Channels and Experts
Videos of Research-Based Classroom Practices in Action
All PD In Focus videos are organized into channels guided by widely recognized experts.
Getting Started with PD In Focus
Start here to learn how you can use PD In Focus to lead your professional development. PD In Focus supports your efforts to improve learning, teaching, and leadership through building local capacity and expertise. This channel includes video tutorials, collaborative learning tools, and guides for use at your school.
The Art and Science of Teaching
The Art and Science of Teaching Channel presents a comprehensive framework for effective teaching. This framework consists of three major focus areas and ten design questions, all of which are powerfully interconnected as part of the art and science of great teaching.
ASCD Master Class: Season 1
ASCD Master Class is a lively and in-depth video interview series in the mold of Charlie Rose. Each month, join NPR correspondent and former educator Claudio Sanchez in the studio as he talks with some of today's most influential educators about the issues that matter. This season, Claudio leads a five-part series on leadership. Look for a new episode each month, premiering exclusively in PD In Focus.
ASCD Master Class: Season 2
ASCD Master Class is a lively in-depth video interview in the mold of Charlie Rose. NPR correspondent and former educator Claudio Sanchez talks with some of today's most influential educators and entrepreneurs about the issues that matter. In season two, Claudio leads a multi-part series on technology in education. Look for new episodes throughout the year, premiering exclusively in PD In Focus.
Best Practices in Action
Discover best practices in action. This channel features teachers and schools using innovative methods and teaching strategies to motivate students, build resiliency in the classroom, and develop critical-thinking skills.
The Brain and Learning
Learn how the human brain develops and how this impacts learning from early childhood to secondary school. Discover key principles and strategies for brain-compatible teaching and learning.
The Common Core
Explore how the Common Core State Standards approach literacy and Mathematics in new and important ways. Through video examples, you'll learn practical ways to put the standards to work in classrooms.
The Common Core Webinars Channel
The Common Core Webinars Channel contains a selection of archived webinars describing shifts required in curriculum development and implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Each webinar is led by an education professional intimately involved with the development of the standards or who can offer advice and suggestions for successful implementation and assessment of student achievement in relation to the standards.
Conducting an Effective IEP Meeting Aligned with the Common Core
This channel focuses on the nuts and bolts of structuring and executing an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting that is tied to the Common Core State Standards. Watch as a school team—composed of a school principal, special education teacher, language arts teacher, and math teacher—meets with the parent of a special needs student and engages in an annual review that uses the Common Core State Standards to help inform his goals.
Cooperative Learning
Learn how cooperative learning can be used to fulfill content requirements and address achievement gaps in student learning.
Curriculum Mapping
Whether you're deep into curriculum mapping or just starting out, this channel offers concrete tools and resources to help you implement the process in your district or school. The channel features teachers and administrators who are implementing the process and shares tools and resources that assist in creating quality maps. Learn how to support collaboration and develop professional development sessions that are essential to successful curriculum mapping.
Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction is responsive instruction that addresses and takes into account students’ varied learning needs. This channel explores how to ensure that all students meet the learning goals and provides practical teaching and learning strategies.
English Language Learners
Who are English language learners? Students are called ELLs until they achieve full English proficiency. The resources in this channel are organized around instructional practices, literacy strategies, classroom assessment, connecting to culture, and parent involvement. Learn strategies from expert teachers as they work with their ELLs.
Enhancing Professional Practice
Bring to life the components of successful teaching practice and classroom observation processes from ASCD's acclaimed book Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Scenes from elementary, middle, and high school classrooms illustrate what successful teachers do in all four domains of effective practice: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.
Formative Assessment
What is formative assessment? The resources in this channel explain what formative assessment is, why it's important for teachers to use this approach in the classroom, and how to use formative assessments to gather evidence about student learning and use this evidence to adjust teaching.
Giving Effective Feedback to Your Students
Giving students good, effective feedback on their progress is one of the toughest challenges teachers face. In this channel, teachers demonstrate written and oral feedback strategies that put students at the center of the learning and help them improve their own performance. Teachers use feedback in the formative assessment process to improve the focus of classroom lessons and instructional strategies. They also ensure that feedback has the right timing and tone with the optimum amount of content and clarity.
High Schools at Work
If you’ve ever wondered what you could do to improve the performance of your high school students, close achievement gaps, and lower drop-out rates, then here’s an opportunity for you and your colleagues to see how innovative high schools are succeeding by being more responsive to the varied needs of their students. Use the resources in this channel to visit high schools that have redesigned the cultures of their schools and implemented strategies to personalize learning and help their students reach higher levels of achievement.
Implementing RTI in Secondary Schools
Go beyond the theory of Response to Intervention (RTI) to see exactly what schools do to help struggling students close achievement gaps. Use this channel to follow a high school freshman through an RTI approach that features research-based strategies that emphasize universal screening, diagnostic assessment, and a three-tiered instructional intervention. Learn about online research tools and how to build pools of expert teachers.
The Innovators: Integrating Literacy into Curriculum
Common Core State Standards reinforce the new definition of literacy and raise the bar for student achievement. But how will teachers help students reach that bar? Visit two successful sites where integrating literacy education is working.
Leading with Vision: Six Steps to Implementing the Common Core State Standards
This channel, geared toward school leaders, includes examples of effective ways to empower teachers to make necessary shifts in curriculum planning and instructional practice. Learn how to roll out information without overwhelming staff, balance ongoing needs with the need to adopt new standards, and anticipate and overcome roadblocks to implementation.
Literacy Strategies
Literacy means "power over letters" and includes the creation of text as well as the use of text in the learning process. This channel features resources and strategies to improve reading and writing skills in the content areas. Discover new ways to develop background knowledge and vocabulary in all grade levels and subject areas.
Never Work Harder Than Your Students
Bring Robyn R. Jackson, the author of ASCD’s wildly popular book Never Work Harder Than Your Students, to your school with this channel! Robyn explains how any teacher can develop the qualities and mind-set of a great teacher. Scenes from real classrooms take you through each of the seven principles described in her book. This channel shows how teachers in all grade levels can apply these practices in their classrooms and bring them all together to ensure that students take more responsibility for their learning.
Problem-Based Learning for the 21st Century Classroom
Visit elementary and secondary schools where teachers use problem-based learning to develop real-world, authentic tasks that motivate students and encourage them to take more ownership of learning. See examples of how teachers use problem-based learning to collaborate across the curriculum and integrate technology into their instruction.
School Culture and Climate: Addressing Bullying
Visit this channel to see how one school decided to stand up to bullying and what they’ve done to create a safe, nurturing, and learning environment for everyone. Scenes show how educators use coordinating committees, student survey data, and classroom discussions to stay on top of real and potential bullying situations. Interviews provide insight into how to develop schoolwide awareness on how to recognize and respond to bullying.
The Strategic Teacher
The Strategic Teacher channel, drawing on Harvey Silver’s book The Strategic Teacher: Selecting the Right Research-Based Strategy for Every Lesson, immerses teachers in practical research-based instructional and professional growth strategies that ultimately improve student learning. This channel features educators from across the United States who have used these strategies to transform their classrooms and schools into places full of a passion and joy for learning.
STEM
Providing students with a well-rounded education that includes science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) will help to prepare students for the jobs of the future. Visit this channel and see examples of special schools that focus on educating students of all ages on STEM. Learn how STEM can be incorporated into instruction at all grade levels and improve students' learning experiences and include 21st century learning skills.
Video Programs
ASCD's rich video library takes professional development to the next level. Each video in the channel is presented in its original length, making it a must have resource for anyone seeking greater understanding of educational practices and theories. Over 90 hours of content are now available on demand, with new titles added regularly!
Vocab in Action: Critical Strategies for Your Classroom
Based on Marilee Sprenger's best-selling books, Teaching the Critical Vocabulary of the Common Core and Vocab Rehab, this channel puts Sprenger's brain-research–based, timesaving strategies for mastering vocabulary into action in real classrooms to boost student knowledge for the key words they need to know for success with the Common Core standards.
The Whole Child
The Whole Child Initiative proposes a definition of achievement and accountability that promotes the development of children who are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. We seek to redefine what a successful learner is and how we measure success. ASCD is helping educators, families, community members, and policymakers move from rhetoric about educating the whole child to reality.