Based on the best-selling book The Core Six: Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence by Harvey Silver, R. Thomas Dewing, and Matthew J. Perini, this video helps teachers meet the challenge of the Common Core State Standards with the six research-based strategies proven to transform instruction.
See the strategies come to life within six classrooms across different subjects and grade levels. You'll witness teachers capturing students' interests, using discussion and questioning techniques to extend their thinking, and asking them to synthesize and transfer their learning.
Located in the Films on Demand database - click on the link and log in using your MDC Username and Password.
Interview with neuroscientist Paul Yellin about creating a common language shared by neuroscientists and educators.
Middle school math students develop and present many different approaches to a single set of concepts, creating the potential for greater understanding.
How We Organize Knowledge: The Structure of Disciplines
This program covers the ways in which the organization of knowledge and understanding can influence learning. It also introduces Bruner's and Schwab's ideas about the structure of the disciplines. Featured are a fourth-grade teacher, a 10th-grade biology teacher, and a ninth- through 12th-grade teacher, with expert commentary from Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Bloom's Taxonomy to Create Tiered Instruction
This mini-lecture describes how to use Bloom's taxonomy to create tiered instruction. Dr. Andy Johnson, Reading Specialist, www.OPDT-Johnson.com
This video is located on YouTube.
Films On Demand is a state-of-the-art streaming video platform that makes it easier than ever to incorporate outstanding educational programs from Films Media Group into your content management systems, online lesson plans, distance learning courseware, or electronic card catalog system.
Thinking about Thinking: Metacognition
This program explores how thinking about thinking helps students better manage their own learning and learn difficult concepts deeply. The program
features a senior English teacher and a sixth-grade teacher, with expert commentary from University of Michigan professor Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Lee S. Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Watch It, Do It, Know It: Cognitive Apprenticeship 
This program demonstrates how teachers help their students develop expertise and accomplish complex tasks by modeling, assisted performance, scaffolding, coaching, and feedback. It features a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher and an 11th- and 12th-grade English and social studies teacher, with expert commentary from University of Michigan professor Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar.
Different Kinds of Smart: Multiple Intelligences 
This program delves into Harvard University professor Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, describing how people have learning skills that differ in significant ways. Featured are teachers who share a class of five- through eight-year-olds, including several mainstreamed special needs students, and a ninth- and 10th-grade social studies teacher, with expert commentary from Howard Gardner.
Schoolwide Enrichment Models (SEM) Based on the belief that “a rising tide lifts all ships”, the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) is a proven plan for infusing a broad range of high-end learning strategies into existing school programs and standards-based reform initiatives. SEM helps educators and schools develop the gifts and talents of all students by using gifted education teaching practices, with all students. SEM places a premium on local school involvement, and the belief that all students are capable of developing their unique talents through the use of challenging, and enriching teaching practices.
In the video, Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis take viewers inside schools where they will observe the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in action and meet teachers, principals, and students who have benefited from this easy-to implement plan. Viewers will learn: specific strategies for modifying and differentiating the curriculum in the regular classroom in order to accommodate individual rates and levels of learning; a hands-on approach to three interrelated types of enrichment that focus on the application, rather than assimilation, of knowledge; ways in which student products and services can be brought to bear on authentic assessments. (35 minutes)
Located in the Films on Demand database - click on the link and log in using your MDC Username and Password
The Classroom Mosaic: Culture and Learning
This program discusses how culturally responsive teaching enables students to create connections, access prior knowledge and experience, and develop competence. Featured are a sixth-grade teacher and two ninth-grade teachers, with expert commentary from University of Wisconsin professor Gloria Ladson-Billings and University of Arizona professor Luis Moll.
Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking
With Dr. Robert Swartz. Teachers can help students become good thinkers. Good thinkers raise key questions and gather and evaluate pertinent information, thus making informed decisions. But how do we teach students to think skillfully? In this workshop, you will see how thinking skills can be infused into science content instruction, contrasted with direct instruction in non-curricular contexts. You will also see classrooms where teachers have restructured their lessons to infuse thinking skills and, in the process, added richness and depth to their students' learning.
LaNelle Harvey teaches in a part of Los Angeles where the dropout rate for high school students reaches 70%. She describes how learning about neuroscience has changed her classroom.
Scaffolding: Johanna and Her Mother with Commentary
Using the video of Johanna and her mother as illustration, Prof. Kurt Fischer explains the role of scaffolding in learning.
