Total Participation Techniques presents dozens of ways to engage K 12 students in active learning and allow them to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge and understanding.

    Full-color photographs of actual early childhood programs demonstrate that the spaces children learn and grow in can be comfortable for children, teachers, and parents alike.Margie Carter serves on the adjunct faculty at Pacific Oaks College Northwest, Seattle, Washington. Deb Curtis works as a child care teacher at the Burlington Little School in Seattle. Their other books include The Art of Awareness, The Visionary Director, Training Teachers, Spreading the News, and Reflecting Children’s Lives.

    It's not easy to explain these abstract reading strategies to elementary readers, yet knowing how they work and how to use them is an important first step to connecting with texts. Fortunately Tanny McGregor has developed visual, tangible, everyday lessons that make abstract thinking concrete and that can help every child in your classroom make more effective use of reading comprehension strategies.Comprehension Connections is a guide to developing children's ability to fully understand texts by making the comprehension process achievable, accessible, and incremental. McGregor's approach sequences stages of learning for each strategy that take students from a fun object lesson to a nuanced and lasting understanding. Her lessons build bridges between the concrete and the abstract by incorporating writing, discussion, song, art, and movement into a web of creative connections that reinforce each strategy on a variety of levels. All the while Comprehension Connections offers an inside look at the dynamic of McGregor's teaching, showing you how her ideas look in action, and including the language she uses and that she encourages her students to use as they build their facility with: schema inferring questioning determining importance visualizing synthesizing. Many students struggle to understand what it is they are supposed to do as they learn to read strategically. Help them make connections to the ideas behind reading and watch as your readers go deeper into texts than ever before.

    They are places for research, refuge, and reflection--where students create, collaborate, communicate, and develop skills in critical thinking and compassion. Learn 10 ways to create the library learning environment that every child deserves. In Hacking School Libraries, 2015 School Librarian of the Year, Kristina A. Holzweiss, and 2017 Sensational Student Voice Award finalist, Stony Evans, bring you 10 practical hacks that will help you create a welcoming and exciting school library program. They show you how to rethink your library to become the hub of the school community, whether you are a veteran librarian or just beginning your career. Hacking School Libraries isn't just for librarians. It's for any educator who wants to learn how to transform your learning space provide hands-on learning opportunities empower your students bring curriculum to life differentiate instruction effectively raise funds advocate for modern school libraries establish global connections celebrate reading What the experts say: "When I learned that Kristina and Stony were writing a book to fit into one of my favorite series, I was so excited and couldn’t think of a better duo to do so! School librarians will find Hacking School Libraries such an amazing read and resource in so many ways. The hacks found in this book are terrific for any grade level and will help guide librarians to make a difference in their library, school, and community!" -Shannon McClintock Miller, Teacher Librarian and Iowa Future Ready Librarian Spokesperson "Authors Kristina Holzweiss and Stony Evans are two of the most respected thought leaders and practitioners in the school library field. Their book, Hacking School Libraries, is an essential resource for any modern-day library media specialist. It is filled with actionable tips and strategies that anyone can easily implement tomorrow." -Laura Fleming, Library Media Specialist, bestselling author of Worlds of Making and The Kickstart Guide to Making Great Makerspaces Grab Hacking School Libraries today, and incorporate library media centers into your learning community tomorrow.

    Offering practical guidance for literacy educators, curriculum development specialists, and other education professionals and policy makers, this volume considers how we can most effectively improve the quality and content of reading and writing instruction. Leading researchers and practitioners address the eight principles of best practice, providing the most current information on how to enhance students' ability to construct meaning from text independently, draw upon texts to build conceptual understanding, effectively communicate ideas orally and in writing, and develop an intrinsic desire to read and write. This timely book blends state-of-the-art theory and research with workable suggestions based on extensive hands-on experience in the field.

    In Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions , authors Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz provide teachers with a framework for planning and facilitating purposeful math talks that move group discussions to the next level while achieving a mathematical goal.Through detailed vignettes from both primary and upper elementary classrooms, the authors provide a window into how teachers lead discussions and make important pedagogical decisions along the way. By creating equitable opportunities to share ideas, teachers can orient students to one another while enforcing that all students are sense makers and their ideas are valued. They examine students’ roles as both listeners and talkers, offering numerous strategies for improving student participation. Intentional Talk includes a collection of lesson planning templates in the appendix to help teachers apply the right structure to discussions in their own classrooms.

    Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé—as she prefers to be called—does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher.  Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.

    For others, it's a boring, stressful, and frustrating waste of time. If your child is in the second category, why keep tormenting them? Instead, why not help them find an educational environment where they feel genuinely motivated, excited, and empowered?In this eye-opening book, Blake Boles makes the case for leaving conventional school and taking one of the many alternative paths through K-12 that exist today. He addresses parents' major concerns about unconventional education—Can my kids still go to college? Will they still be employable? How will they learn to work hard?—while highlighting the hidden benefits of self-directed learning, such as improved parent-child relationships, a more balanced decision-making process regarding college, and a heightened sense of autonomy and connection.Drawing upon 15 years of work as a mentor and guide for adolescents in alternative and experiential learning environments—as well as his own unconventional life path—Boles weaves together narrative, theory, and research to build a powerful argument for granting children unusual levels of freedom and responsibility.

    By practicing these disciplines, you'll learn how to:Attract top teachers to your school Create an intense environment that demands people's best thinking Drive sound decisions by constructing debate and decision-making forums Give your team a sense of ownership for responsibilities and results

    Tamar Chansky frequently counsels children (and their parents) whose negative thinking creates chronic or occasional emotional hurdles and impedes optimism, flexibility, and happiness. Now, in the first book that specifically focuses on negative thinking in kids, Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking provides parents, caregivers, and clinicians the same clear, concise, and compassionate guidance that Dr. Chansky employed in her previous guides to relieving children from anxiety and obsessive compulsive symptoms. Here she thoroughly covers the underlying causes of children's negative attitudes, as well as providing multiple strategies for managing negative thoughts, building optimism, and establishing emotional resilience.

    In detailed accounts, Lillard shows how children acquire the skills to answer their own questions, learn to manage freedom with responsibility, and maintain a high level of intellectual stimulation by using the Montessori method. This is an essential handbook for parents and teachers who have chosen the Montessori alternative for the older child.

    KEY TOPICS: Specific, practical strategies include ways to get students active from the start through activities that build teamwork and immediately get them thinking about the subject matter. 101 activities include ice-breakers for the beginning of class, strategies for the middle of a lesson, and concluding exercises to foster student reflection and future application. In addition, these activities are designed to enliven learning, deepen understanding, and promote retention. Designed for the preservice and inservice teacher, this book is effective for anyone teaching in middle schools, high schools, colleges, and centers for adult education. For professionals working in middle school/secondary school education.

    In this remarkable resource, Maria Walther shares two-page read-aloud experiences for 101 picture books that tune you into what to notice, say, and wonder in order to bolster students' literacy exponentially.A first-grade teacher for decades, Maria is a master of "strategic savoring." Her lesson design efficiently sparks instructional conversations around each book's cover illustration, enriching vocabulary words, literary language, and the ideas and themes vital to young learners.Teachers, schools, and districts looking to energize your core reading and writing program, search no further: The Ramped-Up Read Aloud delivers a formula for literacy development and a springboard to joy in equal parts.

    Engaging IdeasShows how teachers can encourage inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate in their courses. Presents a wide variety of strategies for stimulating active learning and for coaching writing and critical thinking. Offers teachers concrete advice on how to design courses, structure assignment, use class time, critique student performance, and model critical thinking activities. Demonstrates how writing can easily be integrated with such other critical thinking activities and inquiry discussions, simulation games, classroom debates, and interactive lectures.

    It can't start from scratch, and it can't fire all its teachers and principals when students do poorly. Great charter schools can only serve a tiny minority of students. Whether we like it or not, most of our youngsters willcontinue to be educated in mainstream public schools.The good news, as David L. Kirp reveals in Improbable Scholars, is that there's a sensible way to rebuild public education and close the achievement gap for all students. Indeed, this is precisely what's happening in a most unlikely place: Union City, New Jersey, a poor, crowded Latino communityjust across the Hudson from Manhattan. The school district--once one of the worst in the state--has ignored trendy reforms in favor of proven game-changers like quality early education, a word-soaked curriculum, and hands-on help for teachers. When beneficial new strategies have emerged, like usingsophisticated data-crunching to generate pinpoint assessments to help individual students, they have been folded into the mix.The results demand that we take notice--from third grade through high school, Union City scores on the high-stakes state tests approximate the statewide average. In other words, these inner-city kids are achieving just as much as their suburban cousins in reading, writing, and math. What's even moreimpressive, nearly ninety percent of high school students are earning their diplomas and sixty percent of them are going to college. Top students are winning national science awards and full rides at Ivy League universities. These schools are not just good places for poor kids. They are good placesfor kids, period.Improbable Scholars offers a playbook--not a prayer book--for reform that will dramatically change our approach to reviving public education.