Staten Island Technical High School

As a school with a gifted and talented student population and a vast diversity of learning styles, the young women and men of SITHS shall be actively engaged on a daily basis in all their instructional classes. Using a wide variety of grade appropriate educational experiences, data-driven lessons will be designed and implemented by teachers to challenge the critical thinking abilities and deepest levels of understanding of all our students in accordance with the Common Core Learning Standards.

This instructional model for optimum student engagement will hence be known as the SITHS Engagement Model. Academic time allotted to each of its three major components (Critical Thinking Questioning Techniques that Promote Complexity and Rigor, Clustering Activities, and Think-Pair-Share) will be determined by the subject class teacher. To further uphold the internal integrity of this site-specific instructional design is the SITHS Academic Honesty Code.

The development of curriculum maps and the integration of high-level content subject-related materials and enrichment to be addressed daily is the responsibility of the subject class teacher with the supervision of department AP''s.

The teacher's developmental lessons will be designed for greater understanding and supported by critical thinking activities that promote heightened student engagement. Each of the lesson's three major components will be tied together by a variety of ideal teaching modalities.

To heighten the level of student understanding of content materials while at the same time making students more responsible for their own learning, a variety of the following practices may be implemented: