Texts, Fall 2008

Staff Reports

Skills Students Need to Succeed

SSIS (Social Skills Improvement System) Classwide Intervention Program
Stephen Elliott and Frank Gresham
Pearson Assessments, 2007

Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic and…good manners? Researchers have found that 10 basic social skills such as taking turns, listening and simply being nice are just as important to children’s academic success as the subjects they study, and that students can and should be learning these skills in the classroom.

“If we increase social skills, we see commensurate increases in academic learning. That doesn’t mean that social skills make you smarter; it means that these skills make you more amenable to learning,” Stephen Elliott, Vanderbilt Peabody education and psychology researcher and co-author of the newly published The Social Skills Improvement System—Classwide Intervention Program, said. “In our research, we found that elementary kids and teachers value cooperation and self-control. When we teach and increase those behaviors, we reduce problem behaviors and maximize learning time.”

Elliott and co-author Frank Gresham identified the top 10 skills that students need to succeed based on surveys of more than 8,000 teachers and more than 20 years of research in classrooms across the country. They are:

1. Listen to others
2. Follow the steps
3. Follow the rules
4. Ignore distractions
5. Ask for help
6. Take turns when you talk
7. Get along with others
8. Stay calm with others
9. Be responsible for your behavior
10.Do nice things for others

Elliott and Gresham present a detailed 10-week program that teachers can use to incorporate teaching of these skills into pre-school through middle school curriculum. The program devotes a week to each of the 10 skills, with each section building upon what is learned in the previous unit. In addition to the guide for teachers, the program includes student workbooks, videos and other supplemental materials.

Elliott believes that rather than adding to a teacher’s already heavy workload, the program will, in fact, help them reach children more effectively.

“Many teachers feel pressured by the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act and see this as an add-on,” Elliott said. “But we have found after this program they can teach these skills at the same time as they are teaching science and math, and it will help them be more effective across the board.”

The program includes a simple screening tool that teachers use at the beginning of the year to assess their individual students’ social and basic academic skills. The tool allows them to provide specific assistance in a particular area based on the student’s needs, and to assess progress. It includes communication with parents throughout the process to encourage their involvement in supporting these skills at home.

Stephen Elliott is Dunn Family Professor of Educational and Psychological Assessment and director of Vanderbilt’s Learning Sciences Institute. Frank Gresham is professor of psychology at Louisiana State University’s Department of Psychology.

Strategies to Improve Student Writing

Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students
Karen R. Harris, Steve Graham, Linda H. Mason, and Barbara Friedlander
Brookes Publishing Co., 2007

Co-authored by Vanderbilt Peabody professors Karen Harris and Steve Graham, along with Linda Mason and Barbara Friedlander, Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students seeks to reverse the downward trend in the quality of student writing. The book presents a detailed program that teachers can use to help students master writing and improve their self-confidence.

“Writing is discouraging and frustrating for many students, which can lead to an avoidance of writing and contribute to poor overall academic achievement,” Karen Harris, Currey Ingram Professor of Special Education, said. “This book offers teachers a guide for giving students the skills and strategies they need to learn how to write while boosting their enthusiasm and confidence in their ability to write independently and well.”

The book outlines how to implement writing instruction approach called Self-Regulated Strategy Development, or SRSD, which was designed by Harris and co-author Steve Graham, also Currey Ingram Professor of Special Education. The approach has been developed through 25 years of research and its effectiveness shown in more than 40 studies, including randomized field trials. “SRSD focuses on five areas that research has found are particularly difficult for students learning how to write: generating content; planning and outlining composition structure; creating goals and big-picture plans for compositions; quickly and effectively executing the mechanics of writing; and revising text and goals as needed,” Harris said. “While doing all of this, students need to be able to stay focused and to feel confident about their ability.”

The book lays out the SRSD approach for teachers in six stages: develop background knowledge with students about the writing genre and about powerful writing strategies; discuss the students’ current strategies and abilities; model effective writing strategies and the composing process; help students memorize strategies and self-instructions; support what students have learned through collaboration and revision; and establish independent performance.

“Teachers with whom I have worked have enthusiastically adopted SRSD because it is practical and easy to use in the classroom,” Robert Reid, professor of special education at the University of Nebraska, writes in the book’s forward. “What do students think of SRSD? They love it because it helps them learn how to do a task. These strategies help to give students the perseverance they need to get through demanding tasks such as writing an essay.”

Harris and Graham’s co-authors are Linda H. Mason, professor of educational and school psychology and special education at Pennsylvania State University; and Barbara Friedlander, a special education teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools, Potomac, Md.

Using Data to Improve Schools

Leading with Data: Pathways to Improve Your School
Ellen Goldring and Mark Berends
Corwin Press, 2008

Data can help school administrators boost student achievement, support teacher performance and improve parent-school relations.

Leading with Data: Pathways to Improve Your School, written by Ellen Goldring, professor of education policy and leadership, and Mark Berends, associate professor and director of the National Center on School Choice, outlines how administrators can and should use data to improve their schools.

“School administrators, now more than ever, are bombarded with demands to be accountable and to raise student achievement,” Goldring said. “Too often, policy decisions are made without any reference to what is shown to be working, or not working, at a particular school or in the larger educational system. We wrote this book to give school administrators guidance on how to use data to make decisions based on their students’ and teachers’ performance and needs, and to help identify, collect and analyze the most useful data.”

Standards-based reform continues to be a primary driver of education policy in the United States, and all of its components—content and performance standards, curriculum and instructional alignment, assessments and accountability — assume that data will be collected, reported and used. However, these standards vary from state to state and often miss school-level conditions, complicating administrators’ abilities to meet calls for reform and to use the data in a manner that meaningfully impacts student achievement.

“The uses of data extend beyond test scores to community, school and classroom conditions that support positive student outcomes,” Berends said. “Being able to support your decisions with a variety of verifiable data, and make mid-course corrections based on those data, will help administrators build stronger and more meaningful relationships with all of their various stakeholders. And in an era of increasing school choice, good data is essential to marketing your school to parents of prospective students.”

The book details how to collect and analyze relevant data for school improvement and student learning and how to use it to guide decisions. In addition to test scores, data can include student and program information, student work, portfolios, performance reviews and more.

The authors outline four key reasons for using data to drive decisions: to work toward continuous improvement; to meet accountability requirements; to focus efforts and monitor progress; and to develop a sense of community through organizational learning.