Johns Hopkins Talent Development Middle Schools (JHTDMS)
The JHTDMS reform program incorporates an integrated set of standards-based instructional materials, effective instructional practices, assessments and performance standards along with focused and sustained staff development and in-classroom implemenation support for each of the major subject areas: Reading, Language Arts, and Math. JHTDMS includes an Extra Help Lab in which students that need the extra help will be pulled from an elective class for a ten (10) week period to help enhance their reading and/or math skills.
Program Design:
The planned reform based on the Talent Development models will make it possible for our schools to engage all our students in a standards-based curriculum in each of the major subject areas that is coherent, focused, and challenging. To make it possible for all students to succeed in this demanding core curriculum, our teachers must update and upgrade their instructional strategies and content knowledge.
The Talent Development Model has a proven track record of increasing student achievement through teacher learning. For example, the National Staff Council, in their forthcoming Consumer Guide, identifies Talent Development's Student Team literature program as one of the just seven staff development efforts in the area of language arts that has demonstrably improved teacher effectiveness and student achievement in the middle grades. Similarly, Talent Development's staff development efforts in middle and high school mathematics, science, and U.S. History have received great reviews from middle and high school teachers, who credit these efforts with helping them to become more skillful teachers in the subject areas.
The professional development offered in each of the major subject areas combined with follow-up curriculum coaching and implementation support makes it possible for teachers to become skilled in instructional approaches that focus teaching for understand, peer assisted learning, explicit mechanisms for providing students with essential background knowledge, developing meta-cognitive strategies, and strategies and materials which engage students in an active way with questions that provoke higher order thinking skills. The Talent Development models provide the curriculum, professional development, coaching, implementation support, capacity building, and structural and organizational reforms needed to spread excellence in teaching to every class in every major subject at every grade level.
To help students succeed the curriculum and other components of the Talent Development program selected for Oceanview Middle School and Southern High School include:
Student Team Literature and Talent Development Writing:
The Talent Development Middle Grades core Reading/English/Language Arts (RELA) curriculum includes Student Team Literature, Talent Development Writing, plus an extra-help program called Computer-and Team-Assisted Reading Acceleration that provides additional instruction and reading opportunities for struggling students.
The Talent Development Middle Grades Reading/English/Language Arts program represents a coherent research- and standards-based approach to developing the literacy of older students. The program teaches effective reading strategies and operations, extends reading comprehension skills, develops fluency in reading and writing, systematically adds important words to students/working vocabulary, and builds basic language skills and higher-order thinking, literary analysis, and writing skills. One distinction of this approach is its integrated nature. Skills are not taught in isolation. All objectives in Reading/English/Language Arts are taught through reading, studying, discussing, and responding to high-quality, high-interest books.
The Talent Development Middle grades Reading/English/Language Arts program includes a wide variety of curricular materials that support teachers' use of effective instructional practices, engaging and varied learning activities assessments, and students' use of effective peer assistance processes. A primary tool in the Talent Development Middle Grades Reading/English/Language Arts program is the Partner Discussion Guide, which structures the teachers' and students' teach and learning activities. Partner Discussion Guides are available for almost 200 books (fiction and non-fiction books from genre, biographies, and collections of short stories or poems). This curriculum is aligned with current Philadelphia Curriculum Frameworks.
The Talent Development Middle School Mathematics Program:
The Talent Development Middle Grades mathematics program is centered on the use of curricular materials developed by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. The Talent Development sequence consists of using university of Chicago School Mathematics Project's Everyday Mathematics in fifth and sixth grade, University of Chicago School Mathematics Project Transition Mathematics in seventh grade, and University of Chicago School Mathematic Project Algebra in 8th grade. These are research- and standards- based materials, which are particularly well suited to achieving algebra for all in 8th grade.
Extra Help:
In Talent Development schools, students who need extra help in Math or Reading attend a ten-week accelerated learning class (in addition to their regular math and reading classes) that uses cooperative groups and computers to provide intensive learning experiences. Students needing extra help to meet high standards have responded enthusiastically to these "extra dose" classes even though the students miss an elective class for ten weeks in order to participate. These extra-dose classes help make de-tracking work well because the teachers of the regular classes feel no pressure to lower their standards: The teachers know that intensive extra help will be received by all students who need additional time and instruction to master the material.
Communal Organization of the School
The communal organization component of the Talent Development Model recognizes that student effort and teacher effectiveness can be greatly increased by implementing innovative approaches to school organization and staffing that allow teachers, students, and families to establish separate learning communities of 200 to 300 students which occupy their own areas of the school and stay together for two or three years, usually with the same teach of teachers. Most teams are small (two or three teachers) and are responsible for fewer than 100 students, because most teachers teach two subjects to students whom they serve.
De-tracking of Instruction
Many middle and high schools inadvertently manufacture the low achievement of many students by offering high expectation instruction to only a subset of their students (sorting some students into high-expectation instruction to only a subset of their students sorting some students into high-expectation instrcution while elegating others to a lower track featuring a lower-quality education). The Talent Development program has demonstrated that all children are capable of succeeding in demanding college-preparatory courses when given appropriate support. Because tracking causes gross inequalities in students' access to knowledge, instructional resources, and well-qualified teaching, Talent Development students are heterogeneously grouped in their core academic classes. Heterogeneous grouping for core academic classes help Talent Development Schools reach high levels of academic performance by eliminating lower track sections that teachers choose and that typically feature a modified instructional delivery of that content. To help teachers mange these heterogeneous classes effectively and teach in ways that help students learn, Talent Development staffs provide focused and coherent professional development in the use of subject-specific cooperative learning and teaching-for-understanding instructional methods and classroom management techniques designed or diverse classrooms. By combining heterogeneous classrooms with effective cooperative learning approaches that feature guided peer-tutoring and peer discussion of high-level content, Talent Development Schools cultivate the conceptual learning of all students. This use of structured cooperative learning is also quite effective in building peer support for achievement in the classroom so that positive peer pressure leads students to embrace academic aspirations and encourage students who are not "giving their best" to work harder.
School-Family-Community Partnerships
Talent Development schools participate in the National Network of Partnership Schools. This network, established by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, brings together schools, districts, and states that are committed to developing and maintaining a comprehensive program of school-family-community partnerships. As part of the network, Talent Development School establish Action Teams that carry out school, parent, and community involvement activities in a focused and coherent way. Research shows that students achieve more and at higher levels when their families are involved in their school. Johns Hopkins Talent Development encourages such involvement, as well as community partners, especially through the National Network of Partnership Schools, which is also part of the Center for social Organization of Schools.
Cultural Relevance
Talent Development curricular materials and professional development emphasize culturally relevant materials and teaching practices. This component of the program recognizes that students will work harder and learn more is instruction is attentive to the student population's cultural patterns and norms, promotes cross-cultural understanding, and helps students connect to and interpret cultural traditions.
On-site Facilitators
One certified curriculum coach, as required by Johns Hopkins Talent Development Program, per subject implemented will provide in-classroom support which includes modeling, troubleshooting, peer coaching, meeting with small groups of teachers to go over upcoming lessons, and making sure that teachers have the supplies and materials necessary to implement the program. It is essential that only expert teachers who are talented peer coaches fill this role.
Professional Development
Talent Development Middle and High Schools commit to ongoing planning and professional development needed to implement and sustain the core components of the Talent Development model. Professional development services include initial planning meetings, and follow-up on-site training. School-based teachers and administrators will work with classroom teachers to develop capacity within the school and at the classroom level. Additional support is provided to these school-based coaches through on-site follow-up visits and regular phone and electronic contact with University-based facilitators.
Talent Development Middle and High Schools are provided multiple layers of sustained professional development, technical assistance, and implementation support. The first layer is on-going subject and grade specific staff development that is explicitly linked to the curriculum. This professional development has three primary foci. First, on a quarterly basis, Talent Development professional development sessions model upcoming instructional activities for teachers. Second, these sessions
Program Design:
The planned reform based on the Talent Development models will make it possible for our schools to engage all our students in a standards-based curriculum in each of the major subject areas that is coherent, focused, and challenging. To make it possible for all students to succeed in this demanding core curriculum, our teachers must update and upgrade their instructional strategies and content knowledge.
The Talent Development Model has a proven track record of increasing student achievement through teacher learning. For example, the National Staff Council, in their forthcoming Consumer Guide, identifies Talent Development's Student Team literature program as one of the just seven staff development efforts in the area of language arts that has demonstrably improved teacher effectiveness and student achievement in the middle grades. Similarly, Talent Development's staff development efforts in middle and high school mathematics, science, and U.S. History have received great reviews from middle and high school teachers, who credit these efforts with helping them to become more skillful teachers in the subject areas.
The professional development offered in each of the major subject areas combined with follow-up curriculum coaching and implementation support makes it possible for teachers to become skilled in instructional approaches that focus teaching for understand, peer assisted learning, explicit mechanisms for providing students with essential background knowledge, developing meta-cognitive strategies, and strategies and materials which engage students in an active way with questions that provoke higher order thinking skills. The Talent Development models provide the curriculum, professional development, coaching, implementation support, capacity building, and structural and organizational reforms needed to spread excellence in teaching to every class in every major subject at every grade level.
To help students succeed the curriculum and other components of the Talent Development program selected for Oceanview Middle School and Southern High School include:
Student Team Literature and Talent Development Writing:
The Talent Development Middle Grades core Reading/English/Language Arts (RELA) curriculum includes Student Team Literature, Talent Development Writing, plus an extra-help program called Computer-and Team-Assisted Reading Acceleration that provides additional instruction and reading opportunities for struggling students.
The Talent Development Middle Grades Reading/English/Language Arts program represents a coherent research- and standards-based approach to developing the literacy of older students. The program teaches effective reading strategies and operations, extends reading comprehension skills, develops fluency in reading and writing, systematically adds important words to students/working vocabulary, and builds basic language skills and higher-order thinking, literary analysis, and writing skills. One distinction of this approach is its integrated nature. Skills are not taught in isolation. All objectives in Reading/English/Language Arts are taught through reading, studying, discussing, and responding to high-quality, high-interest books.
The Talent Development Middle grades Reading/English/Language Arts program includes a wide variety of curricular materials that support teachers' use of effective instructional practices, engaging and varied learning activities assessments, and students' use of effective peer assistance processes. A primary tool in the Talent Development Middle Grades Reading/English/Language Arts program is the Partner Discussion Guide, which structures the teachers' and students' teach and learning activities. Partner Discussion Guides are available for almost 200 books (fiction and non-fiction books from genre, biographies, and collections of short stories or poems). This curriculum is aligned with current Philadelphia Curriculum Frameworks.
The Talent Development Middle School Mathematics Program:
The Talent Development Middle Grades mathematics program is centered on the use of curricular materials developed by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. The Talent Development sequence consists of using university of Chicago School Mathematics Project's Everyday Mathematics in fifth and sixth grade, University of Chicago School Mathematics Project Transition Mathematics in seventh grade, and University of Chicago School Mathematic Project Algebra in 8th grade. These are research- and standards- based materials, which are particularly well suited to achieving algebra for all in 8th grade.
Extra Help:
In Talent Development schools, students who need extra help in Math or Reading attend a ten-week accelerated learning class (in addition to their regular math and reading classes) that uses cooperative groups and computers to provide intensive learning experiences. Students needing extra help to meet high standards have responded enthusiastically to these "extra dose" classes even though the students miss an elective class for ten weeks in order to participate. These extra-dose classes help make de-tracking work well because the teachers of the regular classes feel no pressure to lower their standards: The teachers know that intensive extra help will be received by all students who need additional time and instruction to master the material.
Communal Organization of the School
The communal organization component of the Talent Development Model recognizes that student effort and teacher effectiveness can be greatly increased by implementing innovative approaches to school organization and staffing that allow teachers, students, and families to establish separate learning communities of 200 to 300 students which occupy their own areas of the school and stay together for two or three years, usually with the same teach of teachers. Most teams are small (two or three teachers) and are responsible for fewer than 100 students, because most teachers teach two subjects to students whom they serve.
De-tracking of Instruction
Many middle and high schools inadvertently manufacture the low achievement of many students by offering high expectation instruction to only a subset of their students (sorting some students into high-expectation instruction to only a subset of their students sorting some students into high-expectation instrcution while elegating others to a lower track featuring a lower-quality education). The Talent Development program has demonstrated that all children are capable of succeeding in demanding college-preparatory courses when given appropriate support. Because tracking causes gross inequalities in students' access to knowledge, instructional resources, and well-qualified teaching, Talent Development students are heterogeneously grouped in their core academic classes. Heterogeneous grouping for core academic classes help Talent Development Schools reach high levels of academic performance by eliminating lower track sections that teachers choose and that typically feature a modified instructional delivery of that content. To help teachers mange these heterogeneous classes effectively and teach in ways that help students learn, Talent Development staffs provide focused and coherent professional development in the use of subject-specific cooperative learning and teaching-for-understanding instructional methods and classroom management techniques designed or diverse classrooms. By combining heterogeneous classrooms with effective cooperative learning approaches that feature guided peer-tutoring and peer discussion of high-level content, Talent Development Schools cultivate the conceptual learning of all students. This use of structured cooperative learning is also quite effective in building peer support for achievement in the classroom so that positive peer pressure leads students to embrace academic aspirations and encourage students who are not "giving their best" to work harder.
School-Family-Community Partnerships
Talent Development schools participate in the National Network of Partnership Schools. This network, established by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, brings together schools, districts, and states that are committed to developing and maintaining a comprehensive program of school-family-community partnerships. As part of the network, Talent Development School establish Action Teams that carry out school, parent, and community involvement activities in a focused and coherent way. Research shows that students achieve more and at higher levels when their families are involved in their school. Johns Hopkins Talent Development encourages such involvement, as well as community partners, especially through the National Network of Partnership Schools, which is also part of the Center for social Organization of Schools.
Cultural Relevance
Talent Development curricular materials and professional development emphasize culturally relevant materials and teaching practices. This component of the program recognizes that students will work harder and learn more is instruction is attentive to the student population's cultural patterns and norms, promotes cross-cultural understanding, and helps students connect to and interpret cultural traditions.
On-site Facilitators
One certified curriculum coach, as required by Johns Hopkins Talent Development Program, per subject implemented will provide in-classroom support which includes modeling, troubleshooting, peer coaching, meeting with small groups of teachers to go over upcoming lessons, and making sure that teachers have the supplies and materials necessary to implement the program. It is essential that only expert teachers who are talented peer coaches fill this role.
Professional Development
Talent Development Middle and High Schools commit to ongoing planning and professional development needed to implement and sustain the core components of the Talent Development model. Professional development services include initial planning meetings, and follow-up on-site training. School-based teachers and administrators will work with classroom teachers to develop capacity within the school and at the classroom level. Additional support is provided to these school-based coaches through on-site follow-up visits and regular phone and electronic contact with University-based facilitators.
Talent Development Middle and High Schools are provided multiple layers of sustained professional development, technical assistance, and implementation support. The first layer is on-going subject and grade specific staff development that is explicitly linked to the curriculum. This professional development has three primary foci. First, on a quarterly basis, Talent Development professional development sessions model upcoming instructional activities for teachers. Second, these sessions