Teaching Students to Drive Their Learning: A Playbook on Engagement and Self-Regulation, K-12

About the Book

High levels of engagement—it’s not an impossible dream. But to attain it we need to focus on what galvanizes learning, and ensure we are offering the tools and mindsets with which students can lean in. In this playbook, an ace team of educators give us the goods to guide self-starting learners.

Nine modules show us how to:

• Coherent standards, success criteria, tasks, and goals so students can travel clear pathways
• Offer tools that allow learners to recognize the gap between their current performance and the expected performance, and select strategies to close that gap
• Talk with students about engagement as a continuum, and that there are actions they can take to heighten their buy-in to any endeavor
• Stress-test our lesson plans to ensure students can discuss, debate, create and problem-solve around highly relevant content
• Use lots of low-stakes assessment and feedback routines to develop effective collaboration that doesn’t depend on us.

Our job as teachers is to guide learning experiences that build knowledge and self-efficacy. But from there, we need to stay on the sidelines and let students play. Only then will they develop the muscle to persevere, the strategic actions to excel, and the confidence to make our curriculum the springboard of their own dreams and goals.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Module 1: Engagement: From Disrupting to Driving Learning Module 2: Learners Know their Current Level of Understanding Module 3: Learners Understand Where They’re Going and Have the Confidence to Take on the Challenge Module 4: Learners Select Tools to Guide Their Learning Module 5: Learners Monitor Their Progress and Adjust Their Learning Module 6: Learners Seek Feedback and Recognize that Errors are Opportunities to Learn Module 7: Learners Recognize their Learning and Teach Others Module 8: Responding When Students Disengage

About the Author :
Douglas Fisher is professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Doug was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is a credentialed English teacher and administrator in California. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, leadership, and curriculum design, as well as books such as The Teacher Clarity Playbook (2nd ed.), Your Introduction to PLC+, The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Credibility, Instructional Strategies to Move Learning Forward: 50+ Tools That Support Gradual Release of Responsibility, and Welcome to Teaching! Nancy Frey is a professor in educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. Her published titles include 50 Strategies for Activating Your PLC+, The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning, Welcome to Teaching Multilingual Learners, Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers, and RIGOR Unveiled: A Video-Enhanced Flipbook to Promote Teacher Expertise in Relationship Building, Instruction, Goals, Organization, and Relevance.  Sarah Ortega, EdD, is a credentialed bilingual teacher and administrator in California.  She served as a classroom educator for 19 years before moving into various leadership positions at the site and district level.  In 2023, Sarah was recognized as the Chula Vista Elementary School District Teacher of the Year.  Her teaching videos have been featured in professional development training and educator magazines. She is a professional learning consultant and works with schools and districts to design and implement learning solutions that support the emotional, behavioral, and instructional needs of students.  She is a co-author of Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescents and Instructional Strategies to Move Learning Forward. John Hattie, PhD, is an award-winning education researcher and best-selling author with nearly thirty years of experience examining what works best in student learning and achievement. His research, better known as Visible Learning, is a culmination of nearly thirty years synthesizing more than 2,100 meta-analyses comprising more than one hundred thousand studies involving over 300 million students around the world. He has presented and keynoted in over three hundred international conferences and has received numerous recognitions for his contributions to education. His notable publications include Visible Learning, Visible Learning for Teachers, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn; Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12; and 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning.

Review :
Teaching Students to Drive their Learning is a timely playbook that gives educators the research and tools to support student agency in learning. Through seamlessly integrating research-based practices into clear actions that teachers can quickly implement in their classrooms, this book is a must-read for all. The newest Corwin playbook is one that should be in the library of every educator who strives to accelerate the learning of their students. Through clever analogies and real-world examples, this book creates a clear path paved, including strategies to teach students to take ownership of their own learning and become life-long learners who seek challenges and thrive on their own growth. 

It′s a practical guide to developing the qualities of self-driven learners in your students and promoting a classroom culture that allows the teacher to confidently let their students take on challenges and effectively become their own teacher. This is a great read for all educators!  It really speaks to how we, as educators, need to help students become responsible for their own learning.  Students truly need to know what to do when they don’t know what to do! This playbook is a great refresher for experienced teachers on ways that they can support students who are having difficulty finding success in the classroom. It’s a gentle nod and a great reminder of best practices that all teachers can benefit from. Since implementing Visible Learning practices, we have made great strides as a school district. We have embedded the use of learning intentions and success criteria in our classrooms and made them visible, utilizing them to guide instruction, and referencing them as the basis for assessment and reflection. Our students now understand what they are learning, how they know when they’ve learned it, and where they need to go next.