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High-Leverage Practices Video Exemplars Collection

You can learn more about the HLP Collection below, or you can click on an HLP from the list to access the videos and resources associated with that practice.

Additional media will be added to the collection on an ongoing basis.

Collection Overview

The High-Leverage Practices Video Exemplars Collection documents a range of teachers whose exemplary practice TeachingWorks has chosen to feature. This collection includes video exemplars of high-leverage practices (HLPs) being enacted in real classroom settings. These videos exemplify the high-leverage practices in different forms and in different school contexts and to help us develop commonly agreed upon technical language to describe the work of teaching. For example, in the video exemplars representing the high-leverage practice of establishing norms for classroom learning, we provide annotated illustrations of specific norms being established and the moves that the teacher is using in the video.

This collection is part of a suite of materials and resources TeachingWorks is creating to contribute to enhanced professional development for both pre-service and practicing teachers. More information about the high-leverage practices and the organization can be found on the TeachingWorks website.

About Teachers and Classes

  • Teachers were pre-screened and identified as having exemplary practice for consideration in collection
  • Classroom videos captured in the 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years
  • Video range includes Kindergarten to high school classrooms
  • Mathematics and English language arts lessons (in addition to Social Studies, Science Literacy and other content)
  • Lessons from teachers in diverse school districts in Michigan and California
  • Each video clip features a TeachingWorks' High-Leverage Practice (HLP)

Collection Contents

  • High-Leverage Practice (HLP) overview format describing each HLP and highlighting examples of the tools & techniques used by teachers featured in the exemplars collection
  • 45+ mathematics, 40+ English language arts class sessions of approximately 2-3 minutes each
  • Each 2-3 minute clip and full length video captured from two camera angles, along with additional "stitched" views combining footage from the two cameras
  • Some clips are accompanied by lesson artifacts including lesson plans, lesson materials, class handouts, digital scans of handwritten student notebooks, and test papers.

Collection Background

For consideration in this collection, TeachersWorks sought teachers who:

  • Have demonstrated success working with all students
  • Actively engage students as learners and as individuals
  • Demonstrate high expectations for all students and are skilled at engaging a diverse group of student in complex work
  • Are skilled at leading a whole class discussion
  • Have well-established norms for engaging in discourse
  • Have demonstrated success setting up and facilitating small group work
  • Are comfortable making their teaching practice public
  • Work in school settings that are open to having videotaping occur
  • Have some flexibility regarding scheduling and pacing

Contributing Partners

  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • TeachingWorks, University of Michigan
  • Teaching & Learning Exploratory, University of Michigan

High Leverage Practices

1. Making content and disciplinary practices explicit through explanation, modeling, representations, and examples
2. Leading a discussion
3. Eliciting and interpreting individual students' thinking
4. Establishing norms and routines for classroom discourse central to the subject-matter domain
5/6. Recognizing and responding to common patterns of student thinking in a subject-matter domain
7. Teaching a lesson or segment of instruction
8. Implementing organizational routines, procedures, and strategies to support a learning environment
9. Setting up and managing small group work
10. Engaging in strategic relationship building conversations
11. Setting long- and short-term learning goals for students referenced to external benchmarks
12. Appraising, choosing, and modifying tasks and texts for a specific learning goal
13. Designing a sequence of lessons toward a specific learning goal
14. Selecting and using particular methods to check for understanding and monitor student learning
15. Composing, selecting, interpreting, and using information from methods of summative assessment
16. Providing oral and written feedback to students on their work
17. Communicating about a student with a parent or guardian
18. Analyzing instruction for the purpose of improving it
19. Communicating with other professionals