Learn how to formatively assess and grade group work, including learning skills, group interaction skills, and individual achievement.
In this inspiring and thought-provoking follow-up to his 2009 best-seller Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life, Baruti Kafele makes the case that the achievement gap between white and minority students can be closed only if educators first transform students’ negative attitudes toward learning. According to Kafele, educators can achieve remarkable results by focusing on five key areas:
* The teacher’s attitude toward students * The teacher’s relationship with students * The teacher’s compassion for students * The learning environment * The cultural relevance of instruction
Replete with practical strategies and illustrative anecdotes drawn from the author’s 20-plus years as a teacher and principal in inner-city schools, Closing the Attitude Gap offers a wealth of lessons and valuable insights that educators at all levels can use to fire up their students' passion to learn.
Educators, politicians, parents, and even students are consumed with speaking the language of academic achievement. Yet something is missing in the current focus on accountability, standardized testing, and adequate yearly progress. If schools continue to focus the conversation on rigor and accountability and ignore more human elements of education, many students may miss out on opportunities to discover the richness of individual exploration that schools can foster. In The Best Schools , Armstrong urges educators to leave narrow definitions of learning behind and return to the great thinkers of the past 100 years–Montessori, Piaget, Freud, Steiner, Erikson, Dewey, Elkind, Gardner–and to the language of human development and the whole child. The Best Schools highlights examples of educational programs that are honoring students' differences, using developmentally appropriate practices, and promoting a humane approach to education that includes the following elements: * An emphasis on play for early childhood learning.* Theme- and project-based learning for elementary school students.* Active learning that recognizes the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of adolescents in middle schools.* Mentoring, apprenticeships, and cooperative education for high school students. Educators in «the best schools» recognize the differences in the physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual worlds of students of different ages. This book will help educators reflect on how to help each student reach his or her true potential, how to inspire each child and adolescent to discover an inner passion to learn, and how to honor the unique journey of each individual through life. Note: This product listing is for the reflowable (ePub) version of the book.
How do you know if your school is improving? Do you know what really works in reading programs…in writing…in math…in science? How do we measure what works? What about teaching to the test–or to the vast array of standards being mandated? How do we effectively use cooperative learning–and direct instruction–and alternative assessment? How do we sustain school reform? How do we get results–and measure them in terms of student achievement? In this expanded 2nd edition of Results , Mike Schmoker answers these and other questions by focusing on student learning. By (1) setting goals, (2) working collaboratively, and (3) keeping track of student-achievement data from many sources, teachers and administrators can surpass the community's expectations and facilitate great improvements in student learning. Through hundreds of up-to-date examples from real schools and districts, Schmoker shows how to achieve–and celebrate–both short- and long-term success. Here's one example: Bessemer Elementary school in Pueblo, Colorado, has an 80‑percent minority population. Between 1997 and 1998, the number of students performing at or above standard in reading rose from 12 to 64 percent; in writing, they went from 2 to 48 percent. Weekly, standards-focused, team meetings made the difference. As Schmoker says, «We cannot afford to overlook the rich opportunity that schools have to make a difference.» This second edition of Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement includes the following: * a Foreword by Michael Fullan;* a new Preface to the 2nd Edition by the author; * new information about cooperative learning, direct instruction, standards and assessments, and research and development;* new examples of successful schools;* new educational research by Michael Fullan, Robert Marzano, Linda Darling‑Hammond, Bruce Joyce, Dennis Sparks, Linda Lambert, and Richard Dufour, among others;* new information on action research–by teachers as well as administrators–and other effective staff development initiatives; and* a new emphasis on cultivating teacher leaders–and how to do it.
What does it feel like to walk into your school? Is it a welcoming place, where everyone feels valued? Most school improvement efforts focus on academic goals, instructional models, curriculum, and assessments. But sometimes what can make or break your learning community are the intangibles–the relationships, identity, and connections that make up its culture. Authors Fisher, Frey, and Pumpian believe that no school improvement effort will be effective unless school culture is addressed. They identify five pillars that are critical to building a culture of achievement:
1. Welcome: Imagine if all staff members in your school considered it their job to make every student, parent, and visitor feel noticed, welcomed, and valued. 2. Do no harm: Your school rules should be tools for teaching students to become the moral and ethical citizens you expect them to be. 3. Choice words: When the language students hear helps them tell a story about themselves that is one of possibility and potential, students perform in ways that are consistent with that belief. 4. It’s never too late to learn: Can you push students to go beyond the minimum needed to get by, to discover what they are capable of achieving? 5. Best school in the universe: Is your school the best place to teach and learn? The best place to work?
Drawing on their years of experience in the classroom, the authors explain how these pillars support good teaching and learning. In addition, they provide 19 action research tools that will help you create a culture of achievement, so that your school or classroom is the best it can be. After reading this book, you’ll see why culture makes the difference between a school that enables success for all students and a school that merely houses those students during the school day.
You know that repeating the same words and the same instructions—or simply announcing the answers to questions—doesn’t help students learn. How do you get past the predictable and really teach your kids how to learn? Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey say that helping students develop immediate and lifelong learning skills is best achieved through guided instruction, which they define as “saying or doing the just-right thing to get the learner to do cognitive work"—in other words, gradually and successfully transferring knowledge and the responsibility for learning to students through scaffolds for learning. In this helpful and informative book, they explain how guided instruction fits your classroom and works for your students. Their four-part system for implementation consists of these elements: * Questioning to check for understanding. * Prompting to facilitate students’ thinking processes and processing. * Cueing to shift students’ attention to focus on specific information, errors, or partial understandings. * Explaining and modeling when students do not have sufficient knowledge to complete tasks on their own.
Each element is thoroughly explained and illustrated with numerous examples drawn from the authors’ extensive experience in the classroom and their observations of hundreds of expert teachers, as well as a broad sampling of relevant research. Aimed at teachers at all grade levels, across the curriculum, Guided Instruction will help you provide timely and meaningful scaffolds that boost students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment.
Everyone agrees that what we do in schools should be based on what we know about how the brain learns. Until recently, however, we have had few clues to unlock the secrets of the brain. Now, research from the neurosciences has greatly improved our understanding of the learning process, and we have a much more solid foundation on which to base educational decisions.
In this completely revised and updated second edition, Patricia Wolfe clarifies how we can effectively match teaching practice with brain functioning. Encompassing the most recent and relevant research and knowledge, this edition also includes three entirely new chapters that examine brain development from birth through adolescence and identify the impact of exercise, sleep, nutrition, and technology on the brain.
Brain Matters begins with a “mini-textbook” on brain anatomy and physiology, bringing the biology of the brain into context with teaching and learning. Wolfe describes how the brain encodes, manipulates, and stores information, and she proposes implications that recent research has for practice—why meaning is essential for attention, how emotion can enhance or impede learning, and how different types of rehearsal are necessary for different types of learning.
Finally, Wolfe introduces and examines practical classroom applications and brain-compatible teaching strategies that take advantage of simulations, projects, problem-based learning, graphic organizers, music, active engagement, and mnemonics. These strategies are accompanied by actual classroom scenarios—spanning the content areas and grade levels from lower elementary to high school—that help teachers connect theory with practice.
What can 21st century educators learn from the example of a 19th century president? In this intriguing and insightful book, Harvey Alvy and Pam Robbins show how the legacy of Abraham Lincoln can guide today's education leaders–principals, teachers, superintendents, and others–as they tackle large-scale challenges, such as closing the achievement gap, and everyday issues, such as communicating with constituents. The authors identify 10 qualities, attributes, and skills that help to explain Lincoln's effectiveness, despite seemingly insurmountable odds: 1. Implementing and sustaining a mission and vision with focused and profound clarity2. Communicating ideas effectively with precise and straightforward language3. Building a diverse and competent team to successfully address the mission4. Engendering trust, loyalty, and respect through humility, humor, and personal example5. Leading and serving with emotional intelligence and empathy6. Exercising situational competence and responding appropriately to implement effective change7. Rising beyond personal and professional trials through tenacity, persistence, resilience, and courage8. Exercising purposeful visibility9. Demonstrating personal growth and enhanced competence as a lifetime learner, willing to reflect on and expand ideas10. Believing that hope can become a reality Chapters devoted to each element explore the historical record of Lincoln's life and actions, then discuss the implications for modern educators. End-of-chapter exercises provide a structure for reflection, analysis of current behaviors, and guidance for future work, so that readers can create their own path to success–inspired by the example of one of the greatest leaders of all time. Note: This product listing is for the reflowable (ePub) version of the book.
Teachers across the country are seeking ways to make their multicultural classrooms come alive with student talk about content. Content-Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners is a practical, hands-on guide to creating and managing environments that spur sophisticated levels of student communication, both oral and written. Paying special attention to the needs of English language learners, the authors • Detail research-based steps for designing lessons that spark student talk; • Share real-life classroom scenarios and dialogues that bring theory to life; • Describe easy-to-use assessments for all grade levels; • Provide rubrics, worksheets, sentence frames, and other imaginative tools that encourage academic communication; and • Offer guiding questions to help teachers plan instruction. Teachers at any grade level, in any content area, will find a wide variety of strategies in this book to help students simultaneously learn English and learn in English. Drawing both on decades of research data and on the authors’ real-life experiences as teachers of English language learners, this book is replete with ideas for fostering real academic discourse in your classroom.
In Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind , noted educators Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick present a comprehensive guide to shaping schools around Habits of Mind. The habits are a repertoire of behaviors that help both students and teachers successfully navigate the various challenges and problems they encounter in the classroom and in everyday life. The Habits of Mind include * Persisting* Managing impulsivity* Listening with understanding and empathy* Thinking flexibly* Thinking about thinking (metacognition)* Striving for accuracy* Questioning and posing problems* Applying past knowledge to new situations* Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision* Gathering data through all senses* Creating, imagining, innovating* Responding with wonderment and awe* Taking responsible risks* Finding humor* Thinking interdependently* Remaining open to continuous learning This volume brings together–in a revised and expanded format–concepts from the four books in Costa and Kallick's earlier work Habits of Mind: A Developmental Series . Along with other highly respected scholars and practitioners, the authors explain how the 16 Habits of Mind dovetail with up-to-date concepts of what constitutes intelligence; present instructional strategies for activating the habits and creating a «thought-full» classroom environment; offer assessment and reporting strategies that incorporate the habits; and provide real-life examples of how communities, school districts, building administrators, and teachers can integrate the habits into their school culture. Drawing upon their research and work over many years, in many countries, Costa and Kallick present a compelling rationale for using the Habits of Mind as a foundation for leading, teaching, learning, and living well in a complex world.