Hop, Skip, Leapfrog

Educators needed to plan, implement, and improve strategies that maximize student learning of skills, content, and competencies, flexing to differences and tapping into the cognitive, motivational, and other resources students were individually bringing. To do this, students’ daily experience of learning needed to become more targeted and relevant, actively engaging, socially connected, and growth oriented.

How schools and systems did this varied depending on readiness, existing context, and vision. Some educators and leaders felt ready to make big “leaps,” adopting new practices that significantly altered learning experiences and structures across whole campuses or the system. Others made more incremental changes, tweaking existing approaches to target individual needs or increase engagement. Regardless of scale, these hops, skips, and leaps helped them make progress towards more learner-centered approaches. (This frame for analysis was inspired by and adapted from the notion of a "leapfrog pathway", though modified for our own lens and definition of practice change.)

“Hops” represent small tweaks or improvements, usually through implementation of single tools or specific instructional strategies.

"Skips” required educators to adopt new systems of practice, changing student experience at a greater scale (either in terms of sustained, consistent change within an area or across a greater number of students and classrooms).

“Leaps” were systemic, longer-term changes to the “grammar” of school, where traditional organizational structures for learning such as use of time, space, grade-levels, and progress assessment were fundamentally altered.

Explore concrete examples of how systems made changes to practice below. Each section is organized by student experience aims and further broken down by scale of change. As you explore, consider how these practice hops, skips, and leaps might be relevant to your own school or system.

These practice changes sought to help educators and learners ensure that experiences aligned to what each student needed to make progress based on individual needs, strengths, interests, and identities. Strategies included means for differentiation as well as ensuring students also accessed rigorous grade- and group-level learning experiences. Efforts also sought to make learning more identity- and culturally-affirming and responsive.

Hops

Skips

Leaps

Educators needed to implement practices that helped students cognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally engage in the learning process. These strategies encouraged students to reflect on and make sense of their learning journey, exert greater agency and ownership through choice-making and self-direction, and participate in authentic inquiry and application of that learning.

Hops

Skips

Leaps

Teams identified new ways to help students deepen connections through and with other peers and experts. They also applied strategies that brought in families, guardians, and other community members as meaningful partners for learning.

Hops

Skips

Leaps

More than ever, learning needed to focus on individual and group-level actual mastery of essential standards and skills. Educators implemented strategies that supported teacher and learner understanding of mastery and how to identify, set, and measure progress towards goals. Further, teachers identified ways to sustain practice, giving students feedback and offering multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery before moving on.

Hops

Skips

Leaps