Now, you can easily stop reducing students to a number, letter, or any label that misrepresents learning and assessment in education. Now, you can help children see the value in every single assignment. Today, you can make assessment a rich, ongoing conversation that inspires learning for the sake of learning, rather than as a punishment or a reward. All you have to do is go gradeless. Throw out your grade book tomorrow! In Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, award-winning teacher and world-renowned formative assessment expert Starr Sackstein unravels one of education's oldest mysteries: how to assess learning without grades -- even in a school that uses numbers, letters, GPAs, and report cards. While many educators can only muse about the possibility of a world without grades, teachers like Sackstein are reimagining education. In this unique, eagerly-anticipated book, Sackstein shows you exactly how to create a remarkable no-grades classroom like hers, a vibrant place where students grow, share, thrive, and become independent learners who never ask, "What's this worth?" Learn what formative assessment really looks like. Summative assessment is typically an end-of-unit exam or standardized test, but what is formative assessment? Many teachers struggle with the concept. Hacking Assessment not only explains what formative assessment is, it provides blueprints for implementation and examples from educators around the world, who use this strategy successfully every day. Read It and You Can Take These Actions Immediately: Shift everyone's mindset away from grades Track student progress without a grade book Communicate learning to all stakeholders in real time Maximize time while providing meaningful feedback Teach students to reflect and "self-grade" Deliver feedback in a digital world Create e-portfolios and cloud-based learning archives Inspire Students to share their work openly This is not your average assessment book Hacking Assessment won't bore you with outdated research or unrealistic strategies. In her captivating, conversational style, Sackstein provides practical ideas woven into a user-friendly success guide with actionable steps for creating an amazing conversation about learning that does not require a traditional grade. Each chapter is neatly wrapped in this simple Hack Learning Series formula: The Problem (an assessment issue that plagues education) The Hack (a ridiculously easy solution that you've likely never considered) What You Can Do Tomorrow (no waiting necessary) Blueprint for Full Implementation (a step-by-step action plan for capacity building) The Hack in Action (yes, someone has actually done this)

    Suggests ways to overcome the problems teachers face when teaching the classics--length, challenging vocabulary, complex syntax, and alien times and settings--and lists suggested titles.

    It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quick reference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes, and other design elements to call attention to important information.Although a substantial amount of research has shown that most reading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standard reading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. School psychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students with reading difficulties and to make recommendations to address such difficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessment and intervention techniques, backed by the most current research findings.Bridge the gap between research and practice Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student struggles in reading Improve reading skills using the most highly effective evidence-based techniques Reading may well be the most important thing students are taught during their school careers. It is a skill they will use every day of their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success. Struggling students need help now, and Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how to get these students on track.

    Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris rethink traditional teaching practices in  Who's Doing the Work: How to Say Less So Readers Can Do More . They review some common instructional mainstays such as read-aloud, guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading and provide small, yet powerful, adjustments to help hold students accountable for their learning.Next generation reading instruction is much more responsive to student needs and aims to remove some of the scaffolding that can hinder reader development. Instead of relying on teacher prompts,  Who's Doing the Work  asks teachers to have students take ownership of their reading by managing their challenges independently and working through any plateaus they encounter. Whether you are an elementary teacher, literacy coach, reading specialist, or parent,  Who's Doing the Work  provides numerous examples on how to readjust the reading process and teach students to gain proficiency and joy in their work.

    He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple’s first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that builds bicycle-powered maize shellers in Tanzania, Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Wagner identifies a pattern—a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators. Wagner shows how we can apply this knowledge as educators and what parents can do to compensate for poor schooling. He takes readers into the most forward-thinking schools, colleges, and workplaces in the country, where teachers and employers are developing cultures of innovation based on collaboration, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation. The result is a timely, provocative, and inspiring manifesto that will change how we look at our schools and workplaces, and provide us with a road map for creating the change makers of tomorrow. Creating Innovators will feature its own innovative elements: more than sixty original videos that expand on key ideas in the book through interviews with young innovators, teachers, writers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, including Thomas Friedman, Dean Kamen, and Annmarie Neal. Produced by filmmaker Robert A. Compton, the videos are embedded into the ebook edition in video-enabled eReaders and accessible in this print edition via QR codes placed throughout the chapters or via www.creatinginnovators.com.

    And you'll look into the authors' own teaching minds and hearts as they unpack the moves and decisions they make to design and implement instruction that allows every student to make significant and personally relevant meaning of texts. Along the way, you'll learn how to: notice and name what students are doing as readers to build their identity and agency move beyond simple strategy instruction to step students into more complex texts show students how readers draft and revise as they read to promote engagement, self-monitoring, and deeper comprehension.Filled with student voices and classroom examples including read-alouds, small groups, and conferences, What Readers Really Do will challenge, inspire, and empower you to become the insightful, independent teacher your students need you to be. And it will remind both you and your students why and how we really read.

    She shows us how to teach students to manage all the thinking and questioning that precedes their putting pen to paper. More than that, she offers us smarter ways to have students write about their reading that can last them a lifetime. She demonstrates how students' responses to reading canstart in a notebook, in conversation, or in a read aloud lead to thinking guided by literary criticism reflect deeper text analysis and honest writing processes result in a variety of popular genres--book reviews, author profiles, commentaries, editorials, and the literary essay. She even includes tools for teaching-day-by-day units of study, teaching points, a sample minilesson, and lots of student examples-plus chapters on yearlong planning and assessment. Ensure that your students will be readers and writers long after they leave you. Get them enthused and empowered to use whatever they read-facts, statistics, the latest book--as fuel for writing in school and in their working lives. Read Angelillo.

    She wants children to learn how to care for themselves, their fellow students, their environment, and their work. Her book is loaded with practical wisdom. Using Charney's positive approach to classroom management will make the whole school day go better."- Nel Noddings, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, and author of CaringThis definitive work about classroom management will show teachers how to turn their vision of respectful, friendly, academically rigorous classrooms into reality.The new edition includes:More information on teaching middle-school studentsAdditional strategies for helping children with challenging behaviorUpdated stories and examples from real classrooms."Teaching Children to Care offers educators a practical guide to one of the most effective social and emotional learning programs I know of. The Responsive Classroom approach creates an ideal environment for learning—a pioneering program every teacher should know about."- Daniel Goleman, Author of Emotional Intelligence"I spent one whole summer reading Teaching Children to Care. It was like a rebirth for me. This book helped direct my professional development. After reading it, I had a path to follow. I now look forward to rereading this book each August to refresh and reinforce my ability to effectively manage a social curriculum in my classroom."- Gail Zimmerman, second-grade teacher, Jackson Mann Elementary School, Boston, MA

    The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension skills at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

    Despite our best intentions, grades seem to reflect student compliance more than student learning and engagement. In the process, we inadvertently subvert the learning process. After careful research and years of experiences with grading as a teacher and a parent, Cathy Vatterott examines and debunks traditional practices and policies of grading in K -12 schools. She offers a new paradigm for standards-based grading that focuses on student mastery of content and gives concrete examples from elementary, middle, and high schools. Rethinking Grading will show all educators how standards-based grading can authentically reflect student progress and learning--and significantly improve both teaching and learning.

    What does great writing instruction look like and sound like How do successful teachers of writing get great writers who enjoy writing Where do they find the time for instruction assessment and test prep In Writing Essentials Regie Routman demystifies the process of teaching writing well and gives you the knowledge research precise instructional language and confidence you need to succeed With Regie s help you ll transform your classroom into an organized joyful writing environment where students connect reading with writing every day across the curriculum learn essential skills like grammar and spelling and achieve higher scores on high stakes tests through sensible writing based test preparation and daily classroom based assessment Writing Essentials specifically and explicitly demonstrates practical easy to do strategies that turn your writing instruction practices into best practices Follow Routman s path for successfully leading all students including English language learners writers who struggle and students coping with learning disabilities from first draft to publication You ll find expert advice and specific demonstrations on a wide variety of techniques including demonstrating your own writing process for students organizing and managing the writing classroom conducting effective efficient writing conferences creating meaningful rubrics for better assessment teaching various forms of narrative and informational writing and poetry applying shared writing across the grades and across the curriculum teaching editing and revision mapping out your writing instruction with Regie s own flexible five day lesson planning model In addition Writing Essentials includes a DVD with eight three to four minute video clips from primary and intermediate classrooms that show Regie conferring with writers and celebrating their work as she teaches and assesses These invaluable clips and the detailed notes that accompany them take you insi

    This completely updated 3rd edition offers practical solutions that emphasize relationship building, curriculum relevance, and academic success. The emphasis is on preventing problems by helping students to understand each other, work well together, and develop responsibility for their own actions, but the authors also include intervention strategies for handling common and severe problems in dignified ways.Filled with real-life examples and authentic teacher-student dialogues, Discipline with Dignity is a comprehensive and flexible system of prevention and intervention tools that shows how educators at all levels can --Be fair without necessarily treating every student the same way.--Customize the classroom to reflect today's highly diverse and inclusive student population.--Seek students' help in creating values-based rules and appropriate consequences. --Use humor appropriately and effectively to respond to abusive language.--Fine-tune strategies to resolve issues with chronically misbehaving students and "ringleaders" or bullies.This book is not simply a compendium of strategies for dealing with bad behavior. It is a guide to helping students see themselves in a different way, to changing the way they interact with the world. The strategies innate to this approach help students make informed choices to behave well. When they do, they become more attuned to learning and to understanding how to use what they learn to improve their lives and the lives of others--with dignity.

    And not just for kids who read well. They also work for kids who struggle in reading, who don't respond to abstract concepts. -Tanny McGregorInside, every kid wants to love reading-sometimes they need our help to see it.That's where Tanny McGregor's memorable, sensory-driven lessons come in.The chapters in this book, she writes, are a collection of ideas about how to launch genres, how to introduce your students to the personalities of each, and how to build a curiosity and appreciation for what each genre has to offer. Use the seed ideas suggested in this volume with a genre of your choice and see how it grows!Genre Connections makes learning achievable, accessible, and incremental for all readers-including struggling readers. Tanny's lessons use everyday objects, works of art, music, and her much-loved anchor charts to help readers get acquainted with seven commonly taught genres and to discover what makes them unique.Her launching sequences gradually release responsibility for learning about text types, and they can be adapted for any genre. They help readers weave creative, sensory threads into a tapestry of understanding by taking them from a fun introductory object lesson to an immersive experience.Looking for the perfect partner for Tanny's Comprehension Connections? Or for a new way to bring the inner reader out in any student? Let the ideas in Genre Connections inspire you to help your students get to know genres quickly, confidently, and effectively.

    Troy Hicks explores the questions of how to teach digital writing by examining author's craft, demonstrating how intentional thinking about author's craft in digital texts engages students in writing that is grounded in their digital lives. Troy draws on his experience as a teacher, professor, and National Writing Project site director to show how the heart of digital composition is strong writing, whether it results in a presentation, a paper, or a video. Throughout the book, Troy offers: in-depth guidance for helping students to compose web texts (such as blogs and wikis), presentations, audio, video, and social media mentor texts that give you a snapshot into what professionals and students are doing right now to craft digital writing suggestions for using each type of digital text to address the narrative, informational, and argument text types identified in the Common Core State Standards a wealth of student-composed web texts for each digital media covered, along with links to them on the web technology tips and connections, as well as numerous tools for creating a digital writing assignment. To preview a sample of Crafting Digital Writing click here.

    This indispensable book is filled with no-nonsense advice, checklists, and handouts as well asA step-by-step plan to make the first week of school a success Approaches for creating a positive discipline plan Methods for motivating students, especially reluctant readers Strategies for successful classroom management Suggestions for creating and grading student portfolios