A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Resource VII
Video Lists

The following videos⁽⁴⁾ offer practical strategies teachers and other school staff can use in the classroom. These strategies can promote effective teaching and learning to help all children achieve high standards.

Assessing the Whole Child
The National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing gives a first-hand view of how one teacher effectively implemented performance-based assessments in her third- and fourth-grade classroom.

Included with the video is a report that discusses what teachers need to implement performance assessments in their own classrooms.

School Development Library: A First Grade Math Lesson With David Burchfield
A videotape produced by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory tracks a teacher throughout the day as he strikes a balance between teacher-directed learning that is geared toward the general ability level of first-graders and student-directed learning that gives students the freedom to initiate, plan, and direct their own work so that they are uniquely challenged.

Effective Assessments: Making Use of Local Context
This video, produced by the Rural Schools Program at WestEd, offers practical strategies for creating culturally relevant student assessments. In a Navajo school district, for example, teachers modify a state math assessment task that calls for designing and costing out a tile floor, asking students instead to do the same for a Navajo rug.

The companion Guide to Developing Equitable Performance Assessments serves as a workshop guide for staff developers.

Effective Instruction: Linking Schools and Communities
This video, produced by the Rural Program at WestEd, looks at the way three schools work with parents and communities to ensure that learning grows from the culture, knowledge and skills of students.

Enhancing Mathematics Teaching through Case Discussions
A real-life case discussion with teachers discussing children's thinking, mathematics, language issues, and teaching. The video models how case discussions can spark new ideas and challenge old beliefs, while simultaneously providing support and encouragement for participants to improve their teaching.

For Our Students, For Ourselves: Learner-centered Principles in Practice
These two videos introduce the viewer to Learner-Centered Psychological Principles and their implications for educational practice in high schools. Viewers visit three high schools and observe students, teachers, and administrators using the Principles to guide their educational reform efforts. Learner-centered practices make learning personalized and relevant in a climate of personal consideration, mutual respect, and student responsibility. The three featured high schools include a small rural school, a school in a suburban setting, and an inner-city school with nearly 2,500 students.

Learning with Technology: Merging onto the Information Highway
A videotape produced by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory illustrates ways in which several schools and classrooms use the Internet. It also discusses how schools can establish an Internet educational program. Although intended for all educators, the program is geared especially for principals and other administrators.

Local Heroes: Bringing Telecommunications to Rural, Small Schools
Making interactive video and audio a reality in small, rural schools is the subject of this video and guidebook produced by the Southwest Educational Laboratory. The video recounts the experiences of six rural schools in the Southwestern United States that added vital courses to their curriculum through technology. The accompanying guidebook gives schools detailed directions for the formative, planning, and implementing stages for similar projects. The video and guidebook are also available in Spanish.

Successful Schoolwide Programs
This series of three videos highlights five effective elementary schoolwide programs in California. The first video features Westmoreland and Blanch Charles Elementary Schools. The second video features Signal Hill and Longfellow Elementary Schools. The last video features Glassbrook Elementary School. Footage includes classroom activities, teacher and parent interactions, staff planning meetings, and interviews with administrators, teachers and parents.

What About Learning?
Based on learning principles developed by the American Psychological Association, this video shows that learning occurs most naturally when people have a personal need to know certain information; that people are naturally curious and enjoy learning unless the learning setting is punitive; and that personally relevant and meaningful learning tasks stimulate creativity and higher-order thinking processes.

A booklet accompanies the video and describes activities and questions viewers might discuss before and after watching. The booklet also contains general tips for organizing and leading a discussion and a sample press release and flier that facilitators may distribute to community members as they watch the video. The video is available in English and Spanish.

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[Resource VI - School Reform...Associations]

[Resource VIII - Overview of Key ESEA Programs]