STUDY GUIDE SERIES: LOOKING AT TEACHING THROUGH THE LENS OF THE FFT CLUSTERS

Teachers and instructional coaches (including mentors and teacher preparation personnel) want to improve or enhance teaching practice.

The Danielson Group created a powerful professional development tool in a series of Study Guides. Each Guide provides steps educators can use to examine examples of teaching practice, discuss that practice with their colleagues, and use what they learn to examine their own and colleagues’ practices to promote growth.

The power of professional learning comes when educators can have focused discussions about the teaching and learning that they witness. The process of discussing what one has learned from the Instructional Set with colleagues, and how it can be applied to one’s own practice, are the actions needed to enhance teaching and learning. Just watching videos of effective teachers is not enough to change practice. Additional thinking and actions need to happen in order to impact change. These Study Guides are intended for use by educators participating in professional learning communities.

There are eight Study Guides in the Series. Each Study Guide covers three different Instructional Sets, including 3 different grade levels and subjects. Analyzing lessons from a variety of grades and subject areas provides learning opportunities for educators that stretch their analysis skills and enhance their understanding of the FFT Clusters.

Contents of the Study Guides

Each Study Guide provides a multi-step process to examine, reflect on, discuss, and apply learning from the contents of an Instructional Set. Each guide provides the following steps:

  1. Lesson Overview
  2. Preparation and Questions
  3. Viewing the Classroom Video
  4. Selected Highlights of the Lesson Video
  5. Viewing the Teacher Commentary
  6. Questions, Applications, and Discussion

For each Instructional Set, there is an extensive list of evidence gleaned from the video and artifacts that is aligned to the FFT Clusters by master coders Videos from the Resource Links section may need to be downloaded first to view.

Each Study Guide includes two versions for each Instructional Set:

  • One version for communities of teachers
  • Another version for communities of instructional coaches or teacher mentors.

The first five steps of the process are identical in both versions, and were designed to focus on examining the instruction taking place in the classroom video. Step 6 is a group activity focusing on analyses of the featured Instructional Set and applications of learning.

Each of the 8 Study Guide sets are available through Amazon, and a link for their purchase is provided below.

PLEASE NOTE: The Danielson Group does not take orders/payment for the Study Guides. They are available exclusively through Amazon.

Resource Links
Subject
Grade Level
Adaptive Design: Footrest
Adaptive Indust. Tech
9
Questioning Poetry
ELA
8
Comparing and Solving Ratios and Rates
Math
5
Resource Links
Subject
Grade Level
Theorems About Special Parallelograms
Math
9-10
Reading Non-fictional Text
ELA
2
Nevada: The State of Sin?
Social Studies
7
Resource Links
Subject
Grade Level
Electricity
Science
4
Inscribed Angles
Math
11
Evidence Based Authentic Discussion
ELA
7
Resource Links
Subject
Grade Level
The Golden Ratio
Math
10
Comparing and Contrasting Across Texts
ELA
5
Decomposing 10
Math
K
Resource Links
Subject
Grade Level
Reading Workshop
ELA
4
Taking Notes
ELA
K
System of Linear Equations
Math
9