning and help you start the year off strong, we’re introducing Early Impact, a bi-weekly roundup of strategies and tools vetted by our student agency experts at Gateway Impact.

If your dream classroom is one in which students embrace collaboration, advocate for themselves and one another, and embrace a growth mindset when things get tough, read on; in each issue we’ll bring you curated resources to help you build student-centered learning environments, optimized for grades 6-12 and applicable to any content area. Between now and mid-September, we’ll cover:

Centering Non-Cognitive Skills with the Student Agency Rubric
Long Term Planning for You and Your Students
Classroom Setup and Routines
Student Collaboration in the Classroom
Making the most of your Team Collaboration
Student-Led Conferences

Let's dive in!

This week we’re starting at the very beginning with the Student Agency Rubric, which identifies specific noncognitive skills and habits that supports students’ success throughout their education: Academic Strategies, Academic Habits, Self Awareness & Growth Mindset, Self-Advocacy, and Collaboration & Community Skills. Because it includes the full range of these skills, this rubric is a centerpiece of classroom learning. Our experts recommend focusing on one skill at a time, allowing students to gradually develop a broad set of skills that will allow them to thrive even in the classes that most intimidate them.

Click through to find the rubric itself, as both a PDF and a fully customizable Word doc, as well as a full text overview, links to related resources, and a video guide to the rubric. As you review the document, you’ll certainly get some great ideas about how these skills fit in with your academic content, making the rubric a great place to start your planning for 2019-20.

What’s summer without a little poolside reading material? Together, these two articles are a great introduction to the topic of noncognitive skills and why it’s so important that we teach them as deliberately as we do academic content.

Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners: The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance
University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research

This article comprehensively reviews the research that supports how noncognitive factors impact students’ overall academic performance. It’s a great point of entry into the topic and is helpful for organizations seeking evidence that supports the importance of developing students’ social and emotional skills. In addition to the full article, this link also points you toward a PowerPoint presentation and a video that would be great to use for PD.

The Influence of Teaching Beyond Standardized Test Scores: Engagement, Mindsets & Agency
The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University

This article examines how different teaching approaches help foster students’ engagement, growth mindset and agency. With these in mind, schools can shape the professional development of their teachers.

Looking for more? Check out our Student Agency Research landing page at Gateway Impact, where you can access the very best of the research that shapes our approach to supporting students in the classroom.

That’s it for this week! In the next edition of Early Impact, we’ll dive into planning in earnest with resources to help map out the year for both your students and your team’s professional development. In the meantime, be sure to get some serious relaxing in!

Know a friend or colleague who’d be interested in Early Impact? Forward along and encourage them to subscribe!

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Gateway Impact was made possible with the support of generous donors, including the S.H. Cowell Foundation.