The authors acknowledge both the structural and sociological issues that contribute to low-performing schools and offer multiple tools and strategies to assess and improve classroom management, increase literacy, establish academic vocabulary, and contribute to a healthier school culture.

    -Kathy Collins and Matt GloverWhat do we see when young children interact with books before they can read the words?Kathy Collins and Matt Glover see real reading, characterized by purposeful meaning-making and opportunities for reading growth and language development."One of our biggest hopes," write Kathy and Matt, "is to help you see and value all of the powerful work young children do as readers." With I Am Reading you'll see that fostering what little ones do before they can read the words is important early instruction.Kathy and Matt show how to nurture, nudge, and instruct young readers to make meaning in any text, whether or not they are reading the words. They share: observation guides for children reading any kind of book specific descriptions of language and independence development sample reading conferences and whole-class minilessons suggestions for creating reading opportunities in preschool and reading workshops in K-1 action plans to get you going 25 online video clips of children making meaning and teachers supporting them.I Am Reading pairs two important voices in early literacy to remind us that we're teaching children, not reading levels. "In the rush toward ever higher reading levels in the early years," write Kathy and Matt, "we may fail to value the strategy use and high-level thinking children do before they are reading conventionally." Join Kathy and Matt and look anew at your young readers so you can provide the kind of support that gets them off to a great start.

    Building on three studies that investigated schools successful in closing the achievement gap, Tyrone Howard shows how adopting greater awareness and comprehensive understanding of race and culture can improve educational outcomes.Important reading for anyone who is genuinely committed to promoting educational equity and excellence for all children, this accessible book:Outlines the changing racial, ethnic, and cultural demographics in U.S. schools. Calls for educators to pay serious attention to how race and culture play out in school settings. Presents empirical data from schools that have improved achievement outcomes for racially and culturally diverse students. Focuses on ways in which educators can partner with parents and communities.

    In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the genteel founding of the common schools movement in the nineteenth century to the violent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from the dispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to the founding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campus in 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued to bedevil us: Who should teach? What should be taught? Who should be held accountable for how our children learn?    She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change. And she also discovers an emerging effort that stands a real chance of transforming our schools for the better: drawing on the best practices of the three million public school teachers we already have in order to improve learning throughout our nation’s classrooms.   The Teacher Wars upends the conversation about American education by bringing the lessons of history to bear on the dilemmas we confront today. By asking “How did we get here?” Dana Goldstein brilliantly illuminates the path forward.

    Born from the ideas and research in her much-loved Teaching Grammar in Context, and benefiting from the creativity of her colleague Jonathan Bush, this new resource goes even further to bring the best research, theory, and practices into the classroom. Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is three helpful books in one. In the first part, Weaver outlines the latest theories, research, and principles that underlie high-quality grammar instruction for writing. She demonstrates that specific, effective grammar-teaching practices: address all of the 6 Traits of writing instructionemphasize depth, not breadthshould be positive, productive, and practical-not stodgy, correct, and limitingmust be incorporated throughout the writing process, not broken out in isolated units.In part two, Weaver links theory and practice. Her explicit, classroom-proven teaching ideas, strategies, and lessons address key subjects as diverse as helping students make better stylistic use of modifiers, incorporating grammar into revision, and mapping grammar instruction to the curriculum. Mostly in part three, she invites members of the field into a discussion of high-quality grammar instruction. Jeff Anderson (Mechanically Inclined)Rebecca Wheeler (Code-Switching), and other practicing teachers describe their teaching-how they model the vital role grammar plays in guiding students through the editing process, how they respond to student errors, how they help English Language Learners edit for conventional English, and how grammar supports code-switching among speakers of African American English. Like Weaver's, their ideas are ready for immediate classroom implementation. With all this, plus a brief primer on crucial grammatical concepts, Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is what teachers have been waiting for: an up-to-date, ready-to-use, comprehensive resource for leading students to a better understanding of grammar as an aid to more purposeful, detailed, and sophisticated writing. To request this title as a Desk/Exam copy, click here.

    QRI-5

    His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.

    This practical resource shows teachers how to be effective and have a life! Author and educator Maia Heyck-Merlin explores the key habits of Together Teachers—how they plan ahead, organize work and their classrooms, and how they spend their limited free time. The end goal is always strong outcomes for their students. So what does Together, or Together Enough, look like? To some teachers it might mean neat filing systems. To others it might mean using time efficiently to get more done in fewer minutes. Regardless, Together Teachers all rely on the same skills. In six parts, the book clearly lays out these essential skills. Heyck-Merlin walks the reader through how to establish simple yet successful organizational systems. There are concrete steps that every teacher can implement to achieve greater stability and success in their classrooms and in their lives. Contains templates and tutorials to create and customize a personal organizational system and includes a companion website: www.thetogetherteacher.com Recommends various electronic or online tools to make a teacher's school day (and life!) more efficient and productive Includes a Reader's Guide, a great professional development resource; teachers will answer reflection questions, make notes about habits, and select tools that best match individual needs and preferences Ebook customers can access CD contents online.  Refer to the section in the Table of Contents labeled, Download CD/DVD Content, for detailed instructions.

    The Inclusive Classroom: Strategies for Effective Instruction provides a wealth of practical and proven strategies for successfully including students with disabilities in general education classrooms. The text is unique for its three-part coverage of fundamentals of teaching students with special needs (including legal and professional issues, and characteristics of students with special needs); effective general teaching practices (including such topics as strategies for behavior management, improving motivation, increasing attention and memory, and improving study skills); and inclusive practices in specific subject areas (including literacy, math, science and social studies, vocational and other areas). This approach allows readers to understand students with special learning needs, effective general practices for inclusive instruction, and content-specific strategies. The overall approach is one of effective instruction, those practices that are most closely aligned with academic success.

    Just read this till the end You don’t have to buy this book. Just read this till end & you will learn something that will change the way you do math forever. Warning: I am revealing this secret only to the first set of readers who will buy this book & plan to put this secret back inside the book once I have enough sales. So read this until the very end while you still can.School taught you the wrong way to do mathThe way you were taught to do math, uses a lot of working memory. Working memory is the short term memory used to complete a mental task. You struggle because trying to do mental math the way you were taught in school, overloads your working memory. Let me show you what I mean with an example:Try to multiply the 73201 x 3. To do this you multiply the following:1 x 3 =0 x 3 =2 x 3 =3 x 3 =7 x 3 =This wasn’t hard, & it might have taken you just seconds to multiply the individual numbers. However, to get the final answer, you need to remember every single digit you calculated to put them back together. It takes effort to get the answer because you spend time trying to recall the numbers you already calculated. Math would be easier to do in your head if you didn’t have to remember so many numbers. Imagine when you tried to multiply 73201 x 3, if you could have come up with the answer, in the time it took you to multiply the individual numbers. Wouldn’t you have solved the problem faster than the time it would have taken you to punch in the numbers inside a calculator? Do the opposite of what you were taught in schoolThe secret of doing mental math is to calculate from left to right instead of from right to left. This is the opposite of what you were taught in school. This works so well because it frees your working memory almost completely. It is called the LR Method where LR stands for Left to Right.Lets try to do the earlier example where we multiplied 73201 x 3. This time multiply from left to right, so we get:7 x 3 = 213 x 3 = 93 x 2 = 60 x 3 = 03 x 1 = 3Notice that you started to call out the answer before you even finished the whole multiplication problem. You don’t have to remember a thing to recall & use later. So you end up doing math a lot faster. The Smart ChoiceYou could use what you learnt & apply it to solve math in the future. This might not be easy, because we just scratched the surface. I've already done the work for you. Why try to reinvent the wheel, when there is already a proven & tested system you can immediately apply. This book was first available in video format & has helped 10,000+ students from 132 countries. It is available at ofpad.com/mathcourse to enroll. This book was written to reach students who consume the information in text format. You can use the simple techniques in this book to do math faster than a calculator effortlessly in your head, even if you have no aptitude for math to begin with.Imagine waking up tomorrow being able to do lightning fast math in your head. Your family & friends will look at you like you are some kind of a genius. Since calculations are done in your head, you will acquire better mental habits in the process. So you will not just look like a genius. You will actually be one. Limited Time BonusWeekly training delivered through email for $97 is available for free as a bonus at the end of this book for the first set of readers. Once we have enough readers, this bonus will be charged $97. Why Price Is So LowThis book is priced at a ridiculous discount only to get our first set of readers. When we have enough readers the price will go up.

    How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.

     This illuminating book shows how to make this scenario an everyday reality. With its foundation in principles introduced in the authors' bestselling Visible Learning for Literacy, this resource delves more deeply into the critical component of self-assessment, revealing the most effective types of assessment and how each can motivate students to higher levels of achievement.

    Includes professional development guide.

    In sharing lessons, anecdotes, and cautionary tales from his own experiences revamping assessment procedures in the classroom, Dueck offers a variety of practical strategies for ensuring that grades measure what students know without punishing them for factors outside their control; critically examining the fairness and effectiveness of grading homework assignments; designing and distributing unit plans that make assessment criteria crystal-clear to students; creating a flexible and modular retesting system so that students can improve their scores on individual sections of important tests.Grading Smarter, Not Harder is brimming with reproducible forms, templates, and real-life examples of grading solutions developed to allow students every opportunity to demonstrate their learning. Written with abundant humor and heart, this book is a must-read for all teachers who want their grades to contribute to, rather than hinder, their students' success.

    Sousa discusses the cognitive mechanisms for learning mathematics and the environmental and developmental factors that contribute to mathematics difficulties. This award-winning text examines:Children's innate number sense and how the brain develops an understanding of number relationships Rationales for modifying lessons to meet the developmental learning stages of young children, preadolescents, and adolescents How to plan lessons in PreK-12 mathematics Implications of current research for planning mathematics lessons, including discoveries about memory systems and lesson timing Methods to help elementary and secondary school teachers detect mathematics difficulties Clear connections to the NCTM standards and curriculum focal points